Preserving the Past by Pat Mulso

The museum will have special extended hours during the Freeborn County Fair, and admission to the museum and village is free to all fair attendees. We will be open from noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday. The gate by our village church will open at noon each day. Please plan to visit us during the fair and see what’s new.

We have two special events taking place in August as well. The first is our annual “Echoes from the Past: A Journey into History” which is Aug. 19 with special guest star, Marion Ross.  Tickets are available at the museum and cost $7.50. Seating is limited so don’t delay in purchasing your tickets.

We also have “An Evening with Marion Ross” which will take place on Aug. 20. This is a limited seating event and will include a social, dinner and interview with Marion Ross. Tickets are $20 each or $35 for two tickets. Tickets must be purchased in advance and are available now at the museum.

The museum will host a four-hour defensive driving refresher class from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. on Aug. 27. The cost is $20 for AARP members or $25 for nonmembers, which includes the class materials and administrative fee. You must register for the class and will need your driver’s license to do so. Call or stop by the museum to register during our regular business hours.

The Freeborn County Genealogical Society meets each month at the museum; the next meeting is 7 p.m. Aug. 10. Visitors are welcome. There is a brief business meeting followed by coffee and a program.

The Golden K2 Kiwanis meet weekly at the museum from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Wednesdays. However, there will be no meeting at the museum on Aug. 5.

The museum also has several weddings taking place in our Village Church this summer.  Contact us at the museum during regular hours if you are interested in renting the church or our meeting rooms for a special event.

I attended my sibling reunion in Ohio earlier this month and had a great time visiting with everyone and also had the opportunity to meet and visit with two of my cousins on my dad’s side that I grew up with. We laughed and talked for nearly three hours over lunch.

Then the day before we left, I met with cousins on my mom’s side to discuss plans for our big family reunion next summer. This is the reunion which will reunite descendants of Gerhard Hartings, who was left in the care of a priest at the port of entry in 1850 and never located again until through a DNA test last year we were able to verify some of his  living descendants.  So after 165 years we are delighted to reunite this missing link of our family with the rest of the family for a great reunion. We have secured the hall and reserved the caterer. I stopped and shared our story with a local newspaper in the area where the majority of our family still live.  They are going to print a story shortly to tell our story and alert the family to save the date for our July 16, 2016 reunion. There were over 1,000 people in attendance at our last big reunion, so it takes a lot of planning, but we are on our way and excited for the opportunity to get to know our new found cousins!

 

Pat Mulso is the executive director of the Freeborn County Historical Museum, Library and Village, 1031 Bridge Ave.