From the President's Desk

Taking a Second Look

July Open House Exhibit

     July’s exhibit will speak to the museum’s outreach program to children.  In conjunction with the Besore Lirbrary’s summer reading program, the theme of which is traveling, the museum will be exhibiting the collections of Carrie and Katie Lum, Mercersburg, and three cousins – Laura (10) and Tyler (6) Eby and Hannah Cramer (12). 

     Carrie began collecting bookmarks at a school Book Fair when she was in kindergarten. She has now been collecting for 13 years.  Her collection began with bookmarks of things she liked, such as dolphins and animals.  Others are related to favorite books and movies from her youth, like Pooh, Belle, and Cinderella.  Having read all of the Little House on the Prairie books, Carrie’s favorite bookmark is from the Laura Ingalls Wilder House in DeSmet, South Dakota. Other more recent favorites were purchased while on a trip to Europe when she was 16. 

     Carrie’s sister, Katie who has been collecting for 11 years, started her collection of ink pens when she was four years old.  Her first pen came from the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and is a favorite because of the colored stones that float inside of it.  Katie’s collection now numbers over 50 pens that have been collected from across the U.S.A., Canada, and Europe. Her favorites, that have fond memories for her, include one from a fifth grade field trip to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and from family vacations to Gatorland in Orlando, Florida, Nag’s Head and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

     Hannah, Laura, and Tyler’s contribution to the July exhibit is not anything that they have collected but has to do with what they studied during this past home-school year, which was about travel – the Lewis and Clark expedition (1803 – 1806). From their studies of the journey of Lewis and Clark throughout the Louisiana Purchase, the children chose the Sioux Indians to research.  The approximately 57” by 25” diorama that they made includes a Sioux Indian village, the Missouri River and the plain.  Hanna, Laura, and Tyler write, “It took a lot of time.  To make the tepees, we used ideas from a Kids Discover magazine.  We sculpted the people from clay and glued hair and clothes on them. Then we arranged the people and had them doing everyday chores.  Last of all, we placed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in a canoe on the Missouri River to represent the expedition visiting the village.” 

     Hannah, Laura, and Tyler will try to be present for some of the open house times to talk to visitors about their project.

     The museum will have a special open house for the children registered in the Besore Library summer reading program between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Thursday, July 17. Other children from the community who might be interested in visiting the museum during this time are also welcome.  A parent or guardian must accompany the children.  Continuing the theme of “Travel” during this one-hour special open house, AAMI members Evelyn Pensinger and Frances “Pickle” Diehl will tell stories of growing up in Greencastle and Shady Grove and riding the trolley to surrounding towns.  Museum members Jim Craig, Tom Fox, and Robert “Red” Pensinger will each have one of their antique cars on the premises for the children to look at.  Pictures of the trolley, the CVRR railroad tracks, train, and tie pins, the hotel day registers of the Antrim House and Franklin House will all show the children what travel was like in the early to mid 1900’s.

     Please be sure to stop by and learn more about where visitors to Greencastle came from, as found in the registers, and to see the diorama and collections of ink pens and bookmarks.

August Open House Exhibit

The August exhibit will be “Antique Tradesmen’s Tools.” About a year and a half ago, David Reichard, formerly of Shady Grove, gave to the museum a number of cabinet maker’s tools.  These along with antique woodworking tools from the collections of AAMI member Joe Henson and tin snips and a slate hammer from Jim Craig will be displayed.  The tin snips were used by Jim’s late father, James H. Craig, who was a well-known plumber in Greencastle.  The slate hammer is from a time when slate was commonly used for roofs. In addition, the woodworking tools of the late Howard Swisher, will be on loan for the exhibit from his son, Bob Swisher.  Howard retired  in  1975 after  working for Moller Organ in Greencastle for 47 years.  The consoles for the organs were made by Howard with the tools that will be displayed.  Swisher will, also, be loaning a large wooden vice that was used to bend sheet metal by his late father-in-law John Lindsay, who was a plumber in the Greencastle area.
     As an added visual for the exhibit, the museum has been given the opportunity to use slides that were taken in 1977 of the Moller Organ factory that show different phases of making an organ by hand, several organs in different states of completion along with some of the workers at that time.
       Did you know there is currently another organ making business in Greencastle? It is Lawless-Johnson Organ Company, 501 South Cedar Lane. John Johnson has offered and will have his business open for tours during the corresponding museum open house hours on Thursday and Sunday.  This exhibit will be quite unique and definitely offer insight into the tools that were used daily by trades people of the past.

Recent Acquisitions

• One book – A Sketch of Medicine and Pharmacy – And a view of Its Progress by the Massengill Family from the Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century, by Samuel Evans Massengill, M.D., 1943 which validated that Carl’s Drug Store (in 1943) was the oldest, continually operated drug store in Pennsylvania.  It is now the oldest, continually operated drug store in the United States.

                A gift from Frank Ervin

• Three Greencastle-Antrim Carl’s Book Store postcards – the National Hotel on the southwest corner of the square, Moss Spring, and the drinking fountain (now located at the King Playground) given to Greencastle by the “Old Boys Reunion” of 1914                                         A gift from Pauline Rinehart
   

• One aerial photo of the west side of Greencastle, three copies of the 1954 plot layout (Orchard Circle) for the Orchard Realty Company, one list of the original lot owners with addresses, the history of the Willowbrook Dairy, one pastel picture of Route 30 (possibly of the Fort Loudon area) and one oil painting of the Martin’s Mill Covered Bridge both painted by the late Elizabeth “Libby” Gordon Foust, wife of the late Paul R. Foust.                                                                  Gifts from Ray Mowen

• One 1911 Calendar advertising piece for E. W. Pensinger Hardware Store, Center Square, Greencastle, one photo of Edgar W. Pensinger, one chestnut brown leather bank envelope with E. W. Pensinger embossed in gold. Edgar Pensinger was the father of Harold “Penny” Pensinger, the late husband of Evelyn Pensinger.

Advertising pieces: two ink pens (one hammer and one screw) from Antrim Building     and Farm Supply; one 1965 calendar with photograph of Martin’s Mill Covered Bridge (Chambersburg Dairy); one First National Bank thermometer; Foust’s Drug Store photo development envelope; one Nellie Fox Bowl wooden nickel; one E.L.M. Department Store $1 wooden nickel; one 1964 Belle’s Dry Good’s “lucky” penny; one Greencastle Exxon key ring; one Earle G. Miller Insurance key ring; one Yingling Insurance Agency blue pencil; one Winger Plumbing and Heating nail clipper on key ring; one Elliott and Snyder refrigeration, electrical, plumbing, and heating red screw driver; one J. B. Lindsay 30^th anniversary pry-type bottle cap opener

Local election handouts:  one Otto Beckner home memo pad; three pencils (one each) Gideon Hartman, Paul Bricker, and Jones, Shuman, Cordell and Peterson.           Gifts from Evelyn Pensinger

• A copy of Pennsylvania – A History of the Commonwealth published in 2002 by Penn State University Press                                                                                         A gift from Alice Brumbaugh

Recent Purchases

• A 1954 Omwake and Oliver Calendar given as a free premium at Christmas to customers.  It has a sizeable Lockhart print entitled “Finding the Bluebird of Happiness” which takes up about two thirds of the calendar.  A little blond girl of about 10 years holds her baby doll while looking up at a bluebird.  This Lockhart print is not one of the common Lockhart prints.
• A 1934 reproduction Fox Buick calendar from 1979.  The dates were the same in these two years but the ads and the monthly calendar sheets are all from 1934.
• Autographed copy of The Mid-Atlantic Frontier: A Guide to Historic Sites of the French and Indian War. 

What’s Been Happening 

• Advertisements have been purchased for the G-A Chamber’s Quality of Life Book and for Susquuehanna Life’s “Museum and Gallery Guide.” The guide will be distributed from the Pennsylvania/Maryland Visitors’ Center (between Exits 1 and 3), all along I 81 to the Pennsylvania/New York Visitors’ Center.
• Bonnie spoke to the Greencastle-Antrim Rotary in May and to the Mercersburg Rotary in June.
• Be sure to stop and look at the new hardscape pieces that have been added to the landscaping at the front entrance area.  These concrete pieces are reproductions of European Victorian antique sculptured lawn “ornaments.”  A straight bench has been placed directly in line with the front entrance with an urn on either side of the walk where the boxwood starts.  A curved bench and a small bird bath is nestled in the corner of the boxwoods that are adjacent to the street and a single curved bench sits in the corner of the boxwoods on the other side of the front entrance.  Please stop and rest awhile, close your eyes and imagine that there is nothing but open pasture and fields surrounding the museum house all the way out to the Leitersburg Pike, as it would have been in 1860.

New Email Address         

Bonnie Bingaman, AAMI’s resident genealogist, has changed her email address to ancestorhunter@yellowbananas.com.   If you have been looking for genealogy information for awhile, come to a dead end, and still can’t find what you’re searching for, contact Bonnie Bingaman at either her email address or at 717.597.9080

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