March 2005, Volume 8, Issue 2

From the President’s Desk

The time and work that volunteers give to organizations such as museums is greatly appreciated.  Volunteers are, and have always been, the backbone of such establishments, whether large or small.  Without volunteers, a great deal of work would never be accomplished. 

It has been a while since Allison-Antrim Museum has updated its volunteer lists.  Enclosed with this newsletter is a pre-stamped postcard addressed to the museum.  On the postcard are a number of areas in which the museum needs help from time to time.  We would appreciate it if you could fill it out and return it to the museum by March 15, so that we can update our volunteer lists.  To save some postage, only members who live within the general area of Greencastle-Antrim have received a postcard.  We already know that those of you who live great distances away will not be able to volunteer in the areas listed on the postcard, but we do appreciate your support through membership.

A docent is someone who is trained to teach or lecture.  Specifically, at AAMI, a docent will be taught about the history of the museum, the property, and the items that are on exhibit, so that she or he can educate the visitors to the museum.  When trained, docents will be able to give a tour of the museum.

The duties of a volunteer, who helps out during open house, are to be present and guard the items that are on exhibit.  Open house volunteers do not have to give tours.

About seven times per year, the museum needs light refreshments served at the monthly meetings, which are held at the Evangelical Lutheran Church.  Light refreshments can be as simple as cookies, pretzels, chips, and a drink, or whatever the volunteer would like to serve.

The newsletter mailing requires folding the newsletter, putting it in the envelope, and then applying the pre-printed label and the stamp. There are about 230 newsletters. It is no longer necessary to pre-sort in-town and out-of-town envelopes, before taking the envelopes to the post office or leaving them for your mail carrier to pickup.

There are times when I need help installing and de-installing monthly exhibits, and decorating at Christmas. 

On scheduled open house days, there are four metal signs which say “Museum Open,” which need to be placed at four locations around town – the Besore Library, the corner of South Ridge Avenue and Leitersburg Street, the corner of Leitersburg Street and South Washington Street, and at Hardee’s on the corner of Routes 16 and 11.  The signs then need to be collected at the end of open house hours.

If you have questions about any of the volunteer areas on the postcard, please call me at 717.597.9325.  The amount of time that you give is up to you.  If you’re called to volunteer for a certain month during open house, and it doesn’t suit your schedule that month, it’s ok. Nothing is written in stone when you return your postcard.

April is national volunteer recognition month.  It’s you, the members and volunteers, of Allison-Antrim Museum who have made it what it has become over the last six and a half years.  To all of Allison-Antrim Museum’s volunteers, “Kudos to you.”

Katherine Carl Estate

Allison-Antrim Museum received a bequest of $1,000 from the estate of Mrs. Katherine Carl.  In addition, the family requested that memorial donations in her name be made to the museum, from which it has received $310.  Mrs. Carl was a charter member of Allison-Antrim Museum and gave many Carl family and Carl’s Drug Store artifacts and memorabilia upon the opening of the museum in 1998. Those artifacts can be seen in the permanent Carl’s Drug Store exhibit in the large parlor of the museum.

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March Exhibit

“History in Cookbooks” will be the title of the March special exhibit.  The basics of life include food, shelter, and clothing.  In the United States, during modern times, radio and TV commercials, advertisements in magazines and newspapers, and billboards along the roadside seem to have made eating the national pastime. The introduction of smorgasbords in restaurants and the Big Mac were some of the first commercial enticements which have led to the over-sizing of Americans.  In “The Joy of Cooking” 1964 edition, the brownie recipe, baked in a 9” x 13” pan, yields about 30 brownies.  Just 27 years later in the 1991 edition of “The Joy of Cooking,” the brownie recipe, baked in a 9” x 13” pan, says it yields about 16 brownies.

Along with societal history, world history events have also affected the daily menus of American families.  During World War II in “The Alice Bradley Menu-Cook-Book,” the May 1945 edition lists the following as rationed foods: sugar, coffee, canned fruits and vegetables, canned and dried soups, fresh and canned meat, cheese, canned fish, butter, margarine, lard, and other cooking fats and oils.  In addition, cream was thin instead of thick, and fresh milk was replaced more often with evaporated, condensed, or dried milk.  Tea, cocoa, chocolate, spices, flavorings and condiments were not readily available. 

Honey, molasses, corn syrup, and maple syrup were used as sugar substitutes in recipes or the quantity of sugar in some recipes was simply lessened.  Fresh vegetables from Victory gardens or the market replaced canned vegetables when available.  This particular cookbook did advise to use ration coupons to purchase canned tomato puree, juice, catsup, or chili sauce for color, flavor and vitamins.  Fewer ration coupons were needed to purchase dried beans versus canned beans.

It was recommended to use fresh salmon and other fish, steamed, in place of canned salmon and tuna, which were being used by the Army.  Under oils, fats, butter and margarine, the author advised, “Save all fat that you cannot use and return it to your butcher to be made into ammunition.” 

The section on wartime cookery ends with the following: “Keep constantly in mind these suggestions from the U.S. Food Administration:  Buy and prepare only what you need.  Plant a Victory garden.  Raise chickens or pigs or keep a cow if you can.  Buy what is plentiful, especially wheat.  Use fresh vegetables and fruits.  Follow nutrition rules.  Cooperate on rationing rules.  Remember that food is a weapon.”

The cultural melting pot of America has also influenced what has been placed on the tables of American families for hundreds of years.  In this area, the Pennsylvania German cuisine greatly influenced our daily meals and waistlines. The English, Irish, Italians, French, Eastern European, and many other cultures make up our country. Ethnic restaurants have been good things, introducing the flavors of unfamiliar cuisine to our palates.  Tasting and learning about the cuisine of our neighbors and their/ cultures become part of the process of getting to know others who are not exactly like we are.  Learning to know others leads to understanding and tolerance.

Visit the museum in March and see a very small portion of the variety of cookbooks that have been published.  Visitors will also have an opportunity to taste some recipes.

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April Exhibit

Frank Ervin, AAMI member and proprietor of Carl’s Drug Store, has asked Allison-Antrim Museum to participate in his plans for celebrating the 180^th anniversary of Carl’s Drug Store.  Dr. Adam Carl arrived in Greencastle in April 1825. He opened his drug store on April 27 in his residence at 13 South Carlisle Street.  For 149 years, three generations of the Carl family owned the pharmacy, which is now the oldest continuously operating drug store in the United States.  Edward Carl, the last of the Carl family to own the drug store, sold the business to Frank H. Ervin in 1974. 

Over the past 180 years the drug store has been located as six different addresses from South Carlisle Street to North Carlisle and then on East Baltimore Street to the current North Antrim Way location.  Dr. Adam Carl and his grandson Charles B. Carl and his son Edward Carl were owners of the drug store.  Only Adam Carl was a licensed medical doctor as well as a licensed pharmacist.  His son George Davidson Carl was the only other licensed medical doctor in the Carl family.

Since the front door of the museum opened on August 1, 1998, it has had a permanent Carl’s Drug Store exhibit.  The special exhibit for the month of April will focus on the items in that exhibit in addition to other Carl’s Drug Store items for which there is no permanent exhibit space available.  Also, on exhibit will be some items that are on loan from Frank Ervin’s collection.

As a memento, visitors to the museum will receive a booklet which details the history of the drug store and an old-fashioned cardboard hand-held “church” fan which features one of the glass slides that was used as an advertisement in the local movie theaters. These mementos are courtesy of Carl’s Drug Store and Frank Ervin.

Please join the museum on April 7 and 10 as it shares in this momentous 180^th anniversary of Carl’s Drug Store!

March Monthly Meeting

Kurtis Meyers, a graduate of Greencastle-Antrim High School, will present a program on “The Aviation Industry in Hagerstown:  The Post-war Years” with emphasis placed on Fairchild.  Meyers’ first presentation, in May 1998, covered the aviation history in Hagerstown from 1916 – 1945.

Meyers is a leading authority on Fairchild and aviation in the Cumberland Valley.  Among other projects, he has produced a video on the history of aviation in Washington County, Maryland.

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April Quarterly Meeting

Who hasn’t enjoyed a Hershey’s Kiss?  The guest speaker for the April quarterly dinner meeting will be Keven Walker who will speak about “Milton Hershey and His Legacy.”  There is no one who has grown up in this central Pennsylvania region who cannot be aware of Milton Hershey and Hershey chocolate candy.  Our taste buds just don’t accept anything else but the flavor of Hershey’s milk chocolate as being the true flavor of milk chocolate.  That being said, there is much more to the legacy of Milton Hershey than his chocolate candy and Hershey Chocolate, now Hershey Foods. 

Milton S. Hershey (1857-1945) was an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and father to countless orphans.  Hershey failed at his first two companies – the first one made taffy and the second made cough drops.  In 1882, he realized success when he established Lancaster Caramel.  By 1895, his three plants were doing a million dollars worth of business per year.  Before he sold Lancaster Caramel in 1900, Hershey began making chocolate candy, a five cent bar of chocolate, to be exact.  As with caramel candy, he discovered that milk made the caramel chewy and he also figured out how to make a quality product in large quantities, which reduced the price for consumers. 

Hershey bought land in Derry Township, Pa. about a mile from where he grew up, and began building his first chocolate factory in 1903.  Hershey became incorporated in 1908.  The town of Hershey, Pa. catered to Hershey’s employees and was created solely from his ideas.  Did you know that the Hershey Amusement Park of today was first created for the pastime benefits of Hershey’s employees? His employees could ride the carousel and watch vaudeville shows at no cost.  Hershey also built a community center where his employees could hold their club meetings.  A 30-mile inter-urban railway was built by the company for its employees when they needed to travel outside of Hershey.

Milton Hershey’s ultimate charitable gift was the Deed of Trust which he established in 1909 for the Hershey Industrial School for orphan boys.  Martin Morse Wooster quoted an editorial that appeared in the Times newspaper, Troy, N.Y. in 1923, “Mr. Hershey can not estimate the good that will result from his tremendous gift.  Neither he nor anyone else can have more than a faint conception of the influence that this school will exert on the lives of its inmates, on the communities in which they will become a part, on the State, the nation, and posterity.”  Changes have occurred over the years.  The school is now called The Milton Hershey School, which began admitting blacks in 1968 and girls in 1976.  Today, the student population is ten percent true orphans with the rest of the student body being comprised of low-income, single-parent households, as well as children from two-parent households whose parents cannot afford to take care of them.

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What’s Been Happening

• Ken and Bonnie did a book signing at the new Heritage Center in Chambersburg, which celebrates the history of Franklin County, on Saturday, January 29 during the winter Ice Celebration.

• Rebecca Elgin and Bonnie led a tour on February 24 for the 20-member ninth grade social studies class of Ellen Kirkner, head of the high school social studies department. The students were studying the life-style of Greencastle and Antrim Township at the turn of the 20^th century.

• Bonnie spoke about Allison-Antrim Museum to the Greencastle-Antrim Lions Club at their February 24 meeting.

• The February exhibit, “Sweethearts of the Silver Screen,” was an outstanding success.  There were 90 visitors to the museum during both open house days that came from as far away as Fairfield and Shippensburg and Alexandria, Virginia.

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Recent Acquisitions

·          A copy of the Crunkleton family genealogy and history, which was a gift from Lorraine Pensinger Phillips.

·          One 1915 photograph of a children’s choir in a church, which is still to be identified.  All the names of the children are included. A gift from Vivian Scull

·          One black rectangular-shaped metal box which belonged to Dr. Nowell of Greencastle.  The box was able to be locked.  A gift from Frank Kesselring

·          An edema blood-letting instrument that was used at the battle of Antietam and during other Civil War engagements by Dr. Henry G. Christzman, was given to AAMI by Hermione Brewer.  After the war, Dr. Chritzman continued his practice of medicine in Welch Run, Pennsylvania.  Dr. Chritzman had two sons Clarence of Upton and Harry of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania,  who followed in his footsteps as doctors.  Two grandsons, also, became doctors and practiced in Greencastle.  Their names were Dr. Henry Chritzman and Dr. William Chritzman Brewer.

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Website Inquiries

• Coincidentally, there were a total of four questions received over the past two months about woven coverlets.  From Ohio, an estate appraiser sought information on J.M. Kostner, a weaver of woven coverlets.  The coverlet in question was made in 1845. Extant coverlets woven by Kostner date from 1843 to1848.
   

• The only known written account of the Corp. William Rihl incident by a Confederate soldier was emailed to AAMI for its records.
   

• An email was received concerning the ownership of a Greencastle woven coverlet that was made by local weavers Ambrose and Bohn, which was on exhibit during the March 2002 woven coverlet exhibit.  The coverlet in question is owned by the Washington County Historical Society, Hagerstown, Maryland.
   

• A question was received concerning a coverlet that was woven in 1854 for Frany Fridley, Quincy, Pennsylvania.
   

• From an ancestor of the Peter Kuhn family, an inquiry as to whether AAMI has a copy of the “Peter Kuhn Family History and Records.”  Peter Kuhn was one of the early Antrim Township settlers.  A copy of this particular Kuhn family genealogy would make a very nice addition to the museum’s beginning collection of local genealogy.

Other Inquiries

• A member of the Bortner family telephoned the museum from Connecticut in hopes of solving a family mystery about a family woven coverlet.  Again, the internet was responsible, after the lady discovered the March 2002 AAMI exhibit of woven coverlets from this area on the museum’s Website.

            Their family woven coverlet had a first initial and last name of Bortner woven  into the border of the coverlet.  Unlike most woven coverlets, there are no corner  blocks with the weaver’s name, date, and customer’s name. The lady’s father was  convinced that his grandmother was the weaver of the coverlet because the family  name was the only name that appeared on the coverlet.  In the book American Coverlets and Their Weavers from the Collection of Foster and Muriel McCarl,  Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, there are no Bortners listed as having been weavers in the York, Pa. area, which is from where the family came.  We also   know from history that coverlet weaving was a profession of German men and   that Jacquard looms were expensive and would not have been used by the everyday lady of the house.      

            Unfortunately, the weaver of this coverlet created a mystery for several generations in the future, because he did not include his name in the traditional corner block.

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