Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Circa 1973. Edgar Mattson (left) and Bill Seiler (right) sit on the benches of the relocated Brantford Railroad Depot. Seiler was instrumental in the acquisition and installation of all three museum buildings.
"Life of the Ostrich'' was one of the dozens of postcards that Alice Stanley received from friends and family while she was caring for her mother in Athens, Ohio. This particular postcard came from Cawston Ostrich Farm in California, courtesy of a Cousin Daisy. It would have been similar to getting a meme in the mail, and undoubtedly helped Alice (and presumably her mother) to feel more connected to and encouraged by the outside world.
Legacy is a word that conjures images of grandeur. It has always felt like a fancy word, with wide expanses and a sprinkling of crown-jewels. While many people talk about creating a legacy to leave behind for future generations, Merriam-Webster offers a more neutral notion of the term, "a thing transmitted by or received from an ancestor, predecessor or from the past."
Eddy County Museum fits that definition, as it was left for us by long-lived community members in the 1960s. They knew the world was changing, and though they couldn't exactly know how it might be in the future, they knew how important it was to leave something behind for future generations. (That's us!)
In fact the museum holds many legacies, as the folks who helped to create this tiny community museum each gave a material part of their lives to be preserved.
In the early 1960s, Alice Stanley took residence at the newly-instated Lutheran Home of the Good Shepherd. She was well into her 90s, and brought along her postcard collection. These postcards came from places all over the world, from friends and family who wrote to Alice while she cared for her ailing mother.
Alice was from Athens, Ohio, but had chosen the Lutheran Home because cousin Elsie Kerr had taken up residence there as well. These cousins were born in 1879, and had experienced nearly a century of cultural change. The two women donated over a hundred mementos, household goods, clothing, photographs, postcards and other print media to the Eddy County Museum.
Founding board member William Seiler also spent his final days at the Lutheran Home, just across from the museum. Born in 1902, Williams was 96 years of age when he passed.
The number of artifacts in the museum which can be traced to Bill are few, and the few I have encountered have left me with new questions and greater understandings.
For example, he donated a panoramic photograph that portrays a threshing operation on the farm. The photo is similar to many other agricultural images in our collection. What makes this image unique is that it was captured by Sheyenne-based photographer Sarah Solberg– a name I have since added to my research list.
Another of William's artifacts is a sturdy metal display rack located inside a display case in the depot. It stands about 4 feet high, and is at least that wide.
One day this summer, when updating the displays in the depot, I decided that I really wanted to move it. It was a larger job than I could handle on my own, so I persuaded my husband to help. Once he took a look, and showed me the details of the work I realized it wasn't going anywhere. It was built in place. I playfully imagine this custom-made piece will one day, in the far and distant future, have outlasted all the other artifacts that comprise the museum, and be left standing on the prairie with a map of Eddy County.
