The Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio, is home to the largest known collection of Annie Oakley items in the world and, while Annie Oakley may be one of the most renowned folks from Ohio's Darke County, we learned about a lot of other fascinating people and events during our recent visit to the museum.
Visitors enter the museum through the front door of the Garst House, originally built in 1852 as an inn. The Garst family donated the home to the Darke County Historical Society for use as a museum in 1946, and today the museum has a collection of more than 300,000 artifacts and a complex with over 35,000 square feet of display space.
The Garst has military uniforms from the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard for every American military involvement since the War of 1812, with the exception of the Mexican American War during the 1840s.
Nearly all of the museum's military artifacts have some sort of connection to Darke County, including a collection of items from Lt. Commander Zachary Lansdowne, who died during an ill-fated flight of the Navy airship USS Shenandoah. The collection also has a large number of items from women in military service through the years.
Many visitors come to visit the Annie Oakley Center, opened in 2005 and renovated in 2010. The museum's collection of Oakley artifacts includes a lot of fun items like vintage Oakley-themed toys, posters from movies produced about her, and personal items she carried with her as she traveled the world demonstrating her shooting skill.
Broadcaster and world traveler Lowell Thomas, perhaps best remembered for his travel-oriented television shows during the mid-1900s, also came from Darke County. A gallery showcases Thomas' prolific career in radio, television, movies, newspapers, and as a book author. Visitors can also tour Thomas' childhood home on the museum's grounds during summer weekends.
Crossroads of Destiny, a permanent exhibit opened in 2008, is a must-see for American history enthusiasts. The museum mounted this exhibit to bring attention to a largely forgotten story in the nation's history and to correct inaccuracies about the era perpetuated throughout the years in history books.
The Treaty of Greenville in 1795 paved the way for Midwestern settlement, and this exhibit traces events leading up to the treaty signing going back to the Paleo Indian period, proceeding through the signing of the treaty that involved 12 Native American nations and the United States, and the beginning of America's subsequent westward expansion.
The area in and around Greenville served as home to one of the largest stockade forts ever built in the country, a 50-acre camp that headquartered the United States Army from 1793 until 1796. The museum's four-foot by six-foot large scale model (1/64 inch = 1 foot) of Fort Greene Ville took about 15 months to create, and model maker Andrew S. Janicki used techniques like individually cutting each log in the model from small twigs using a small jig, according to a brochure I picked up in the gallery.
Historians and archeologists worked closely together on the exhibit that contains about 1,000 artifacts, the oldest dating back 14,000 years.
The museum funded a number of digs over the years. Many of the items in the Crossroads exhibit came from digs undertaken in 1994 and 1995 for the bicentennial of the treaty signing, which unearthed artifacts from the fort like weapons, ammunition, buckles, uniform buttons, tools, household implements, remains of the fort's blockhouse, and more.
The museum also has a section containing a recreated "village" of storefronts and homes, a collection of Currier and Ives prints, and more galleries devoted to area history.
Genealogists can find files related to nearly 5,000 surnames that include obituaries, newspaper clippings, legal documents, and family histories at the museum's genealogy library operated by the Darke County Genealogical Society.
Visiting the museum before the end of 2011? Download a buy-two-get-one-free admission coupon at the Discover Ohio site.
See my story, Shooting Star from North Star, Ohio, for more about Annie Oakley's life.
Want to learn more about the Treaty of Greenville and people in frontier Ohio? Check out The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830 (A History of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier) by R. Douglas Hurt, A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh by Allan W. Eckert, or Bayonets in the Wilderness: Anthony Wayne's Legion in the Old Northwest (Campaigns and Commanders) by Alan D. Graff.
© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved
Comments