Historical Society
April News
Quick Links Articles Last Updated: 8/31/10 |
Museum Hours:
Saturday and Sunday 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Special tours can be arranged by calling:
George Rutherford at 814.382.7761
We will have a special field trip prior to the program on May 17.
Our program is entitled "Torpedoes and Testing at Pymatuning" and will feature Janet Anderson. Janet presented this program several years ago and it was so good and impressive we invited her back.
She tells of the program of testing torpedoes, using slides to supplement her talk.
This year we are car pooling to Pymatuning Lake to view the actual site where the torpedo testing was done. We will leave the Conneaut Lake Park Fire Hall at 5 p.m. and travel to the Jamestown site where Janet will show the area.
We then will return to the fire hall for the 7:30 p.m. program. Both the field trip and program are open to the public, free of charge. You need not be a society member to attend.
On a personal note, this program is excellent and very interesting and a great one for younger people to hear.
Wes Goodman of Conneaut Lake has started a summer internship with the society to earn college credits. He is a senior at Thiel College where he is majoring in history.
Wes has experience in many areas involving history, including archives, exhibits, oral interviews and grant research as well as tour guide.
He must work 150 hours over the summer to earn his credits. He has already been busy and we are enjoying him and his enthusiam. We plan to keep him busy and hope to be able to complete some projects that we have not yet been able to get done.
Welcome Wes!
At our annual meeting in April, we elected new offiers and seated two new board members.
George Rutherford will serve as president pro tempore, meaning he will serve as president until somebody steps forward to serve. George was one of the founding members with Gail Fales and Bobbie Moyers. I'm sure you will recognize him as he is very active in Conneaut Lake Kiwanis Club as well as a familar face at the museum.
Dave Lynch was named vice president, succeeding Lee Dennis, who chose not to seek re-election. The board voted to make Lee an ex-offico member.
New board members are Carol Herchenroether and Jacquie Lippert. They succeed Bill Cooper and Joe Rial.
Bobbie moved from president to board member, taking Dave's seat on the board. (Officers are not considered board members according to our bylaws).
We salute Joe and Bill for all the work they have done over the years.
Our 8th annual Conneaut Lake Cuisine, held May 3 at Conneaut Lake Park Fire Hall, was a huge success. It was another sell out - the 8th year for that. We were thrilled with the vendors and the response from the community.
Participating restaurants and food vendors were: Hotel Conneaut, Miller's Food Factory, Palms Restaurant, Judy Hughes, "Ghost of Mama Bears,"; our historical society served parsley potatoes; Pelican Landing, Tink's Subs, Zatsick's Golden Dawn, Livingston's Quality Meats, Sheetz, Yeun's Chinese Gardens, Valenza Restaurant, Pizza Hut, Crawford County Dairy Princess, Conneaut Lake Park Fire Department (Station 5), Casey's Ice Cream and Candies, Saegertown Beverage.
As you may know, our cuisine is our major fundraiser for the year. All the restaurants and food vendors supply all the food, as well as cook it and serve it (or we serve it on their behalf).
The historical society provides all the paper products - plates, napkins, silverware, etc. as well as sterno. We sell 50/50 tickets, which allows us to pay for these products. Winner of the $178 in the 50/50 raffle was Nancy Larko. Nancy is a society member and was also a volunteer server at the dinner.
The society members volunteer their services - from planning to set up, serving at the event and tearing down. Volunteers also purchase tickets as well if they eat. (In our society, there is no such thing as a 'free lunch.")
The fire department was wonderful again, providing us with the site as well as assisted us with things such as chafing dishes, ice and coffee - to say nothing of the great cooperation.
We say a heartfelt thanks to everbody. It is such a wonderful feeling to see our community come out and support us - from the restaurants to the guests.
Over the past eight years, we have raised more than $20,000 from the cuisine itself! It's not only popular, it's profitable and a lot of fun.
Junque Sale and Auction Coming Soon
If you are doing spring cleaning and ready to get rid of some of your stuff, please think of us.
We will have a junque sale (another name for garage sale), on June 26 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the museum. We are seeking good items (no clothes) please that you may no longer want or need. As the old saying goes, what's one man's trash is another man's treasures.
We find it a great way to help "recycle" good items and make a little bit of money for our cause. When the sale is over, all leftover items are donated to another charity.
If you have something to donate, please contact Carol Herchenroether at 412-400-3763. That's her cell phone number.
The auction is set for July 11 at 1 p.m. at the museum with Sherman Allen as the auctioneer. We have an auction every other year and it also is a major fundraiser for us. So if you have some quality items that are perhaps more valuable than garage sale items, please call us and we will accept it for the auction.
Jack and Claire Dearing are cochairman of this event. Their phone number is 382-8157.
Joe Rial and Wayne Koch have volunteered to pick up items if the donor cannot get them to the museum.
We will sell hot dogs and other refreshments that day too!
Please mark you calendars and plan to attend these events, which are always enjoyable.
The Classic Wooden Boat Show has been expanded this year to two days - June 26 and June 27 at Ice House Park. We will have Liberty the Second in the water (not on the water) but docked. We hope to start the engine as well.
This is the 25th anniversary of the raising of Liberty the Second in 1985 and we are celebrating "The Year of the Liberty the Second."
We will have special items for sale at the museum and the boat show, including the 25th anniverseary commemorative book about the history of the boat, which sank in 1922 and was brought up in 1985.
We also plan to display the Foust Boat at the boat show. So, again mark your calendars and join us for this special event!
Renovations of the former garage at the musuem has been lovingly dubbed "the Boat Room," instead of the garage now. The garage has been painted and renovated and has a new display case featuring all the parts of the Liberty the Second. Also featured are enlarged framed photographs of the boat and its activities as well as a framed map of where boats were sunk in the lake.
We will have a ceremony tentataively scheduled for May 29 - if the replica of the fish is complete by that time.
For those who don't know about the fish, we plan to have a replica of the state's largest Muskie ever caught in Pennsylvania. It was caughed by Lew Walker of Meadville in 1924 and is 59 inche long.
The actual fish is mounted and display at Pymatuning, but we can't get it.
So, Dave Lynch is heading a campaign to get a replica of the fish made and displayed in the "boat room."
Raffle tickets are being sold to raise the money for this special project. The winning number will be announced on Memorial Day. Tickets are $1 each or six for $5. Call Dave at 382-6157 for tickets.
Would you like to own a piece of Liberty the Second?
Tim McKay had some of the original wood from the boat and has made a ballpoint pen for us to raffle. Tickets are $1 each or six for $5 and will be available at the museum, the June society meeting and at the boat show.
Plans are to draw the winning ticket on the second day of the Classic Boat Show.
In observance of the Year of the Liberty the Second, we have added some special items to our gift shop. The first is a blue sweat shirt with a photograph of the boat with the lettering, Conneaut Lake, Home of Liberty the Second. Cost is $20.
We also added: bumper stickers reading Conneaut Lake, Pa., Home of Liberty the Second. Price is $2.
New magnets featuring a sailboat with the same logo. Price is $2.
We have three new post cards - all for 50 cents each. They include the Woolly Mammoth, featuring a collage done by Kevin Parsons of the mammoth and the bones; a picture of the Civil War Monument in Memorial Park; and a photograph of Sunset on Conneaut Lake. All are especially beautiful and give a quick glimpse of our small town and a memory of a visit here.
All the above items are on sale at the museum and will be at the boat show.
In additon, our new Liberty the Second Commemorative Book is to be available by Memorial Day. It features 60 pages of copy and 40 pages of advertising to showcase the boat's history and the local businsses.
Only 500 copies will be printed. Cost is only $10. So plan to purchase yours early!
No, we don't mean in the primary election. We mean at the museum.
In conjunction with our new election exhibit, we are holding an election at the museum - to determine what visitors think is the best exhibit at the museum.
The new election exhibit was designed to tell the roots of the primar election - which started in Crawford County at the suggestion of Sadsbury Township resident George Shellito. We have a wooden voting box used for paper ballots as well as the old lever-type voting machine.
Jean Shanley developed a "ballot" for the exhibits and those ballots will be tallied each week and a sign giving the results posted.
So stop by the museum. Once you vote, you will receive a sticker noting "I voted at the C.L. History Museum."
Each year, the exhibit committee works to develop some new displays to keep the public coming back and another part of our community history displayed.
In addition to the election exhibit and the "boat room," new exhibits this year included an expanded agricultural display as well as show cases tracing our history from the glacial era to the development of the railroad and others.
We also have an original Dodgem car from Conneaut Lake Park. The sports exhibit and the school exhibits also have been renovated as have some others.
So check us out and tell your friends.
The museum is open from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sundays or by special appointing by calling George Rutherford at 382-7761.
Special tours of the museum also are available - for all age groups from school children to senior citizens or for private tours. There is no fee for the tours.
Call George Rutherord at 382-7761 to schedule a tour.
As of May 4, 12 different tours are scheduled already!
The board approved selling a number of items at clearance prices. They include book marks - at only $1; craft mugs for kids at 25 cents; tshirts for kids at $5 (marked down from $10) ; sticker books for children, 50 cents; color books, $1; and selected post cards, 25 cents.
We only have five of the "Lovely Spots" books left, so if you want one, don't wait. This book is a reprint of a book given to all customers who rode the train to Exposition Park (Conneaut Lake Park) in the early 1900s. It features some really neat pictures of Hotel Conneaut and is a real keepsake.
Price is only $10.
If you take a trip around the north side of the museum or visit the "boat room," you'll see a new addition.
We replaced the 80-year-old windows with rows of glass block. It looks really nice and will be more energy efficient.
They were expensive, but the board felt it is worth the cost $840) as we continue to upgrade the museum and try to make it not only more attractive, but energ efficient.
Check them out!
We are nearing our goal of $4,700 by August 1 to allow us to paint the southern side of the museum and put on another coat of paint on the front of the building.
We now have $3,970.07 in the account. We received donations of $1,970.07 from private donations and $2,000 from Exxon Mobil to take it to nearly $4,000. That means we only need another $730 to do these two sides.
Of course, we need $11,000 to completely paint the whole building, but we are trying to take it one step at a time.
Anyone wishing to donate to the painting project may send checks to the historical society at PO Box 425, Conneaut Lake, Pa., l6316.
We are a 501-c organization, meaning all donations are tax deductible.
© 2009 Conneaut Lake Area Historical Society
150 North Third St., Conneaut Lake, PA 16316