Rural-life museum to open on former county home land

The larger plan is to make the property a farm and ecology education center.
By LAURE CIOFFI
VINDICATOR PENNSYLVANIA STAFF
MERCER, Pa. -- There was a time here when mail was delivered by horse-drawn sleigh, and wooden treadmills were used by dogs and other animals to help churn butter on the farm.
To ensure that time is not forgotten, the Mercer County Historical Society's Rural Life Museum is keeping those items for display.
The museum's grand opening is next week in a temporary building on land once used as the county home on Pa. Route 58. The permanent home will be in a white barn that sits just behind the temporary building.
Bill Philson, executive director of the Mercer County Historical Society, said the society wanted to get the museum started before the permanent space was ready.
"This is a chance to start a museum, so why wait? When you wait, things fall by the wayside," Philson said.
All of the items on display were donated to the society.
The group started working on the museum slightly more than a year ago after Dale Boyd, historical society president, visited a rural-life museum in New Mexico.
"He thought we could do just as good a job here," Philson said.
Preserving the past
The one-room museum is filled with objects from the 1800s to the mid-1900s, ranging from wooden water pumps and pipes to old washing machines and a host of farm tools. It also includes a display of the old voting system in Mercer County. Philson said the building was once used to house all the county's voting machines.
"If you don't preserve these things, then an entire generation will never know how or why people did things like deliver the mail using a horse and buggy," Philson said. "It's part of our heritage and to this day we [in Mercer County] generate more money through agriculture than anything else."
Yet, although agriculture is the county's largest moneymaker, fewer family farms exist, he noted. That makes the job of keeping the heritage of rural life alive even more important, he added.
The museum is located on the land once used as the old county nursing home and farm. The 163-acre farm is still owned by the county, but a 99-year lease was given to the Munnell Run Farm Foundation, a nonprofit formed in 2002 to support the farm.
Jim Mondok, foundation president, said the group's purpose is to preserve the land for agriculture and education. Mondok also is manager of the Mercer County Conservation District.
The working farm has gardens, a trout nursery and other farm-related items.
Farm Day
A master plan for the entire site, including the Rural Life Museum, will be unveiled during next Sunday's open house. In conjunction with the museum opening, Munnell Run Farm Day will be held on the land, and it includes a farmer's market, traditional arts and crafts, farm wagon rides, free children's activities, food and entertainment.
Mondok said the museum is just one of several partnerships the Munnell Run Farm Foundation has made for using the land.
He said a fund-raising effort soon will be started to raise the $2 million needed to make the improvements outlined in the master plan. Those improvements include putting the museum in its permanent home just a few yards away from the current site and constructing an educational building and new offices.
Mondok said the work will be done in steps. They hope to raise the money through local donations and state grants.
The museum will be open to the public from 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays through October and will reopen for that same schedule Memorial Day 2006, Philson said. It is also available for tours by appointment. Philson hopes it will become one of the stops history lovers make in Mercer County.
"The rural community is becoming aware that we are here. The people that come here are excited about what they see," he said.
cioffi@vindy.com