Ice cream social planned Thursday

Bob Ulrich, Fred Steinbach and Sherry Steinbach serve ice cream during last summer's LCHS social.

Arlan Risbeck and friends will provide live music during a free midsummer ice cream social from 6:30 until 8 p.m. Thursday, July 28, at the Lucas County Historical Society Museum, 123 North 17th St., in Chariton.

Serving of ice cream, ice water and cookies will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the barn-patio area of the museum campus.

Risbeck, who plays steel guitar, will be joined by Ed and Pat Sparks of Liberty Center, bass, rhythm and vocals, for a program that begins at 7 p.m.

Risbeck, a Lucas County native who lives in Colorado, returns to Lucas County during summers in large part to perform in the jam sessions that are a regular feature across the region.

All buildings on the museum campus will be open to tour during the social, guests may come and go as they like, plenty of seating will be provided and admission is free.

Historic Lucas County atlases now online

Two vintage landowner atlases from the Lucas County Historical Society collection, one published in 1896 and the other, in 1912, have now been digitalized and as of Wednesday are available online for everyone to use and enjoy.

These are valuable resources for anyone interested in Lucas County history and/or genealogy and the society is delighted to be able to share them widely via The University of Iowa's Iowa Digital Library. You can access the cover page of that library's Historic Atlases collection here.

Or, you may go directly to the 1896 atlas by using this link; and to the 1912 atlas, by using this link.

So far as we know, the 1896 atlas is the earliest published for Lucas County, which probably makes it the most valuable resource, but the 1912 atlas certainly is interesting, too.

The process that moved these volumes from our library into cyberspace began last year when Mary McInroy, of the University of Iowa Libraries map collection, contacted us. University Libraries already had added many county atlases to its online collection, but had been unable to locate copies of early Lucas County volumes to scan.

She asked if the society would be willing to share atlases from our collection for that purpose and the LCHS Board readily agreed. By doing so, we not only would make them widely available but also cut down on wear and tear to the original books, which after a century are fragile.

In the spring, Marilyn Johnson, Betty Cross and I hand-delivered the atlases to McInroy at University Libraries because (a) we wanted to snoop in the maps collection and (b) because were were insecure about our ability to pack the atlases for safe shipment.

In the months that have followed, the atlases have been scanned, minor repairs have been made to them by University Libraries conservators and custom-built archival boxes have been made for both. They will be on their way home to Chariton next week.

In the meantime, everyone at the Lucas County Historical Society hopes others will find these volumes as interesting and useful as we have.

A grand old Lucas County flag

We have given a respectful salute this week to the oldest flag in the Lucas County Historical Society collection and retired it to safe storage, the only option when its long-term survival is the primary consideration.

The flag was hand-sewn during 1860 by five Liberty Township women, Eliza (Dillman) Sydebotham, Sarah Hollingsworth, Elvira Bidlake, Mary Ferguson and Mary Curtis. It won first prize for the largest flag carried by a township delegation at a Republican party rally in Chariton that summer.

Keep in mind that this was 1860, the year Abraham Lincoln secured the Republican nomination for president, and you’ll see why it is both an interesting and an historically significant artifact.

Kept for many years by Lucas County Republican Woman, its care was transferred to the historical society during 1967.

The red and white stripes of the flag, which measures 100 by 42 inches, are in a high state of preservation. Its 34 hand-cut stars, arranged in two circles with one at each corner and a larger star in the center, were sewn onto a blue silk background, however --- and have not fared so well. The silk has deteriorated to threads and the stars are barely hanging on, in some cases pinned to a newer cotton (but still very old) backing. Those pins, now rusty, are a concern, but we have left them in place for the time being.

Ideally, an heirloom flag of this sort should be stored flat, but we have neither the facilities nor the space to do that. So we’ve done the next best thing --- folded the flag loosely within and around archival tissue paper and placed it in an archival box. It will be kept in a safe, dark, climate-controlled place with other vintage flags that will be given a similar treatment.

There are a few lessons here for anyone dealing with an heirloom flag. At some point, motivated by good intentions, this and other flags in our collection were folded into the “official” crisp triangle we’re familiar with from military funerals and other flag-folding events, then placed in glass-fronted triangular boxes.

That crisp official fold is fine for flags in regular use, but potentially disastrous for heirloom flags and problematic even for other flags if long-term survival is an issue.

The folding process can damage fragile heirloom fabric and even newer flags, if left folded for too long, will become permanently creased.

Without the ability to store a large flag flat, the best solution remains to fold it loosely around and within archival tissue (or a laundered cotton sheet) and place it in an archival box. Flag fabric should not touch wood, or standard cardboard. Nor should flags be stored in attics, basements, garages, or other locations where temperature and humidity fluctuate broadly.

We hope our grand old flag will be around for another 100 years and are doing our best, using the means we have, to ensure that.

In the good old summertime ...

The unfortunate aspect of basing this year's hot dog order on last year's attendance figure was that we ran out. The entirely positive aspect of last evening's Echoes of the Past living history expo on the Lucas County Historical Society Museum campus was that there were plenty of cookies, lemonade, chips and freshly-roasted peanuts to go around as attendance soared. What a great evening!

The weather cooperated even though there was a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms and it was a beautiful, sunny, typically hot and humid summer evening. Lots of old friends were there, but it was especially nice to see so many new faces --- and such a broad age mix. That mix is the sort of thing museums like ours dream about.

School marm Mary Sandy (top and above), administering the Great Iowa History Quiz in Puckerbrush School, may have been the busiest. We had scheduled concurrent presentations in both the school and Otterbein Church for 5:30 and 6:15 p.m. That worked at the church. But a few steps down the hill at the school, a fresh classroom full of scholars filed in as soon as previous classes were dismissed --- and the teacher didn't get a break at all during the two-hour event.

The Rev. Dennis St. Lawrence, pastor of Grace Baptist Church, was just terrific as he blended the general history of curcuit-riding preachers with Otterbein history, then went on to demonstrate briefly just the sort of sermon that might have been delivered from the Otterbein pulpit a hundred years ago.

Dennis rose above and beyond the call of duty by wearing a long wool frock coat from the museum collection in a church air conditioned in the old-fashioned way --- open windows and funeral home fans (actually there are ceiling fans, too) --- and a vintage shirt. Judy and Marilyn added last-minute buttons to the shirt, intended to be held together by studs, when we discovered we didn't have enough studs of the right size that matched.

Ellen Hawkins (center) and the Dixon girls (Jackie Andrews, left, and Betty Cross, right) greeted our guests on the front porch of the Stephens House with lemonade and cookies. Chairs on the porch, plus its broad rail, proved to be a popular place during the evening just to sit and enjoy both the company and the breeze.

Board member Frank Mitchell, returning to his native over-hauls (yes, many of us pronounce overalls that way around here) after a career as a distinguished professor of history way out west in California, was in his element as he led visitors through the history of the log cabin.

Leo Steinbach (seated), shown here with Joe Steinbach, very kindly agreed to visit with guests in the Steinbach Meat Market display about a family and a business that has been a mainstay of Chariton's business community for about as long as there has been a Chariton.

LCHS Board member Ilene Church, a nurse, spent the evening in the Crist Gallery, where our medical display is located, talking with visitors about that aspect of Lucas County's history.

And as always, the vintage peanut roaster that began its life at Piper's Grocery was fired up by board members and officers (from left) Jerry Pierschbacher, Bob Curtis and Bob Ulrich so that those who cared to do so could take home a sack of freshly-roasted peanuts.

It was great, too, to have Chariton Boy Scouts back for another year, demonstrating rope-making on the south lawn of the Stephens House.

So it was a great evening and everyone I think had a good time. The only mishap involved our musician, fiddler Clint Bingham, who managed to run afould of a patch of poison ivy late in the week and was incapacitated by it. Maybe next time!

It's tricky to start naming names because someone will be forgotten, but Marilyn Johnson, general coordinator, with assistance on the food end of things from Mary Lou Pierschbacher and Betty Cross have to be singled out. And then there was Bill Marner, who led a contingent of board members and others to ready the barn for Friday night by moving lumber and equipment into the new blacksmith shop --- then cleaned it up. Thanks to one and all!