Longtime museum board member retires

• Longtime Freestone County Historical Museum board member Nancy Rula (left) retired from the board two weeks ago. Photo by Jason Chlapek/ Fairfield Recorder

A longtime board member of the Freestone County Historical Museum celebrated her retirement two weeks ago.

Nancy Rula served on the board since 2011 and as secretary since 2015. She was awarded a certificate of appreciation for her retirement from serving on the museum board on May 24.

But Rula doesn’t plan on leaving the museum high and dry, however.

“I am not retiring from my volunteer service in the genealogy research and book writing department. I am only retiring from serving on the board of directors,” she said.

Many of Rula’s accomplishments have been making the historic Fairfield Recorder and Teague Chronicle newspapers available in book format for those doing family or local historical research. These books were known as “A History of Freestone County, Its Communities, Its People: Phase I, II, and III” and were several hundred pages each.

She spent countless hours pouring over microfilm transcribing newspaper articles from 18761889 in the Recorder and from 1906-1907 in the Chronicle.

Rula also wrote several books for the museum which include the Fairfield Recorder Obituaries from 1900-1905, and Fairfield Recorder Obits from 19061910, The “Boll Weevil Railroad” Book (from the Teague Chronicle articles, which records the history of the railroad in Freestone County), and The Year of 1890 in Freestone County. She took no money for her efforts and all of the profits were completely donated to the organizations involved.

Rula is also a very willing volunteer helping untold individuals. She is always available to help those who are searching for family genealogical information in the archives of the museum.

“Nancy gives her time and talent selflessly researching for others, hours on end; not only in the museum archives, but in the county clerk’s office as well,” Linda Mullen said. “She is a great blessing to our community.”

The Jonathan Hardin DAR Chapter awarded Rula the Historical Preservation Award in May of 2021. Many of her books were accepted into the National DAR Library for their historical content