The Mansfield Memorial Museum is restructuring to an all-military museum and will hold several online auctions with Charles Miller & Associates Auctioneers.
It's the first of many auctions set to begin as early as September.
There will be a little bit of everything auctioned ― postcards, light fixtures, books, spoons, doors, Aaron Turner, a volunteer who is assisting the museum with the restructuring, said on July 19 from the historic museum at 34 Park Avenue West.
The museum remains temporarily closed due to the death of the late curator Scott Schaut, who died July 4, 2023. The museum is expected to re-open in 2025.
Before his death, Schaut had drafted an extensive inventory list of his personal collections intermingled with museum artifacts on loan from individuals and organizations. The board has located those items, which still remain in the museum and which are part of his estate.
Numerous Mansfield Memorial Museum artifacts are being documented and redistributed on loan to local historical organizations such as The North Central Ohio Industrial Museum and The Ohio Genealogical Society and other museums, according to the museum's board.
"This will allow more artifacts to be displayed that were previously unable to be exhibited for all to enjoy," according to an earlier museum board statement from Ed Olson, board president. "While we have a beautiful large building, there’s not ample space to both store and display all the exhibits. A redevelopment gives us exciting opportunities to revitalize the memorial building to a more contemporary setting displayed in a dedicated environment," Olson said.
The Mansfield Memorial Museum, established in 1889, is the oldest museum in Richland County. Founded by Edward Wilkinson who, as an avid collector of specimens and artifacts for the Smithsonian Institute, Carnegie Natural History Museum and Peabody Field Museum, established a varied and extensive collection.
Currently the museum features multiple collections including all major wars, natural history and the industrial history of Mansfield including Westinghouse’s home of the future and the oldest American robot ELEKTRO as featured in the Worlds Fair 1937-38 in New York. The Mansfield Memorial Museum has been a unique and eclectic experience for visitors, with something for everyone from industrial history to a collection of anthropomorphic animals, including birds, frogs, mice and more, the latter on the museum's second and third floor.
ELEKTRO's fate remains up in the air, pending finalization of Schaut's estate in Richland County Probate Court.
Anthropomorphic animal collections, natural history items to be protected
Some of the items that have a local connection in the anthropomorphic animal collections of Wilkinson's, along with other items including a seashell and mineral collection, are being donated to the Gorman Nature Center; Gorman Nature Center's curator Jason Larson is heading up this particular area because of his expertise. Larson is protecting the original natural history items from Wilkinson, ensuring that regional pieces are kept locally.
Board member Lori Fourhman, and highly skilled volunteers Aaron Turner and Larson have spent hundreds of hours going through the three-story building and its basement returning items to local museums, groups and individuals.
"We are returning things to family members that have been lost to them for decades," Turner said.
The volunteers are doing this work for free, working to see that everything is reconciled with the inventory so that nothing is sold that belonged to Schaut or that was loaned to the museum, Fourhman said.
Turner said nothing in bulk has left the museum.
"We don't have like a whole room empty that we can say, 'This is the permanent keep for the next military museum,' or 'This is the stuff that's a definite sell,'" Turner said.
Volunteers are physically touching every piece of paper and there are millions of pieces of paper, the volunteers said. Every item is being looked at as well as boxes of items.
The museum is filled with jars of potions, boxes of stones, cookie cutters, a jar of old buttons, matchbook collections, wooden chairs, old newspapers and mannequins. Already, volunteers made trips to a recycling center with several truckloads of old and broken electronic computer monitors and fax machines from the basement.
"The goal of the first auction is to get free space on the main floor so we can start filtering this stuff down and unpacking it," Turner said from the third floor.
Fourhman said volunteers are going over every nook and cranny, looking behind every door and finding areas that were packed to the ceiling and where barely a foot could step inside.
Third floor of museum full of treasures from past
A tour of the third floor includes many taxidermy items which were the first curator's original collection, with a swan, ducks, squirrels and a rat among the historic treasures. There are framed portraits, including one of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
The third floor is deteriorating structurally with items laying about. Boxes of starfish, random toys, bicycles, advertising, packaging items, posters and wedding dresses abound not to mention a room full of pieces and parts of mannequins and Christmas decor.
There are 97 wooden chairs, original to the museum. Fourhman said the board has not made a decision yet on whether or not they will be auctioned.
There are dishes, sheet music, three pianos, an organ, family Bibles, wheelchairs, children's books, an old typewriter and more. There are chandeliers and wall sconces from the Madison Theatre, which was directly behind the museum, letters from the marquee and actual films from the theatre.
The three volunteers are going through every piece of paper or ephemera.
"Ephemera is stuff that was made for a certain time but wasn't intended to be kept," Turner said, pointing to an hourly employee pass from Westinghouse, which would be thrown out when an employee got their next one. "When it's saved and 50 years later, it becomes valuable."
Items in the museum are being meticulously looked at, to either sell, donate, keep or throw away, the latter including empty boxes, packaging materials and broken glass.
Turner is making sure every piece of paper inside the museum is reviewed.
All money generated from the auctions will come back to the museum. Once the auctions begin, with items going to the highest bidders; pickup will be at the Richland County Fairgrounds. The News Journal will update readers before the auctions start. To see the online auctions go to: https://charlesmillerauctioneer.hibid.com/auctions
About the museum
The museum features artifacts from all American wars — the Revolutionary War, Spanish-American War, the Civil War, World Wars I & II and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The museum collections includes a uniform exhibit showing the progression of military clothing from the Mansfield Militia pre-Civil War, Civil War, Indian War through the Spanish-American War; a large exhibit of model military tanks, armored vehicles, and trucks from a collection built by Tom Weekly that took over 37 years to compile; and a collection of model aircraft featuring the history of aviation from the Wright Brothers through Desert Storm built by the local Air National Guard from 1964-1987.
The museum also operates the Frank P. Lahm Aviation Museum at the rear of the next door building to the west, which is open Sundays noon to 4 p.m.
lwhitmir@gannett.com
419-521-7223
X (formerly Twitter): @LWhitmir
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Mansfield Memorial Museum plans online auctions as it restructures to all-military museum
Most Popular
Comments / 0