100th Birthday Party

Fort Smith

by  () September 15, 2010 10:19 am 121 views 

 

Fort Smith Museum of History
100th Birthday Celebration
 
The Fort Smith Museum of History will officially turn one hundred on December 10, 2010. Enjoy birthday cake and punch in celebration from 5:00-8:00 p. m.   Dress in your favorite period costume if you wish, anything from the past one hundred years! 
 
The community is invited to purchase gift cards for much needed items from Lowe’s, Home Depot, Staples, Office Depot and Best Buy. Items needed range from computer equipment to shelves to always-needed light bulbs. Gift certificates for archival supplies may be purchased by calling Gaylord’s at 1-800-962-9580. Or you may send a tax deductible birthday donation. Join the museum in celebrating this milestone!
 
What is known today as the Fort Smith Museum of History began in 1910 with a group of prominent local women working together to save Fort Smith’s oldest building, the Old Commissary Building, from demolition. As part of the second Fort Smith, the building had been used as a commissary, a hospital and a guardhouse. The structure is one of the few remaining buildings that housed the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman and Abandoned Lands established by Congress near the end of the Civil War. Judge Isaac C. Parker used the building as his chambers at times during his tenure.
 Members of the Daughters of the Confederacy, Wednesday Club, Sebastian Historical Society, American Women’s League, Fortnightly Club, Fort Smith Beautiful, WCTU, Musical Coterie, Civic League, Sparks Memorial and the Clean City League joined to form the Old Commissary Museum Association.   Incorporated in the Fort Smith District of the Sebastian County Circuit Court October 18, 1910, the Articles of Association were filed by Mrs. George H. Lyman, Mrs. Herschel Hunt, Mrs. Kate Rector Thibaut, Mrs. Fannie Lou Nance, Mrs. Charles Boyd and others. The city agreed to lease the building to the association.
 
Artifacts relating to the history of Fort Smith and the region were collected and exhibited. Included in the collection were rifles used in every war in which the U. S. was involved, the city’s first printing press, the first piano brought to Fort Smith by boat and a side saddle which belonged to the notorious Belle Starr. Mrs. Lora Gaines Goolsby, member of the Old Commissary Museum Association from 1915 through 1953, knew the stories of most of the artifacts in the collection. 
 
In the early days, the museum was open on Thursdays and Sundays from 2:00-5:00. At one time the museum was open seven days per week, 10:00-5:00, with ladies of the Museum Association as guides.
 
Although there was not a formal collections policy or exhibit method, most artifacts were displayed by category. For example, guns and military equipment were grouped together and books were exhibited together in cases
 
In the 1950’s, the Association Constitution was adopted, the name was changed to the Old Fort Museum and the Museum Association began to refer to themselves as the Old Fort Museum Board of Trustees. When the National Park Service expressed an interest in establishing the fort as an historic site in 1960, the Old Fort Museum realized that the Old Commissary Building would need to be included. The museum agreed to give up the lease on the building and the city government promised to always take care of the museum. 
 
In 1976, R. K. Rodgers donated the furniture warehouse building at 222 Garrison Avenue to the museum. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and dedicated as the R. K. Rodgers Building—Home of the Old Fort Museum. A collection of antique vehicles loaned from Carl Wortz and Larry Carter were exhibited in the building. 
 
According to Mrs. John D. Woods, who volunteered at the museum from 1953 until 1989, when the museum acquired the R. K. Rodgers Building the Board of Trustees “wished to become more discriminating.” Museum professional Charlene Akers from Little Rock was hired as director in 1978 with funding from the county. Up until this time the museum had been operated solely by volunteers. Mrs. Woods remembers visiting the museum as a child on visits to her grandmother and aunts from her home in St. Louis. Her fondest memory is of Belle Starr’s saddle. Because of her long association with the museum, she felt a responsibility to the collection and said that she could not “walk off and abandon these things.”
 
In 1979, Melanie Holt Speer was president of the Board of Trustees and offered the Speer Hardware Building to the museum at a very reasonable price. The building, known as the Atkinson-Williams Warehouse was built in 1907 and listed on the National Register of Historic
Places. The Rodgers Building was sold and the proceeds used to establish an endowment fund. Interest from the fund is used for museum operations. An inventory of artifacts was taken and the museum moved to its new home. In 1999, the name was changed once again to the Fort Smith Museum of History.
 
In preparation for the centennial, former board members Mrs. Woods, Ms. Ed Dell Wortz, Mrs. Lou Johnston, Mrs. Margaret Speer Carter and Mr. Richard Griffin were interviewed to capture their recollections of the museum through the years. We thank them for sharing their memories.
 
“You have to have thoughts and dreams. Remind people what they can do. You have a challenge.”
Ed Dell Wortz, June 15, 2010.
 
Celebrate one hundred years of the Fort Smith Museum of History!