McLEAN COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY NEWS
By Euleen Rickard
President Jim Hansford has been in the county several days promoting the museum and its effort to get open to the public. He hosted breakfast at the Lighthouse for several area farmers who formed an advisory group to collect and save McLean County’s old farm implements. He attended Calhoun Lions Club meeting and on Wednesday visited Hubert Mattingly in Owensboro. Also, visited Dudley and Frances Dame, Roger Carpenter and others.
Eleven members and three guests/prospective members attended the regular meeting of the museum that was held at Smith House on October 26. The guests were Norma Williams, and Dudley and Frances Dame. Frances, who is one of our McLean County artists presented one of her paintings of the Old Calhoun Bridge to the museum. Frances is a very active artist and teaches classes at Riverside Manor Health Care. The painting was placed on an antique easel that had been presented to the museum by Jim’s daughter, Mary Wieneck, We are pleased to have the painting and the easel and thank them very much for that fine contribution to our collection.
Welcome to new members, Tom and Kathryn Young of Beech Grove. Tom and Kathryn have restored the Boston House and they are very interested in preserving McLean’s history and artifacts. Kathryn is a member of Renaissance Calhoun, writes the news for Beech Grove each week and is Regent of the Captain William Rowan chapter of the DAR. The DAR printed a nice article on our open house/birthday party for Mr. P.H. Smith in their newsletter of September 10th. Mr. Smith’s wife Hugh Bell Smith was a member of the Captain William Rowan DAR Chapter. We thank the chapter for that recognition.
The ladies held a cataloging and filing day at Smith House on October 29th. The backlog of material is almost finished. If you have genealogy, history or any thing that you think would be of interest for the museum, please send it to McLean County History and Genealogy Museum, P.O. Box34, Calhoun, KY 42327