Humboldt County
Historical Association
PO Box 162
Humboldt, Iowa
50548
Call for Volunteers
FEATURES
HCHA programs /
Historical features
Volunteers Needed to Continue Work of Museum
In 1962, one hundred people attended the first meeting of volunteers eager to organize the Humboldt County Historical Society. The Humboldt Centennial celebration was coming up in 1963 and there was an upsurge in interest in the history of the County. A central place and organization was needed to “discover and preserve facts and things revealing or illustrating” our history.
Membership was open to all, 18 years and older, junior members paid no dues. By June 30, 1963, there were 104 charter members. By 1968 there were 368 members plus 22 juniors.
Programs for the meetings were varied—some of the most popular were demonstrations of spinning, quilt making and home canning. As Ole Fjetland once said, “I don’t think we have ever had a poor one.”
All this time the Association kept looking for a museum site. They found a temporary home in 1964 when Lytton and Feriba Saul offered the use of four rooms rent free in the upstairs apartments of Saul Studio. The rooms were open four hours a week on Friday afternoons with the “Museum and Sifting Committee” on hand to catalogue donations. Large items were stored all over town in barns, basements and attics. Money was raised through home tours, bake sales, bazaars and donations.
In 1966, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Kunert and Mrs. Clarence Kunert donated the Old Mill Farm House; a fourteen-room house built in 1878-1879 by Corydon Brown Sr. The house had stood vacant for years. Pigeons, sparrows, and other creatures had filled the house with debris. Walls needed patching, window panes replacing, the northwest corner of the basement foundation was gone, and a new roof was needed.
In nine years it took $20,000 and thousands of hours of work by hundreds of volunteers before the museum could open. All repairs were paid for as they were completed and not a cent was borrowed. Only two rooms were finished when the house opened to the public in 1968. Many volunteers continued to work and have brought the house and surrounding historical structures to their present condition.
Humboldt County now has a first-class Historical Museum, with ten other historical structures on the grounds as well as the Mill House. Visitors come from all over the States and from overseas to enjoy the museum and its programs. Our web site site has been visited by almost seven thousand people this year. A full program is planned for this summer; check the website for dates and details.
D. C. McCullough tells us that “History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” Where are the present-day volunteers who will do the work of Humboldt County’s history?
Contact Connie Overby (890-9652) or the museum (332-5280) for a job. Volunteer hours have made the Museum what it is—more volunteer hours are needed to keep it going.