New grant moves museum forward

Special to Wesson News

Another grant will provide funds to put the finishing touches on a town historical museum next to Wesson municipal park.

The museum has been in development for more than a year at the former electric building that was later a venue for meetings and activities of local Boy Scouts.

A Home Depot grant jump-started initial work, including moisture-proofing the building, installation of climate control equipment, thorough cleaning, repairs to the doors and floor, and the purchase of a steel back door, seven windows and a mini-split air conditioner and dehumidifier.

Wesson public works personnel and citizen-resident and Home Depot volunteers have provided labor for installations of the HVAC equipment, windows, a ramp of disabled persons and necessary repairs and cosmetics, including the upgrading of plumbing and electrical systems.

The Town of Wesson has sealed the front and north doors of the building to maintain its character.

Wesson Librarian Marilyn Britt credits Home Depot’s Elisha Howard with identifying needed renovations in walk-through “that showed us what was required to turn the building into a museum.”

A permanent history museum that tells the story of Wesson has been a dream of locals since the town’s Sesquicentennial celebration in 2014 when a temporary museum whetted appetites for an ongoing one that honored life here.

As part of the Wesson Sesquicentennial celebration, Dixie Thornton encouraged locals to take the town’s history out of their closets, unpack boxes and donate historical items for public display in the temporary museum she created for the occasion.

In applying for initial Home Depot assistance to create a permanent museum, FOL members Britt, Dr. Steven Liverman and Sonya Cowen noted “the history for City of Wesson is stored in several areas that are not the best environment for safety” and that FOL seeks one location to allow for safety and continued preservation of the historical items.

From its opening in April, 2014, until July, more than 1000 persons, including children, groups from Wesson Attendance Center and out-of-towners who savored history, visited the temporary museum in which Thornton strived for “authenticity” in exhibits that featured clothing, artifacts and document from out of history rather than reproductions.  The exhibit highlights included:

• Clothing made from the cotton and woolen fabrics produced at the textile mills which operated in Wesson from the 1860s into the 1890s and spurred development of the town

• Late 19th Century garments worn by Rilla Oliver Rae, daughter of Captain William Oliver -- one of the early mill owners

• Artifacts from the Wesson mills, including machine parts, keys to buildings, and corporate stamps

• A photo of Wesson mill employees in front of one of the factory buildings in which they worked

• Cotton bales -- raw material for the mill operations

• A 19th Century baby buggy

• School jackets that reflect the progression of Wesson schools and development of Copiah-Lincoln Community College (Co-Lin)

• A World War II military overcoat

• The bell from the old Wesson grammar school

• Pictures and memorabilia from the pre-NASCAR racing career of Wesson resident Ikey Jerome, including his driving suit

The temporary  museum occupied two buildings on Spring Street off Highway 51 across from City Hall, one loaned by its owner, Mayor Alton Shaw, as a private citizen, to the Wesson Chamber of Commerce that housed a series of partitioned exhibits organized to tell distinct stories about different aspects of the life of Wesson -- the mills era, evolution of Co-Lin, churches and religion, commerce, etc. -- through  artifacts, photos, and documents; and an adjacent structure owned by the Town of Wesson next to the public library that featured displays focusing on daily life of townspeople -- a late 19th Century kitchen and bedroom, a garden with a manual plow, home spinning wheel, quilts, the printing press that produced the Wesson Enterprise  weekly newspaper in the 1950s and 1960s, among others.

Since the temporary museum closed, Wesson Friends of the Library members and other citizens of the town have been searching for ways to bring a permanent one to Wesson.  In creating the temporary museum, Thornton worked with Wesson residents steeped in the town’s history -- Sonya Cowen, Carolyn Graham, and Mike Hux -- to identify authentic documents, photos, and artifacts and solicit them from donors and lenders.  Mark Hamilton, former minster of music at Calvary Baptist Church in Silver Creek, worked closely with Thornton, picking up contributions, transporting them to the museum site, and building the museum exhibits.  More than 30 persons contributed as donors and lenders.