Prairie Village Museum Rugby Part 1

Over the weekend the folks and Autumn and I ran over to Rugby to visit the Prairie Village Museum.  What a fantastic place!  There was so much to look at and I took 500 photos just at the museum!  We spent 2.5 hours wandering from building to building all guided by a map.  The tour is unguided otherwise, allowing a person to walk through at their own pace.  A person who loves small-town, prairie history could easily spent 5 hours just reading through eveything there.  The large Silva School was full of information about Pierce County.

Here is link to the museum website.

http://www.prairievillagemuseum.com/default.aspx

And here are some pictures and brief descriptions of the first few building we went through.

The first building you walk through is were we paid our fee.  It was reasonable at 7$ adults and just a few more dollars for children.  There were small gifts to purchase and I bought a vintage card.  This large building also has a number of misc items and themed rooms such as a room of Native American artifacts, and a room of antique guns.  There were antique household items such as stoves, refrigerators, washing machines and dishes.  There were also some very odd items such as these.

A lovely box of candy from the year 1900.  With the candy STILL IN IT!  Yuck!  If you want to see what 112 year old chocolates look like, here's your chance.

We also got a big kick out of these boxing alligators (or crocs, whichever).  Odd....that's all I can say...odd.

Awhile back, I was trying to learn Copperplate writing.  Inside this glass case where three of these cards with names written in fancy Copperplate with embellishments.

Eeeek!  I love this little pie plate!  You'll find out why in another post coming up in a couple of days!

This is the view as you leave the first BIG building.  The village is set up as a town square and there are boardwalks all the way around to guide you (along with a map that they give you when you pay the visitor fee).
In the center of the square are two lovely Linden Trees with a place to picnic underneath and a bandstand.

We toured the PENN railroad depot and the little red caboose. 

The cook car where threshers would sit down for a meal during a long day's work.  I'm sure the place was hotter that hot  even if the windows were open to the outside air!

Then we stopped in at the local dress shop.  There we saw dresses, shoes, fancy items with lace including wedding gowns, gloves, perfumes, you name it!  There was a mannequin sitting at a very old sewing machine. 

The dress shop

Beautiful shoes

The creamery station was next.  According to the brochure, farmers brought their cream and eggs to this station to be sold.  There was even a chick incubator inside.

Dakota Gold was the creamery in Rugby.  You can read about Dakota Gold Quality Supreme here http://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~rcollins/pportraits/ice_cream2.html
The creamery was bought by Cass Clay in 1978 and it sounds like instead of making renovations to serve the growing community Cass Clay closed the creamery.

This is a picture of Frank Volk, a milkman for Dakota Gold.  I found this picture on Flicker and it is in the archives of negatives from the Strand Studio in Rugby.  What a cute little truck!  Notice that the milk in his carrier are cartons and not bottles.

A Dakota Gold milk carton.  How hard was THAT to find!  Who saves a milk carton?

Next up was the Blacksmith Shop, jailhouse and Livery stable.

The summer kitchen is next to the little Norwegian house.  The summer kitchen was used to bake and wash clothes during the hot summer months.  This kept the house cooler.

This is one of my favorite buildings, the little Norwegian house.  There's even a lilac bush growing next to the kitchen window!

Get a load of this linoleum!  I love love love it!  I found linoleum similar to this online, while doing research for my short story.  And now I've seen some in person!  My guess is that it's from the 30's or 40's. (the 30's more-so than 40's).

The beautiful kitchen stove.   To be honest I don't think the stove was here originally.  The wear pattern in the linoleum didn't match.  I'd say the table was here.

See where the table is sitting?  I think there was either a refrigerator or stove there and the table sat on the other side of the room.  This photo was taken while standing in the doorway of the huge pantry/washroom.

The view from the front door.  Mom and Dad are peeking into the large pantry.

Cute tabletop.  If this were my kitchen, I'd have a drop leaf table that could be set closer to the wall during the day and then pulled away from the wall at suppertime and the leaves pulled up.

This is the large cupboard inside the pantry-washroom.  The cupboard had different types of linoleum for lining.

Organ in the living room.  Again, check out the linoleum.  The door behind the baby carriage is the door that encloses the stairway to upstairs (we weren't allowed upstairs).

Another view of the livingroom.  That doorway leads to the kitchen and outside door.

Phone in the kitchen.  It's apparently wired for electricity too.  It'd be interesting to know when the house was last lived in and who lived in it.

I thought this oats box was pretty cute with it's colorful illustrations. 

And here is a photo of the bedroom that was just off of the living room.  Again, cool linoleum.  The bedstead was hand carved!  Beautiful!

Well, that's all for now.  Tomorrow, another house, the all-faiths church, a one room school, log cabin and the school that used to live in Silva.  Also a general store, telephone office, saloon and more!  So stay tuned throughout the week!  It will most likely take me that long to post them all!

Until tomorrow,
Have a Happy, Vintage Day!