THE RICHLAND COUNTY MUSEUM--

The home of the Richland County Museum in Lexington is itself of museum status--it was built as the original Lexington School in 1850. (Small picture).

It featured room for grades one through four on the lower floor and grades five to eight upstairs.

Eight grades were enough in those days. By then, students were well enough schooled in English, math and other fundamentals they could be productive citizens in the largely farming society that existed at the time.

Remember, in 1850 Lincoln had yet to be elected US president and the last Indians were just being evicted from Ohio—the Wyandotte’s up near Upper Sandusky.

On the day of my recent visit to the museum I had the pleasure of meeting Elsie Simon, (pictured in red above) a museum volunteer at the tender age of 87, and, it turns out, who was my neighbor when I first moved out to Madison Township in the mid 1950s.

She is also a living history book. She told me about her great grandfather moving to the Lexington area in 1832 and both he and her grandfather served terms on the Lexington school board.

When her great-grand pappy came here Andrew Jackson was president and in the summer of that year the first wagon train crossed the Rocky Mountains through the Wyoming territory’s south pass.

The museum is only open on Sundays 1:30 to 4:30 and will be closing at the end of October. It has two stories of nicely presented artifacts, all donated and all from Richland County.

When you visit take time to get to know the volunteers. You could be in for a real treat!

I certainly was.

http://www.richlandcountymuseum.org/home