First Look: The Illinois Rural Heritage Museum

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Here is a first look at one of two, new museums planned for the City of Pinckneyville in the coming months. It is part of a $750,000 program to create an Illinois Rural heritage Museum alongside the Pinckneyville Fairgrounds and an Illinois basketball museum and Hall of Fame in the Mc Daniel's building downtown.

Visitors will enter the museum through a barn for horses, the source of power for farming during the late 1800s. In the horse barn, tickets will be sold and a souvenir shop will be located in the old grainery. The tack for the horses, old horse drawn wagons and horse powered equipment will create the atmosphere and will provide a benchmark for measuring the progress to be viewed in later exhibits.

The lobby of he museum entrance will contain a map of the four-acre museum site and will illustrate the location of the farmhouse, repair shop, school house and equipment and machinery displays. The lobby will also double as a meeting room, provide viewing of films and serve as the entrance to the administrative offices for the museum.

The farmhouse display will be viewed from a roped off area and will consist of the kitchen/pantry, parlor and bedrooms. The furnishing will be authentic for the period, down to the calendar and pictures on the walls. The stoves used for heating and cooking, lamps used for lighting and systems for providing water should be of special interest. Methods of storing and preserving meats and canned fruit and vegetables will also being back memories. A one-room school house and machinery and equipment displays with full explanations will complement the museum. For more information, contact Charlie and Mary Greer at 618-521-2245 or irhmuseum@gmail.com