H
I Love this Place
istory can be full of surprises, unexpected dead ends and sometimes even a mystery or two. Or three. Maybe even a ghost. Greene County Historical Society has its share of all of that. Its museum on Rolling Meadows Road is known for its library and fine collections of furniture, tools and artifacts donated by local families that time travel between the mid 1700s, through the gas and oil rich Victorian Age and beyond. But it’s the thousands of artifacts from arrowheads to clay pots, shards and stone tools that take us back to 1925 when the society was born. By that time, some 5000 years of Native American culture had been gathered from the surrounding hills and valleys – a collection that opened a window into the lives of ancient hunters and gatherers through the centuries to villagers raising corn and squash and burying their dead in mounds. A museum was needed to show their lives to the world and those early history hunters answered the call. We have Frank B. Jones – 1879-1951 - of Pine Bank to thank for his 17 years of collecting amazing specimens from nature and man when he roamed “the seven seas” as a Navy Headmaster and avid archaeologist and naturalist. A veteran of the Spanish American War, Jones returned to Greene County in 1906 and joined forces with Muddy Creek native A.J. Waychoff, 1849 – 1927, a professor at Waynesburg College with a formidable thirst for geology anthropology and local history. Waychoff and nephew Paul R. “Prexy” Stewart, who went on to become head of the college geology department, travelled to Ohio to explore the indigenous mounds and dug and documented traces of ancient cultures on farmland all over this area. They identified the first segment of the Warrior Trail near Nettle Hill and as the county’s passion for the past grew, Waychoff and Jones lead the charge to form a society that would be both a library and a museum. It opened in the basement of the newly constructed Long Building in Waynesburg in 1925 with a membership of more than 200. Jones was the co-curator and had on display, along with all those indigenous artifacts, his “18 foot jawbone from a whale killed off Greenland and shipped to Waynesburg by a Norwegian whaler he had met during his travels.” Waychoff, sadly, died in 1927, a year before the society made the news for dedicating its first historical plaque on the site of the first court session held in Greene County along State Rt. 21 near Khedive. As the collections and public interest grew, excess inventory began piling up in the homes of board members. Was it time for a new museum? The tides of history said not yet. In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, a lot on Church Street, Waynesburg was willed to the society by Levi Funk to build a “proper library and museum” - but only under certain conditions: that it be two or three stories, built of stone, have enough insurance to replace it in case of fire, be free of debt, never accrue any debt against it at any time and be built by January 1, 1937. Oh, and it could not be used for “plays, loafing or any trivial purpose and the caretaker must be a person of temperate and sober habits.” History notes that the museum Mr. Funk envisioned was never built! - But the lot was eventu-
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by Colleen Nelson
GREENE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM
A view of Greene Hills Farm, the county’s home for the indigent in the 1920’s, that later became the Greene County Museum in 1970.
A sellout crowd in the 1970’s at the Greene County Historical Society annual Harvest Festival.
ally sold and the money became a nest egg for the future. By 1956, another room was added but members kept a weather eye on their community. Somewhere out there, a new home was waiting. Over on Rolling Meadows Road, the past had another story to tell. In The History of Greene Hills, Richard Zollars reports that in 1789, Barnet Rinehart – 1758-1822 - built the brick farmhouse that is now the oldest part of the museum’s sprawling complex of buildings, additions, sheds and barns. Called Lions Bush, the farm sat on 225 acres and it’s easy to imagine the last of the big cats seen in this area passing through the ravine behind the museum where Civil War battles are now fought during the Harvest Festival. Zollars tells us the farm stayed in the family until 1861 when Jacob Rinehart sold the house and 127 acres to attorney Robinson Downey, who “immediately sold it to the Directors of the Poor
for the County of Greene.” Here, the poor, indigent, mentally and physically challenged and even the occasional unwed mother took up collective country living, raised their own food, sewed their own clothes and worked the farm to supplement what the county paid to manage the facility. As occupancy grew, their cramped, hardscrabble life began drawing criticism from state inspectors that eventually lead to changes in state law concerning institutional living. Spurred to action, the county responded, wings and buildings were added and a boiler house for better heating was constructed in 1886. T.J. Morris supplied the brick, which were “made at 10,000 bricks a day.” The boiler house with its big chimney is now the museum library and has been modernized, with climate control to protect the many books, family photographs and manuscripts that are housed there. Life on Greene Hills Farm, as it became
Two unknown volunteers in the museums first home in the basement of the Long Building in Waynesburg.
known, continued to depend on whatever charity the community could afford, through the 1920s and beyond. When former Greene County resident Francis Marion Curry died in 1921 in Hollywood California, he bequeathed a hefty $37,000 to build a home for the infirm and elderly over age 60. The county was able to invest the money, make a profit despite the depression and build the Curry Home across the road in 1931. Greene Hills Farm continued caring for the rest of the poor for another 35 years. When a second wing was added to the Curry Home in 1965, the farm closed up shop and sat empty for four years. The county was faced with a dilemma. What to do? Tear down this historic place or lease it and a couple of acres for a dollar a year for 50 years to the Greene County Historical Society? GreeneScene Magazine •
OCTOBER 2018
