The Lebanon County Commission for Women and the Lebanon County Historical Society officially opened the Women’s History Exhibit to the public on Tuesday, Oct. 1.
The free-admission exhibit in the front parlor of the historical society, 924 Cumberland St., Lebanon, will remain open to the public during the historical society’s operating hours until Monday, March 31, of next year.
Shane Keenan serves as archivist and registrar for the Lebanon County Historical Society, having served the historical society for almost two years at the time of the interview.
Barbara Gaffney serves as a member of the Board of Trustees and co-chair of the Museum Committee for the Lebanon County Historical Society. She has served the historical society on and off since 1976.
The two spoke with LebTown about what went into creating the Women’s History Exhibit, which celebrates the accomplishments of Lebanon County women over the past almost two and a half centuries.
“This is the longest that we’ve ever used the front parlor for the exhibits,” Gaffney said, noting that after doing some preliminary research, the historical society determined that the exhibit could warrant a six-month display period rather than the three- or four-month display period that is typical of the historical society’s front parlor exhibits.
Read More: Commission for Women, Historical Society unite on Women’s History Exhibit
The Lebanon County Commission for Women committee members Maribel Torres and Becky Woodhouse approached the Lebanon County Historical Society about the possibility of creating the Women’s History Exhibit in February.
After the timeline for the exhibit was established, the historical society held its first meeting regarding the exhibit on Tuesday, April 23. The historical society started the research process in May and started work on the physical exhibit in early August.
Since August, the Museum Committee has been meeting at the historical society every Monday for three hours to prepare the front parlor for the opening of the exhibit. “It’s been time-consuming, moreso than any of the other exhibits that we’ve done in the front parlor,” Gaffney said.
Keenan and Sherie Strohman, who also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees and co-chair of the Museum Committee for the Lebanon County Historical Society, completed much of the research on the women featured in the exhibit.
As Keenan and Strohman were conducting research for the exhibit, Gaffney said the number of women on their initial list “kept expanding and expanding” until it was too great to be accommodated by the exhibit.
The historical society decided to celebrate one Lebanon County woman, according to Gaffney and Keenan, in each of the following categories: the military and the homefront during wartime, politics, medicine, business, education, sports, the arts, and philanthropy.
Regarding the historical society’s decision on who to feature in the exhibit, Keenan said, “A lot of it was based off of, for one thing, significance, like not only first, but just the impact that someone had in a particular area.
“Also, just a matter of what do we have to display on that person? So, there were some people that we would have loved to have in the exhibit, but then we didn’t have any artifacts or any pictures or anything to put with them.”
Although Keenan and Strohman were not able to feature every Lebanon County woman on their initial list, they discovered additional eligible women from across the county in their search for information and artifacts.
Keenan created the signage for the exhibit “plus,” Gaffney said, “a lot of checking with newspapers and finding photographs” through the historical society’s and newspapers’ archives to be used for the exhibit. Keenan also contacted the living women in the exhibit in an effort to obtain artifacts.
According to Keenan, the oldest artifact in the exhibit is “a deposition letter from 1786, a copy of one. The original is not on display.” Gaffney expressed her appreciation for Keenan’s historic preservation efforts, “Shane makes wonderful copies so that the originals stay protected.”
While the women’s commission’s contribution to the exhibit has been sponsoring the publicity surrounding it, Gaffney said the historical society’s contribution has been bringing it to life and “also to have the reception for people that we hope will promote the society in the future since it’s our … past, present, and future that we’re trying to preserve here in the society.”
The Lebanon County Historical Society, in partnership with the Lebanon County Commission for Women, hosted an exclusive preview of the Women’s History Exhibit on Thursday, Sept. 26.
The Lebanon County Commissioners and Mayor Sherry Capello were among the roughly 150 county figures invited to attend the sponsored event and, in exchange, asked to spread the word about the exhibit and the county’s designated historical society.
“Our main purpose is to preserve and to teach the history of Lebanon County,” Gaffney said of the Lebanon County Historical Society.
The historical society is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. In addition to the free-admission front parlor exhibit that is open to the public during operating hours, the historical society offers paid-admission tours of the rest of the museum by appointment.
“We do ask that people schedule in advance so we can make sure we have enough tour guides lined up for them ahead of time,” Keenan said. “And we’re very flexible as to what times we can make work out. We just need enough notice.”
An effort that requires the work of multiple committees with the historical society is its annual ball, which it has been holding for going on 19 years.
“And two years ago, that money, some of the money was designated to be used for children’s programs,” Gaffney said. “So, we have incorporated with contacting schools that not only is the exhibit free to them, but they will also get a free tour of the whole building.”
The historical society is working with local school districts to coordinate field trips for fourth-grade and older classes to the Women’s History Exhibit. At the time of the interview, there was a field trip scheduled before the official opening of the exhibit.
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