Chemung County's First Italian

 By Milo Miller, CCHS volunteer

Today, Chemung County has a sizable Italian American population, with more than 10% of its residents reporting Italian ancestry.

This figure exceeds both the New York State and national averages for Italian ancestry—nearly 1 in 200 Italian New Yorkers are from Chemung County. During the first seventy years of European settlement in Elmira, however, Italian influence was absent.

Historically, several factors have driven Italian immigration to the United States. The first surge of Italian immigration to colonial North America occurred in the mid-1600s when a small group of Waldensians fleeing religious persecution joined Dutch emigrants sailing for present-day New York and Delaware. Waldensians were a religious group living in the Cottian Alps along the current French-Italian border. Although some Waldensians hailed from the present-day Piedmont region of Italy, Italy would not achieve political unification until more than two centuries after the Waldensians departed for North America. The regions that the Waldensians originated from did not even speak Italian, but French, Occitan, and Piedmontese. During the two centuries between early Waldensian immigration and Italian political unification, Italian immigration was rare and sporadic. Most early Italian immigrants were artisans, musicians, political refugees, and merchants from Northern Italy, contrasting with the mass migration of Italian laborers that began in the late nineteenth century. In 1850, fewer than 5,000 Italian immigrants (around .02% of the population) lived in the United States. Twenty years later, following Italy’s 1861 political unification, this number quintupled to 25,000 (around .07% of the population). Beginning in 1880, widespread poverty and limited economic opportunities in Southern Italy and Sicily contributed to a massive wave of Italian immigration. More than four million Italians immigrated to the United States between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I. Although many of these immigrants eventually returned to Italy, more than 1% of the United States population was Italian-born by 1920, with New York State becoming home to a large share of these newcomers. During this time, Elmira’s “Italian Patch” neighborhood arose around Railroad Avenue, Magee, and North Main Streets.

Given this historical context, it follows that encountering an Italian immigrant before 1860 would have been  rare. In Elmira, Peter Landy (likely born Pietro Landi) would have been the first encounter to many. Peter immigrated to the United States sometime in the 1840s, likely from Northern Italy, first arriving in Skaneateles, New York. There, he lived with his new wife Catherine in 1848, an Irish immigrant and fellow Catholic fresh off the boat from County Sligo. In 1849, the two had their first son, Charles Alexander Landy. Peter first resided in Elmira in 1858, on East Henry Street, near where the Dollar Tree stands today.

Peter apparently encouraged “considerable learning.” According to his son Charles Alexander, Mr. Landy was a physician in Italy before coming to America, and his brother across the ocean was a Catholic Priest. In the United States, Peter did not practice as a physician. Foreign medical licenses either did not hold up to United States standards or the process of transferring the licenses was difficult and costly. In Skaneateles, Peter was recorded simply as a laborer. In Elmira, Peter served as a travelling salesman for an ink manufacturer for several years. During this time, he and Catherine’s second son, William, was born in 1860. By 1866, Peter changed occupations and worked as a watchman. In 1869, these escapades in the United States ended. Peter received word that he was to inherit a $25,000 fortune in gold—worth well over half a million dollars today—that his father had originally entrusted to his brother. To receive the fortune, Peter had to sail back across the ocean. Promising his family that he would return a rich man in December, Peter left on July 28th, 1869. He was never heard from again.

Elmira Daily Advertiser, July 17th, 1869 mentioning that Peter was leaving. 

According to his son, the family concluded that Peter had been forced into military service upon arrival, which was common under Italy’s conscription laws. The real story of what happened to Peter may never be known. While a handful of Italian families had arrived in Chemung County by the time of Peter’s departure, they still represented a small minority of the city's population. Peter seems to have largely integrated into Irish society, likely due to his affiliation with the Catholic Church. While his life does not mirror the larger Italian American immigrant experience, which began a decade after his departure, Peter’s life offers a glimpse into what life was like for some of the first Italian Americans. Many older Elmirans may have reflected back to their first experiences with Peter Landy, the Italian ink salesman during the later waves of immigration. As for his children, Charles Alexander married an Irish girl, and he and his brother William grew up to become popular and successful Elmirans. Peter’s wife, Catherine, continued living at the same house on East Henry Street until she died in 1909. She is buried in Saint Peter and Paul’s Cemetery.

Italian American Veterans Club

 By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

 

The Chemung County Historical Society has over 30 collections from local clubs and organizations ranging from AARP to Zonta. The most recent collection I cataloged is from the Italian-American Veterans Club.

The national organization of the Italian American War Veterans of the United States was founded in 1932 and later chartered by Congress in 1981. It was created as a social and patriotic club for Italian American veterans of World War I, but membership was later expanded to include anyone who had served in and been honorably discharged from the armed forces, regardless of ethnicity. There is also a Ladies Auxiliary for the members’ wives. The local chapter was established in 1958 to promote comradeship, patriotism, and civic engagement among local veterans and their families.

In the early years, they met where they could in public parks, churches, restaurants, hotels, and other clubs’ halls. They held spaghetti dinner fundraisers, bake sales, rummage sales, and dances in order to raise funds to purchase their own place. Beginning in 1962, they twice attempted buy a home of their own, but the deal kept falling through. Then, in the spring of 1965, they purchased and opened their club house at 1070 Magee Street. The space included a dining and dance hall with kitchen, bar, and seating for 200 which they could use for their own events and rent out to the public. The club later added a picnic pavilion and bocce courts to the property. 

Memorial Day at the Italian American Veterans Club, 2000

 Over the years, the Italian-American Veterans Club has held a wide range of social events including regular dinner-dances, a summer festival, and Veteran’s Day Awards dinners. They also held a lot of sporting events including golf and bocce tournaments. For years, they sponsored a Little League Baseball team and adult club members played in the local Connie Mack league. The club was also involved in patriotic activities like Memorial Day services, Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades, and other veterans’ events. The organization regularly raised funds to donate to local charitable groups like the Red Cross, Food Bank, Arctic League, and Southern Tier Hospice, among others. 

 

Italian American Veterans Club baseball team, ca. 1960

After years of dwindling membership due to deaths and lack of recruitment, the club folded in 2025. They donated the proceeds from the sale of the club house to the Arctic League, Vietnam Veterans of America’s local chapter, Chemung County Family Fitness Center, and the NICU at Arnot Ogden Medical Center. They donated their papers to us!

The Italian-American Veterans Club Collection contains scrapbooks and photo albums documenting the club’s history from the 1950s through the 2020s. It also includes event programs, promotional literature, and a listing of every Italian-American veteran buried at Saint Peter & Paul’s Cemetery. The collection is available for viewing at our archives during our regular research hours from 1pm to 5pm, Monday through Friday. Elmira’s Italian-American Veterans Club is gone, but their memory will live on with us!

 

Booklet published 2005

P.S. If anyone associated with the club wants to come and help identify photograph, please call me at (607) 734-4167 ex. 207. I would appreciate it!

Patooie!

by Erin Doane, Senior Curator 

Spittoons are particularly American artifacts. No one used to spit like we did here in the good old U.S.A. during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Lobby of the Hotel Rathbun, 1910s

In his 1899 book, American Notes, Rudyard Kipling wrote a vivid description of the practice:

In a vast marble-paved hall, under the glare of an electric light, sat forty or fifty men, and for their use and amusement were provided spittoons of infinite capacity and generous gape. Most of the men wore frock-coats and top-hats – the things that we in India put on at wedding-breakfast, if we possess them – but they all spat. They spat on principle. The spittoons were on the staircases, in each bedroom – yea, and in chambers even more sacred than these. They chased one into retirement, but they blossomed in chiefest splendor round the bar, and they were all used, every reeking one of them. 

Baldwin Kolb’s saloon, 1896

As Kipling reported, spittoons could, indeed, be found seemingly everywhere – business offices, bars, billiard parlors, hotel lobbies, post office, reading rooms, courtrooms, train cars, men’s club, and even the U.S. House and Senate Chambers. But why? What was all the spitting about?

Sitting room at the Hotel Rathbun with a spittoon tucked discretely behind the column on the right, 1910s

The main reason for the large amount of expectoration was chewing tobacco. In the early 1800s, chewing tobacco began to replace pipes and powdered snuff as the preferred methods of using tobacco. Snuff was seen as distinctly British, and pipes could be cumbersome to care for and use. Chewing tobacco was more convenient and didn’t pose a fire risk. Civil War soldiers on both sides chewed tobacco as a way to cope with boredom, stress, and even hunger in the field. One of the downsides is that swallowing tobacco juice is damaging to the digestive system and can cause acute nicotine poisoning. Spitting out the juice is necessary. 

Fred Ferris’s bar and liquor store, early 1900s

In rural settings, those chewing tobacco would just spit on the ground. Those in urban settings also just spat on the ground, which led to the ubiquity of the spittoon. At its most basic level, a spittoon is a bowl into which one spits. Many designs have funnel-shaped lids with holes in the center to keep the saliva, etc. contained. They can be made out of a wide variety of materials including ceramic, porcelain, glass, and metals like tin and brass. We have several different types of spittoons in the museum’s collection.

Stoneware spittoon made in Elmira by E. W. Farrington, c. 1890

Glazed ceramic spittoon with corked hole on the side for emptying, late 1800s

Porcelain spittoon with floral decoration, late 1800s

Four tin spittoons each with removable lids that were used in Chemung County buildings during the early 1900s

Brass spittoon from the second Chemung Canal Bank building, 1920s

Another cause of excessive sputum and the need to spit was respiratory illness; in particular tuberculosis, or consumption as it was called in the 19^th century. A 1907 article in the Star-Gazette explained how “the spit and the small particles coughed up and sneezed out by consumptives, and by many who do not know that they have consumption, are full of living germs too small to be seen. THESE GERMS ARE THE CAUSE OF CONSUMPTION.” It had tips for how to prevent the spread of consumption, including the following:

• Don’t spit on side-walks – it spreads disease, and it is against the law.
• Don’t spit on the floors of your rooms or hallways.
• Don’t spit on the floor of your shop.
• When you spit, spit in the gutters or into a spittoon.

Billiard room at the Hotel Rathbun, 1910s

That same year, the mayor of Boston issued an order to slow down the spread of consumption in his city. In it, he positively forbade all employees of the city of Boston from spitting upon the floors and required the posting of notices in all public building that read: “Do not spit on the floor, to do so may spread disease.” Employees of the city who suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis were not permitted to use the public spittoons, and had to provide themselves with individual sputum receivers.

Writing room at the Hotel Rathbun, 1910s

Regulations like those implemented in Boston, along with public education about consumption and better treatment options, slowly led to a decline of the disease and less need to publicly expel sputum. The use of chewing tobacco also declined sharply in the early 1900s. Some attributed the drop to the civilizing effect of more women participating in public life. Cigarettes were also growing in popularity as a means to enjoy tobacco, and chewing gum became quite popular in the 1920s, in particular with the younger generation.

Lyceum Cafe, c. 1910

A study done in 1935 at the University of North Carolina showed that about 3.5 percent of the school’s 2,500 students reported chewing tobacco, in contrast to 25 percent of students 25 years earlier. By the end of 1930s, spittoons had virtually disappeared from public spaces. I, for one, am grateful that spittoons are now things of the past, typically only found in attics, antique shops, and museums.

Time Travel: Hello Girls

 by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

In Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), a character travels back in time to the medieval era. Observing the behavior of damsels in those days, he asserts that “the humblest hello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in Arthur’s land.” He’s talking about the women who worked as switchboard operators.  

Operators, known as hello-girls, were an important part of the early telephone business. The technology of transmitting the human voice using telephone wires had been patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. Then, to make a phone call, one would lift the receiver which would automatically connect to a switchboard where an operator or hello-girl would answer. The operator would ask which number you wanted and would physically connect the wires. This was called the manual telephone system.

By the end of the 1870s, Chemung County’s first telephone was installed. It was located at Charles Tomlinson’s photography studio on Baldwin Street, and it was soon connected to a similar telephone at the Western Union Telegraph office across the street. The intent was to encourage others to invest in and embrace the new technology.

When Elmira’s first phone book was published in 1880, Tomlinson was not listed. That first book contained 42 subscriber names, their addresses, and phone numbers. Numbers were assigned starting with the number 1. Of the listings, only 4 of these were private residences, including number 29, which belonged to the Langdon mansion, the home of Mark Twain’s in-laws. By the end of that same year Elmira’s phone system had grown to over 100 subscribers. It is not known how many hello-girls were employed.

The job of a hello-girl was a desirable profession open to young women. It offered pay and social status. But on average women stayed in these positions for only three years, so there was a lot of turnover. In larger cities, like New York, businesses attracted applicants by offering amenities like libraries and parlors to lounge in during rest hours, or boat excursions, theater visits, and art museum parties to entertain them. Of course, all of this was under proper supervision. The work they did was critical to the success of the telephone. Sometimes they connected 100 to 225 calls an hour and they were often pushed to handle more.

In response to operator complaints about working conditions, the U.S. Labor Commissioner compiled a report for the Senate in 1910. The report was hundreds of pages long and was not shared with the workers.

The report covered applicants, training, and culture. The majority of hello-girls were unmarried. Of the 6,152 young women who applied to be hello-girls, 2,229 were deemed not eligible because they were too small, too old, unwilling to work on Jewish holidays, not vaccinated, or lacked in personal appearance. That last one is puzzling since the public never saw them, just heard their voices. Hello-girls were required to have a calm manner, be clear-eyed, with a rosy complexion, and have a good appetite. Anyone that met these requirements attended special schools to learn the expected professional protocol. The commissioner found that “the loyalty and esprit de corps among telephone girls is greater than in any other industry in the country.” The report concluded that the hello-girls had nothing to complain about.

As technology changed, the role of the hello-girl changed. Chemung County continued to use the manual telephone system until 1952, when it shifted to the dial system, and all the local hello-girls were let go. Local phone numbers changed to include four digits about this time.

Some things regarding those old telephones do persist. We continue to dial a number when making a call, and we reach someone, which might reflect back to when wires had to be manually connected. Gone are phone booths, phone books and memorizing numbers because they are automatically saved in the phones we carry in our pockets. Today many people making a phone call don’t expect to actually reach a human being, preferring instead to send a text message. Is this a modern telegraph?

Our latest exhibit, Then & Now: How Everyday Objects Have Changed Over Time, includes a variety of telephones from our collection, including one we invite you to dial yourself.  You may not be able to time-travel, but do come see this and other relics from the past.

Don’t Ask AI

 By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

 

In the last year, I’ve gotten more than a few requests from researchers to confirm something AI told them. In each case, much of what AI told them was wrong. I’ve also had people ask me for things ChatGPT assured them were in them were in our archives when they very much were not. While AI certainly has its uses, it’s not the best tool for genealogical or historical research.

It’s not surprising that people are turning to AI to help them in their research. The industry is pushing it as the hottest new technology. It has “intelligence” in its name which certainly gives the impression that it knows stuff. The problem is that most commercial AI is not a database. Rather, they are large language models (LLM). Their creators fed them large amounts of text scoured from books, newspapers, magazines, and the internet. Every time an AI chatbot answers a question, it is not retrieving information, but predicting what the likeliest answer is based on whichever texts it has been trained on. Because many historical and genealogical records have not been digitized, they are not part of commercial LLM training data. AI chatbots don’t have the information needed to predict the right answer.

As a human person, when I can’t answer a researcher’s question, I tell them “I don’t know” or “I don’t have that information” and then try to point them in a more useful direction if possible. Commercial AIs like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok don’t do that. They are programed to always give you an answer, even if it isn’t accurate.  For example, when I asked ChatGPT how John W. Jones, local abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor, died, it gave me the correct date (December 26, 1900) but claimed it was in a cave diving incident. AI chatbots are also trained to keep the user happy at all costs. When I pointed out that Jones’ cause of death was wrong, ChatGPT apologized, gushed about how right I was, and offered another, equally wrong, cause of death.  

 

Me, a human person, doing research

So, if AI isn’t the best tool, what is? Actual historical records. These days, a good number of them are even available on-line. Here is a list of my favorite FREE on-line resources:

New York Heritage (https://nyheritage.org/) –FREE digital collections of material from across New York State like yearbooks, city directories, photographs, etc.

NYS Historic Newspapers (http://nyshistoricnewspapers.org) – FREE digital collection of 19^th and 20^th century newspapers from across New York State.

Internet Archive (https://archive.org/) – FREE digital collections of historic books, magazines, film, audio recordings, and archival material on a wide range of topics.

ProQuest (http://www.proquest.com) – digital collections of newspapers and scholarly publications available for FREE to Chemung County residents with your library card.

NOVELny (http://novelnewyork.org) – digital collections of scholarly publications, newspapers, and magazines available for FREE to New York residents with your local library card.

If you can’t find it on-line, you might have to visit a physical repository in person. For official records in Chemung County, that means visiting the Chemung County Clerk’s office for land records; the Chemung County Surrogate’s Court for wills and estates; the Chemung County Office of Vital Records for birth/death records; and various town clerks for marriage records. You might also want to visit the Steele Memorial Library or the Elmira College archives. And, of course, the Chemung County Historical Society. Our research library & archives are open from 1pm to 5pm, Monday through Friday. Admission is FREE for members and students, with a $5 fee for non-members.

Doing your own research, whether in-person or on-line, is harder and more time consuming than asking AI, but it is far more rewarding. Not only is it more likely to get you the correct answer to your question, it will often get you answers to questions you didn’t even know you should ask! Sometimes it won’t though. Sometimes you will have to learn to live with “I don’t know.”

Charles G. Elliott: A Man of War and Roses

by Erin Doane, Senior Curator

Distinguished Service Cross Citation for Charles G. Elliot, January 10, 1919

When my husband and I were planning our wedding, we visited several florists. The first two handed us books and told us to point at the arrangements we liked. The third, a small older gentleman, picked up a pencil and pad of paper, sat down with us, and asked us about ourselves and what we wanted our wedding to be like. He didn’t show us any catalog photos or push particular types of flowers. He wanted to make arrangements that felt personal to us that would make our day special.

Somehow in the course of our conversation, we learned that the florist had served as a corpsman during the landing at Normandy on D-Day. I was struck by the juxtaposition of that horrific, bloody day and the delicate-looking, quiet man who crafted absolutely gorgeous flower arrangements for our wedding. I was reminded of this encounter when I recently “met” another soldier who, after his time in combat, spent his life among flowers – Charles G. Elliott.

Charles G. Elliott, Elmira Star-Gazette, December 24, 1917

Charles was born in 1892 in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Sometime before 1910, he moved to Elmira with his parents Ernest and Dora. His father got a job as a laborer at a greenhouse and young Charles worked there as an apprentice. By 1917, both father and son were florists working for the United States Cut Flower Company in Elmira Heights. The horticultural company came to the Heights in 1903 and built massive greenhouses on its 62-acre site. By 1907, it was one of the largest and most successful plant and flower growing operations in the country.

In July 1917, Charles enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to Company M, 56^th Infantry Regiment, 7^th Infantry Division. The 56^th was formed from the 17^th Infantry Regiment on May 15, 1917 and was organized at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia in June that year. Shortly after enlisting, Charles left his job as a rose grower and was sent to Fort Oglethorpe for basic training. He was deployed to France in 1918. The 56^thwas stationed at a defensive position along the Moselle River. While the regiment saw only minimal direct combat, the soldiers were in no way safe or detached from the violence of war.

Photograph of men at camp during WWI donated to CCHS by Charles Elliott’s estate

On November 5, 1918, near Preny, France, Charles Elliott was on patrol when he and another member of the company were wounded by heavy machine gun fire. He was hit in the thigh by a bullet but was able to retain command of the patrol, take care of the wounded man, and report to the company commander before he was evacuated. For his heroism that day, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross from the United States and the Croix de Guerre with a silver-gilt star from France.

The Distinguished Service Cross is the United States Army’s second highest military decoration after the Medal of Honor. It is awarded to soldiers who display extraordinary heroism in combat against an armed enemy force. Distinguished Service Crosses were awarded to just over 6,000 of the approximately 4.7 million Americans who served in the U.S. military during World War I.

Charles Elliott’s Distinguished Service Cross and citation

The Croix de Guerre was awarded by the French government to French and allied soldiers for acts of heroism involving combat with the enemy. Stars and palms pinned to the ribbon show the level of military command that officially cited the soldier for bravery. Charles’s silver-gilt star indicates he was mentioned in dispatches at a corps level. More than 11,000 Americans were awarded the Croix de Guerre during the war.

Charles Elliott’s Croix de Guerre and citation

Charles spent nearly six weeks in the hospital recovering from the wound he received on November 5. In June 1919, he returned home and went back to work at the United States Cut Flower Company. On January 5, 1921, he married Crete F. Kingsbury. It was a small ceremony at her mother’s home with their immediate relatives in attendance. Four years later, they had a son, George Kingsbury Elliott. Charles continued working at the United States Cut Flower Company for 30 years, becoming foreman in the greenhouse by 1940.

In 1930, The Elmira Floral Products Company was created as a joint venture between the United States Cut Flower Company and Hoffman Nurseries to market products of the two companies. In 1948, the United States Cut Flower Company changed its name to Elmira Floral Products, Inc. and the 44-year-old award-winning floral company was officially no more. Charles then went to work at Hoffman Nurseries and stayed there for seven years before finally retiring from the plant business. 

After many years of cultivating beauty in a turbulent world, Charles Elliott passed away on November 15, 1957.  He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Charles Elliott’s headstone in Woodlawn Cemetery, August 13, 2026

Discovered History: Summer Cohesion

 By Susan Zehnder, Education Director

What do clues, white curator gloves, pencils, paper, and objects have in common with eight- and nine-year-olds during the summer? It might sound like a sure recipe for eye rolling, but these materials actually created history detectives out of 128 Summer Cohesion students and their counselors.

This year, students had a chance to sharpen their literacy and drawing skills by examining objects from Chemung’s past. Many are eager to return. Here’s what they did.

Each group’s visit started with a scavenger hunt in the main gallery, where they were given visual clues in the form of a tiny picture. This activity encouraged students to move around the large room as they searched for their item and gave them a chance to see the wide variety of items we have on display. Quite a few students had been to the museum before, but by being asked to look for specific items, they discovered things they hadn’t seen on previous visits. They also had the opportunity to revisit familiar items. This approach kept things interesting for everyone. Our galleries are filled with hundreds of items of all sizes. Objects vary from small military medals to fossilized mammoth teeth and a tusk, and everything is connected to Chemung County’s past. There is always something new to see.

Once students found the item that matched their clue, they had to determine if the item was an artifact or a document and report their discovery. Additionally, they were asked to provide two words to describe the item.  As a result of collecting descriptive words, students saw how a “box” became a “small blue box made of metal and leather, while a “trunk” became a “large, old, decorated box.” Their words were recorded on a large sheet for them to see.

After the hunt, participants gathered in the education room for the next activity. Working with a partner, they received a photograph of an object to draw. Each object was different and it wasn’t always obvious from the photograph what kind of object they were looking at. This helped students focus on the details they saw and not ones they assumed existed. Each pair of students had to look closely at the photograph and draw what they saw.

When students were satisfied that they had drawn the object the way they wanted, they put on white curator gloves. For many this was particularly exciting, because they knew it meant they would be handling the actual objects. They brought their photograph up to match and collect its real object, which they carefully brought back to their table. Taking turns, students compared their objects to their drawings in order to make any additions or changes to their work.

Sometimes making changes to written text is tough for students this age, who often falsely interpret needing to make changes or editing as having failed rather than as receiving the chance to improve their work.  Comparing the photo, their drawing, and the actual objects helped guide the students through the process of editing. Although photographs are helpful, being able to see and handle a real object gave participants an entirely different experience of these historical items. Some students found their objects were a surprise because they were smaller or larger than expected. Others found the object’s color to be different. Holding the objects and feeling how heavy or light they were often changed what students thought the items were used for.

Each pair of students also worked together to write a label for their object. Here, using descriptive words became especially helpful if they weren’t able to identify what it was. Some objects looked familiar and were easier to decipher. A mortar and pestle, for instance, was described as a “food masher.” Other objects were tougher to identify and required some creative thinking. A cast iron bank shaped like a log cabin was labelled as a “house,” and students described a Haversack, similar to those used by soldiers to carry supplies during the Civil War, as a “traveling bag.”

Before they left, students compared their work to a poster with photos and labels of each object.

 We gave everyone the option to take their drawings with them or leave them for display in the museum. You can see some of their work on the wall as you enter the Museum’s Bank Gallery.

Mindful that this is their summer break, and a being a firm believer that kids should be allowed to play, discover, and create, especially in summer, when I heard the comment “this is the coolest thing ever” I felt that these detectives had successfully uncovered a new way to look at history around them, and no eyes rolled!