The Desha County Museum will be celebrating its 46th birthday Saturday, July 26 from 11 am to 2 pm.
The Desha County Board of Directors invites the community to visit the Desha County Museum to celebrates it 46th Birthday There will be live entertainment, grilled hot dogs, birthday cake with homemade ice cream, a Christmas in July market and a kids corner and games. The newly renovated Shotgun House will be opened for tours.
SHOTGUN HOUSE
The old Shotgun houses are almost gone from Desha County. The Desha County Museum is lucky to have this one. Shotgun Houses became popular after the end of the Civil War. They were easy to build and almost anyone could build one. They typically had 3 rooms and a front and back porch. The house at the Desha County Museum is approximately 100 years old.
The old Shotgun House at the Desha County Museum had seen better days when it was given to the museum by Shelby Appleberry of Winchester in 1999. In 2024 the process of restoration began. The house now has a new floor and new inside walls. The ceiling was left basica1ly the same. A new roof had been installed several years ago. Windows had been replaced several years ago. The majority of the contents that are in the house had been stored in the Agri. Bldg.
A BEAR TALE
On January 3, 1973, a large black female bear wandered into town and found refuge under the house trailer belonging to Mrs. Zerlene King. The bear quite possibly, had awakened and realized that it was hungry. We'll never know how far it had traveled and why he stopped at Mrs. Kings house. Dogs were barking and Mrs. King looked under her house and saw the bear. The first person she called asked her if she had been drinking! The next person she called was Charlotte Schexnayder/Editor of the Dumas Clarion. (it was paper day) Ms. Charlotte prompt1y walked to the back of the Clarion and said" Stop the presses. We have a story. Melvin, get the camera." By the time the Schexnayders got to the trailer park a lot of people were already there. After an hour the bear emerged and a person from the Game and Fish Commission used a tranquilizer gun to daze the bear. The wounded bear fled as did the many spectators. The bear fled toward what was Hwy. 54. En route, Jody Wilkin tried to lasso the bear but failed.
However, the bear continued down the street to Patoka's store where he climbed a small tree. After several hours the bear fell from the tree and broke its neck. It was an emotional event for the people who saw the bear that day. Soon a drive was underway to collect the $500.00 that a taxidermist would charge to preserve the bear. When the preserved bear was brought back to Dumas it was placed in the Dumas Public Library until the Desha County Museum was built in 1979.
The bear is still a favorite exhibit of many people who come to the museum with their grandchildren and T hear them say, "Twas there that day." For this reason a bear was included on the mural on the west side of the main building.
Museum Director Peggy Chapman recalled a conversation the Former Dumas Clarion Editor Charlotte Schexnayder had with a man who came into the Dumas Clarion.
“One day in 1959, Charlotte Schexnayder, Former Editor of the Dumas Clarion, was working at the Clarion when an unnamed man came into newspaper to talk to her. He told her that Dumas needed at museum because he had some things that he would like to give to it. That was all it took for Ms. Charlotte to get started on a new project. She talked to civic leaders and her many friends enlisting their help with the project. It took 20 years (1959-1979) before a building was builtin and the museum was named the Desha County Museum,” Chapman said.
The Desha County Museum started in early April 1977 with a group of interested individuals met for the ground breaking of the, Desha County Museum. The picture of the ground breaking was in the April 13, 1977 issue of the Dumas Clarion.
The idea to start a museum had been on the mind of Charlotte Schexnayder for years. She had pulled into her circle a small group of supporters. One of those supporters, B.J. Tanenbaum, plus the Dante family, gave the land for the museum. The other major supporters at that time were Mayor Billy Free, former Desha County Judge J.L. Erwin, Desha County Judge Bonnie Zook and Mrs. Thelma Teeter. There were others who played key roles as well. They were Jack & Amy Frank, Margaret Cagle, Mary Martin, Lamar "Curly" Birch, Berzent Blagg, Mary Jo
Tucker, Mike Murphy (first board president), Doc Puryear, Glen Stanford and Charles Holloway. It was a community effort and civic clubs rallied to provide a lot of manual labor in the construction of the main building.
The Open House on Sunday, July 27, 1979 was held in conjunction with Dumas' 75th birthday. At that time the main building was sparsely furnished with a few exhibits. A few exhibits had been purchased such as the A.C. Looney Indian artifact collection which was part of a huge collection that was purchased by two other museums before the DCM was even built.
Desha county citizens responded to the call for donations and the artifacts came in and soon the building was full.
Other buildings were brought in and they are now full as well. The idea of a farmstead was realized when the Terry Log House was given to the museum in 1980 by Mrs. Jesse Kennedy. Soon a log kitchen, blacksmith shop, potato house, and dog house was added. It didn't stop there as the Billy Free Agri. Bldg. Was built in 1987. A War Memorial was dedicated on Nov. 28, 1993 for our fallen heroes. An old community building from Mrs. Johnnie Poole was given 1992. This was followed by a tenant farm house from the R.A. Pickens family in 1999 and a Shot Gun House donated by Shelby Appleberry also in 1999. The last m^sr building acquisition was the historic First Baptist Church of Pickens in 2005.
The Desha County Museum is a work in progress. The museum is more than buildings. The buildings contain many things such as antique farm equipment, quilts, vintage clothing, cameras, collections of glassware, pictures and much, much more! It is impossible to see it all in one visit. It is worth a trip down memory lane to visit the museum or just to learn some Desha County history.
There is a lot of history on this 3.4 acre site. Because of the need for more storage room the museum board members started a building fund several years ago.
