How to Go
What: Butler County Historical Society Museum
Where: 327 N. Second St., Hamilton
Info: Free admission. Call for tours and research appointments. (513) 896-9930 www.bchistoricalsociety.com
HAMILTON — The Butler County Historical Society Museum has long been one of the area’s best-kept secrets, but that’s been changing in recent months with the addition of the Olive S. and Herbert T. Randall Research Center, formally dedicated in April.
The 3,000-square-foot addition has transformed the entire museum complex by providing a safe haven for the society’s documents and artifacts, thereby increasing the research capacity being done by its army of volunteers. It also has opened up areas of the Benninghofen House and the Emma Ritchie Auditorium for exhibitions.
“Our research has skyrocketed,” said Executive Director Kathy Creighton. “Already, through May, we’ve equalled our entire numbers from 2011.”
Moving the research archives out of the Benninghofen House, built in 1861 and named for the prominent Hamilton industrialist who lived there and whose family donated the house to the society in 1947, freed up two rooms of the house for exhibit space.
One has become a “constantly evolving” exhibition called “Industrial Hamilton,” that allows the museum to show off the many artifacts it has collected regarding the city’s commercial past. It currently includes recent acquisitions such as a scale model of the Hamilton Foundry and documents and photos recovered from the closing of Beckett Paper Mills.
Another room has been devoted to the Benninghofen Family and the Schuler-Benninghofen Woolen Mills once located in Lindenwald.
The basement of the Emma Ritchie Auditorium, which had been a display area until it became necessary as a storage area, has been re-opened with displays of clothing and artifacts. One case has been devoted to showing the contents of a footlocker that belonged to Dr. James A. Graft, a Seven Mile physician who operated a field hospital in World War I.
“It’s like he just came home from the war and opened up his case for us,” Creighton said.
A room in the auditorium basement, also once used for storage, now displays a collection of medical artifacts, including a dentist’s chair and an opthamologist’s lens case, and a room houses items from the office of Ann Antenan, a former mayor of Hamilton and prominent advocate for historical preservation.
Many paintings and photographs that had once been in storage are now on display throughout the new addition.
According to society President Greg Young the transformation of the complex is partly due to the gift of the Randall family that made the addition possible, but also to the concerted efforts of Creighton and an active board of directors who have been working together for the past three years to raise the profile of the museum, its holdings and the research capacity of its archives.
“Before we started the renovation, we visited other county historical museums throughout Ohio, and I can tell you that our facility at this point in time is as good as any other.”
Young said the society has also been working to create a Speaker’s Bureau and a series of programs that can be presented in schools and to community organizations and retirement homes.
“We’ve got some great leadership in place, a very capable and active board of trustees and in Kathy Creighton, who has done a remarkable job,” Young said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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