The Horseheads Historical Society Museum has been unpacking its history, preparing to build a database of its collection, find out more details about its holdings, and redistributing items unrelated to Horseheads.
The problem is information is incomplete on some items and non-existent on others. An 1879 wedding dress falls into the first category, two murals of the Village of Horseheads the latter.
Stacey Gunderman White and Michelle Podolec, volunteer board members and Horseheads residents, have been snooping around closets and storage space to discover old treasures and sort the collection.
"The girls were so excited, you'd have thought they'd found gold," said Linda L. Burke, of Horseheads, president of the Horseheads Historical Society board, of the day when the 1879 wedding dress was discovered in one of their buildings, The Zim House, the 1888 home once owned by famous cartoonist Eugene "Zim" Zimmerman.
Gunderman White has been exploring the museum and Horseheads history since she was a child, influenced by her friend and former town historian Nadine Ferraioli, who died in 2007.
"She would talk to me about it as a child growing up," Gunderman White said. "She knew about everybody that came through this town, from first settlers on. She would let me come to the museum and explore. I was the kid who went into the museum and pretended, and she let me do that."
Gunderman White went off to ride race horses and was a thoroughbred racetrack official before returning to Horseheads, where she now operates Beefeater Tavern on Hanover Square with her husband and involves herself in community activities — such as the historical society.
She said she's gone through thousands of donations in the last two years, acknowledging while the finds were new to Podolec and her they probably weren't to elders on the board.
The 1879 wedding dress and two others now on display had been stored following museum protocol, placed in a museum-quality, acid-free box and labeled correctly, with an accession card that told it was donated by Esther Olsen in 1988 and that the dress belonged to a school teacher — either Virginia Manny or Hester Boundry.
The museum volunteers are trying to determine which of the teachers wore the dress, at which of the two schools she taught, and if any descendants are still living.
The volunteers determined the wedding date from the bottom of wedding shoes packaged with the dress. The date Oct. 15, 1879 was written on them.
"Brides at the time wrote the date of the wedding on the bottom of their shoes," Gunderman White said. "Almost as we opened the box it was giving us clues, it wanted us to find out the story. It was evident all three dresses were stacked together and had been displayed at one time, all three of them were teachers.
"I went in there hoping to find wedding dresses," Gunderman White said. "I like to think Nadine is guiding me through this."
The dress was stored properly. The same can't be said for the murals that Podolec found.
"That was an example of something probably not archived properly," Gunderman White said. "They were rolled up and behind this that and the other. That was actually a neat find."
They had handyman Tim Evans stretch them on a frame, and the murals have been hung on museum walls.
"I like the color they add," Burke said. "I would say they were both done by the same person, or maybe as a class project. We thought about that."
They don't know the date they were painted, but they're modern — one shows Hanover Square with Kwik Fill and Pudgies pizza, the other of the canal. They're hoping someone can provide details so they can be properly credited.
The Zim House, donated by Eugene Zimmerman's daughter, Laura Zimmerman, after his death in 1935, had a full inventory at the time of the donation. Over the years, other items that didn't belong were placed there, Burke said.
The last two winters have been spent clearing out storage and cataloging holdings. Good-intended donors sometimes drop off items to get rid of them without realizing the work ahead for a small museum with limited resources.
"We have cleared out the back room," Burke said. "There are so many historical things. We have given some away to other historical societies, where they belong. The Chemung Valley Museum has helped us. Before we took everything. Now, donations have to be related to Horseheads."
With the sorting done, Burke said the museum could use help with data entry so holdings can be displayed on the museum's website.
And, of course, they could use help solving the mysteries of who wore that wedding dress and who painted those murals.
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