The Watonga Middle School student council volunteered their time to help Friday at the museum. They were very well mannered young people and took their positions seriously. I heard them giving a tour out back and was impressed with how well they did presenting the information. They are planning to help if the scheduling works out with our Halloween Bash. They may be able to help with setup Friday and with cleanup afterwards on Sunday. They may be able to help out in the spring if we get to have Frontier Days. They have a school dance the night of the Halloween Bash so they will be busy there. One of the girls saw her last name on some of the items on the third floor and was very excited to think her ancestor donated those things.
We finally know where the jail was located before being moved to the museum. We had been told it was across the street from the court house but didn’t know exactly where. It was on the northwest corner, across the street west of the Ferguson Chapel.
We were able to do a float this year for the Cheese Festival. Donnie and Louise Dunn were helping at the Lions Club booth so Kade G. pulled the trailer. Clay Z., Kimber G. and I rode on the float. Clay was dressed as Mr. Ferguson as a newspaper reporter. Kimber enjoyed waving.
The people that come to a museum are generally interested in history, ask questions, and often share their knowledge; I enjoy learning from our visitors. A young lady who was a history major at Camden University came for the Cheese Festival and made a special effort to make it to the Ferguson Home. Over all it was a successful Cheese Festival at the T. B. Ferguson Home Museum.
A big thanks goes to the Blaine County OHCE groups for asking me to speak at the Fall Council meeting and the most generous donation. Louise D. went as well and explained the Christmas Tree decorating fundraiser we are planning. I’ll explain more latter on that.
Clay and Anthony really got the front of the museum looking good for the Cheese Festival. All of the columns are up and front of the museum is primed for paint. Jena and Sandra have the flower beds cleaned out and the landscaping done with mulch and laid bricks. I just stopped and looked at it Friday as I opened it up and it is amazing the difference between now and a few months ago. It’s amazing how well it looks now.
I will answer here some of the questions that were brought up from various visitors this weekend so others will know too. Yes we are open regular hours Wednesday thru Saturday 10:00 to 3:00 and have been open 20 hours a week for a number of years. Yes we will open for special tours or different occasions. Someone said they didn’t think we were open because the flower beds had grown up. We apologize for the flower beds looking so bad. The Watonga City Parks Department does mow for us but they don’t have time to do flower beds nor is it their place to do them and we have had no one able to do them in a while. Yes there are furnishings inside and we have always had furniture inside. It is set up to look as it would in the time frame when the Fergusons lived there. Most of the artifacts were donated from people living in Blaine County. There are a few items that the Oklahoma History Center brought here.
We would like for different businesses or groups to come to the museum and decorate a Christmas tree. People can come to the museum to vote by donating $1.00/vote on the tree they like best. They can vote more than once of course. We would like this to be done November 22 through December 3 so we can take pictures and have them at the Christmas Bazar so people can also vote on them there. This will help us decorate the museum too. We will open after hours to let anyone in that can’t make it during our regular hours.
The Halloween Bash will be at the Ferguson Home Museum on October 30, 2021, 6:00 to 9:00 PM. There is a $2.00 entry fee. We won’t be doing games with the young kids because of Covid but we plan on having a walk through for the older more adventurous people
Ẇe welcome anyone that would like to become a member of Friends of Ferguson. You will be helping a worthwhile cause. We have one meeting a month. You can help with any project you are interested in or none at all. Maybe you can give suggestions. Before Covid we had more educational programs in addition to fund raisers like the Chicken Noodle Dinner, Easter Egg Hunt for children five years old and younger, the Tea, Halloween Bash, and Breakfast with Santa.