January 1, 2025
Happy New Year to Members & Friends!
For the Historical Society, 2024 was a year like no other in recent memory. Our Wednesday morning Museum volunteer corps started the year with an intent to change a few small exhibits, and what resulted was the start of something far bigger.
If you’ve visited our Museum in the past two to three decades, you’ve seen essentially the same exhibits throughout that time. They’ve served our community reasonably well, but one of our newest volunteers, Sue Ellen Roach, felt that too many items on display were simply “old” rather than pertaining to our community. This resonated with the volunteer corps, who, for the past few years, had started to refine our collections practices by asking: Is this item in our possession something that a person in our community would come to the Museum to look for? If not, then why do we have it?
It became clear that it was time to transform our Museum into an institution that would address both of those objectives. Thanks to the vision, blood, sweat, and tears of this volunteer corps (which included Gary Albright, Denise Dickinson, Kathy Eastman, Jacob Fox, Bill Lane, Sue Ellen Roach, and Charles Woolever), two of the three rooms in our Museum have undergone a complete “exhibit rotation” with all-new items on display that pertain to our community, filled with items that a person in our community would expect to find.
A good number of people got a sneak preview of this work in the past few months. We had our first “soft open” during the Festival On The Falls in August, and then a second one during Fall Weekend. We also opened for a handful of Sundays and had a special evening visit with the Honeoye Falls Rotary. During these previews, almost 200 people got a chance to see what we are so excited about. I can tell you that I have never seen people take so much time to look at our exhibits in all my years with the Society. These exhibits will capture your attention in a way they haven’t in quite some time.
The newly-christened Amo Kreiger Room starts you off, with a focus on the historic businesses of Mendon and Honeoye Falls. This room also contains a revamped display of Native American history, and a stunning new exhibit of a cross section of the 210-year-old “Sibleyville Oak” tree from the corner of Plains Road and NY15A that fell in 2020.
In the William Mantegna Room, you will find a significantly expanded set of exhibits dedicated to the railroads of our area, including the Lehigh Valley and New York Central. You will also be greeted with an all-new exhibit focusing on the history of our local schools, with everything from varsity jackets to yearbooks on display. The Mantegna Room rounds this out with a large display focusing on the most important residents who made our area what it is today, including not just their portraits, but significant artifacts from their lives as well. Adjoining the Mantegna Room is a redesigned set of hallway exhibits, focusing on Honeoye Falls Airport (with some new donations courtesy of Paul Washington, highlighted below) and the Veterinary Office, which was located long ago in our building, prior to its use as our Museum.
The Leo Cooney Room — which sits between those two rooms — will be the focus of this Winter’s work, when the Museum will be closed once again. It will focus on the social aspects of our community, from baseball to the Civil War; from our fire departments to the Grange; and beyond.
Here’s a visual preview!
