On June 1, the museum got a huge turnout thanks to the citywide yard sale in Jonesburg.
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For 35 years, the Jonesburg Historical Museum has been a place where patrons from Montgomery County and other areas get a chance to check out memorabilia of the history of Jonesburg from old heating stoves to a spinning wheel.
On June 1, the museum got a huge turnout thanks to the citywide yard sale Jonesburg was having. About 10 people visited the museum after the first hour of operation.
“It’s a neat place,” said Ruth Ann Devenport, who is a member of the Jonesburg Historical Society. “Being raised here, I want to see it continue going. We finally have more people interested and I think it helps to have fundraisers and stuff. Even having the yard sale, we got a lot more people to go through it.”
The museum is open to visitors on the first Saturday of each month from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. It includes toys, pictures, record players, wedding gowns, cash registers, a barber chair, a railroad room which has old railroad memorabilia and a time capsule that was made by Jonesburg Elementary students in 2000 and should not be opened until 2050.
“It’s such a cool thing for Jonesburg,” Devenport said.
John Frauenhoffer, Mary Jones Eime, Harry Hart and Brooks Sutor were among the founders of the Jonesburg Historical Museum, which opened in 1989.
Devenport said improvements are still being made at the museum.
“It’s been a work in progress,” she said. “It’s growing. Four or five years ago, we got all of the siding put on because it was much more affordable. Kemco (Aluminum) put the siding on for us and it was much more affordable. It was going to cost thousands and thousands of dollars to get it tuckpointed. This way, it looks cool and they did a fantastic job.”
Next to the museum is a slave cabin that was built on the Wright Smith Tobacco Plantation in 1837 and was located southeast of Jonesburg before it was moved to its current location in 1992.
Devenport and her husband Curt, Corey and Kayla Hart, Kathy and Larry Gruenefeld and Jerry Schwartz are part of the Jonesburg Historical Society. Davenport said the society’s mission is to continue to have more visitors come to the museum.
“We want to keep it going,” Devenport said. “We can’t let it go by the wayside. We want to get younger people, like in their 20s and 30s, involved and we will.”
