Eureka College really IS the Center of the Universe!

   So I wasn't planning on blogging today, but I HAVE to share this! : )
  While Lori was giving a couple a tour of the old Victorian Beckwith House this afternoon, I learned that Louis Beckwith (founder of the first Corn Palace in Mitchell in the 1890s) met his wife Mary in Pekin, IL. I was really surprised to find such an important person for Mitchell and DD to have a connection back to Illinois and so near my college. I asked Lori about it later and she said that yes, Louis grew up in the Tazewell County area and after he married Mary, they moved to Mitchell in 1882. I mentioned that he would have been in the area when Lincoln came to speak at Eureka College in 1856. Lori’s response was “Oh yes! Louis did write in his memoir that his favorite memory growing up was going to the campus with his father to see Lincoln speak. He talked about it a lot to his friends at the Corn Palace.” Once again, Dr. Rodriguez, you were right…Eureka College is the center of the universe! I’m planning to do some further research and try to figure out how much connection Louis Beckwith and his family may have had with Eureka College before he moved to Mitchell. I’ll bet there’s plenty of information to find here, and it may be fun to dig into when I get back to campus in the fall.
     In other news, I worked mostly with Lori’s daughter Jamie today. We focused on the wedding dress exhibit, which we pretty much started today and still has a lot of work to be done, but I'm setting a personal goal of finishing it before I leave DD. Such BEAUTIFUL dresses as old as 1864, some in absolutely terrible shape, but it was a lot of fun putting on the gloves and really handling the artifacts. Getting the dresses onto dress forms and figuring out how to properly display them was fun, but stressful because we had to be oh so very careful. I definitely got a lesson in patience.
      Judy also came in today and did her weekly review of the HOBO units, so Lori had me go ‘on rounds’ with her and see how each of the HOBO units work and how to take readings. Unfortunately, the units haven’t been working properly lately so we had to take most of the units out, haul them back to Lori’s office, and enter the temperature, light, and humidity data into the HOBOware on her computer by hand. Still pretty cool gadgets, though. Ahh…toys of the trade.
     That's all for now. Took some pictures today, but I want to take more tomorrow and I'll get them uploaded by the weekend! : )