For over 75 years, the Allen County Fort Wayne Historical Society has collected and preserved our local history, helping to bring the past to life for current and future generations.

From its beginnings in 1921, when the Mary Penrose chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Society merged their collections, its mission has been to foster an understanding and appreciation for the history of the region.

From 1926 to 1980, the collection was housed at the Sweeny Homestead, and in 1980 it moved to the Old City Hall downtown.

This beautiful old sandstone building, once threatened with demolition, is now considered the biggest and perhaps most important piece of the collection.

Inside it overflows with thousands of artifacts related to Fort Waynes rich history, so much so that due to the lack of space, many of these fragile treasures rarely go on display.

But this month, in celebration of its 75th year, a new exhibit will open called Gems of the Collection, featuring 75 fascinating artifacts seldom seen outside of storage.

Deciding on just 75 artifacts was a labor of love for the society's staff because each one has their own favorites.

Several weeks ago, TV's 39 stopped by the museum for a preview of the new exhibit.

The staff was more than willing to tell us about some of their all time favorites.

Well, this is a loving cup won by Art Smith during the 1915 Panama Exposition.

He did a number of stunt races, and this was apparently one of them race against.

As you can see up here Barney Oldfield And Barney was known to be a race car driver of a submarine now, and I think he was the first to break the mile a minute mark.

Way back when.

And so Art raced his airplane against Barney's car for a five mile stretch.

And this wasn't unusual.

It happened quite a bit during that war one period.

And this time at least Art won and took home the silver cup.

So this has been our collection for about 70 years now, and we're very proud of it.

Sometime before 1926, we the DAR, which had a collection in the old courthouse, the Relic Room, they called it, received a donation of two portraits unframed, of the Filson.

Eliza and Robert Filson.

And they when the society opened their museum in the Sweeney House in 1926, those the society's collection and the DAR collection were merged together.

They're on loan, actually.

But anyway, the source of the two paintings, Eliza and Robert, was the DAR originally.

But they're two fine examples of what some people call plain paint paintings.

And they date from about 1840 and or 1841.

And that's when Eliza Filson.

Eliza and Robert Filson came to Fort Wayne in 1841.

He was a merchant.

And she, of course, in those days I was a housewife.

I guess you'd call her, but she would.

I remember reading one account where she was known for her singing voice in the social circles of the time.

The paintings are were done by R.B.

Kraft, who, according to some research, was done in the past, reside in Fort Wayne from about 1839 1844, which helped support the the evidence that they were painted by the 1840 or 1841.

The both paintings were in pretty sad shape and they Eliza was restored in 1977 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and Robert was just restored last year.

And they're two two of our finest examples of some of the early, early or mid, I guess to say, mid-19th century paintings we have of local residents.

Eliza lived until about 1863 and Robert remarried and he lived another ten years about what we're showing you right now is some sterling silver and a China pattern from the Sweeney homestead.

It was used by the Sweeney daughters and probably purchased in the 1880s.

And it's very it's original because it's porcelain covered with something called Healy Gold.

It's very shiny and fancy.

It has little legs on the teacups.

And the silver was is part of the Sweeney Silver.

And we've put that out to a company that we have a a good feeling about The Sweeney, since that was our home from 1926 till about 1980.

The legend of the Watch was that it was given to Little Turtle prior to the War of 1812, and this was to gain his favor by the British against the Americans in case war broke out between the United States and Great Britain.

The watch was manufactured somewhere between 1810 and 1829.

So that story as a possibility that it was given the little turtle.

However, history doesn't hold up.

Sometimes the legend of history hold up, sometimes under close scrutiny.

So recently, taking a very close look at the documentation of the watch.

And we know that it was given to the Godfrey family because one of the Godfrey family members initial is on it, James Arthur Godfrey.

And it was given to James Arthur Godfrey, son George Godfrey, who gave it to his trustee when he died in 1902.

The William Geek family and the family heirs then donated to the museum in 1949.

However, as we look at it and look at the overall scale of history during that time period, the possibility does exist that the watch was given to the last war.

Chief of the Miami, who was Francis Godfrey?

James R. Godfrey, father first, because at the time in the 1810, 1812 time period, it may have been more plausible to give the watch to the more active war chief of the Miami Francis Godfrey, who may have been more sympathetic towards the British than Little Turtle was who had promised never to fight the Americans again after his defeat by Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.

The watch was research by the William Cook family to make sure that there was a possibility that it was Little Turtles.

And there is that remote possibility that that was given to Little Turtle.

But the and the number of scenarios exist on the watch.

It is a fine, exquisite watch, a gold watch that was very valuable for its time.

It is of British manufacture.

And we think, though, that in order to make the story a little bit better story, it may have been traced back a little bit further than what the actual documentation can show that it was, But we cannot positively disprove it either.

So just the story itself does make it a valuable piece for the collection, though.

So this quilt came from the Bethany Presbyterian Church.

It was given to their pastor in 1899 as he was leaving the congregation to go on to another congregation.

Pastor Davies and everyone in the church, at least all the ladies of the congregation of the church, have signed it throughout 1899.

There's a lot of names on it you would recognize.

We have all the Hamilton ladies, Edith, Agnes, Alice and a number more Hamiltons throughout.

We have the Oles family, and of course, they were very big in the wagon works here.

And the Oles mansion, which still still stands down the street, was related into that family and other local family names you might recognize today.

The Darnell's, Foxes.

Gage Barrett The Barrett family.

Wolf Family, of course.

So a lot of names that you would still find around almost a hundred years later.

You find our ancestors have signed this quilt.

Well, the first schedule was produced in 1879.

The first telephone directory, I would, I guess you'd say in Fort Wayne, contains 54 names, mostly businesses at the time.

And it was started by a man named Sidney Lombard.

Uh, eventually got up to 100 subscribers, but it was not a success.

It failed eventually, and I looked up some information on subsequent telephone companies and the first successful telephone company that they continued to exist started in 1881.

So this is kind of short, short lived.

The best foundry machine works.

That was the and the Bass residences.

Of course, he is a wealthy man, so he he had his own phone, the Avalon house, which is a hotel.

Um, for Wayne National Bank, no, First National Bank and Fort Wayne National Bank is on here.

The Gazette office, of course, which is today the Journal Gazette.

Um, once the Sentinel is on here and see.

Yep.

The Sentinel offices on there, the sheriff's office, the police department and don't see any other businesses that my brothers, which was a drug company, Olds and Sons that they made wagons, one of our favorite artifacts that's been around the collection since 1933 is a wagon that was made by the Olds Wagon Works.

Most wagons they made were full scale, the type you'd see going up and down the street, but they made at least a few for children.

The one that we have was made for Mr. Koopman, who played with it during his childhood days and no doubt was passed down a couple of different generations from 1883 and then came to our museum in 1933.

And of course, as with some artifacts that are this touchable and this one saw a few other uses in its time from when it came here, but it's still in very good shape and is very much the style of the larger wagons built here.

And it's really probably the only surviving example of work of the old company.

Over my shoulder, you'll see something that's very special.

It's a cigar store Indian with a little different twist.

It's a woman, and it was here in Fort Wayne.

It was used by the JW Steckbeck company, and it was located The Steckbeck Cigar Company was located down on Lafayette Street, close to where the Reservoir Park is today.

And this was purchased by Steckbeck Steckbeck Paint Company, because they're the descendants of the Steckbeck Cigar Company.

At one time, cigars were very popular in Fort Wayne and it was a prominent business.

And we just think this is a wonderful woodcarving of a woman as a cigar store Indian.

Usually we're used to seeing a chief and instead we have a woman up.

So it's very special and we don't think there are too many like it around.

Well, the desk is behind me is called a wooden desk, and it was a large scale well, it's called a cabinet secretary.

And it was patented in 1874 and its heyday was in the mid 1870s.

And it's such a large piece of furniture that you could store different things into it.

You could have cubbyholes for you stick your paper and your correspondence, you could get your mail and put it in one of the side pieces and it would swing out and you could lock the drawers that were on the sides of it and have it all secure.

And a lot of time to be located like in the office of your of your home so you could work out of your home at times.

And it's an elaborate piece of furniture.

There weren't a great deal of these made 700 or so were probably produced and it's a fairly rare piece of furniture for today.

And they're much sought after a piece you can judge by the quality of the work and so on for today it has a variety of types of wood on it.

It mostly is black walnut because there were lots of walnut forests around this area and that was part of the demise of the Secretary.

Not only was its cumbersomness because it was so large and bulky, but also the hardwood forests of walnut were being depleted here in Indiana at the time and the cost of the wood was going up so much that the company found it hard to afford the high quality materials that's in the desks today.

Okay, this is our Wayne.

Knitting Mill statue.

It just came to the museum last year.

We certainly do consider it a gem.

Wayne Mills had a lot to do with the development of Fort Wayne is one of the larger industries for quite a while, and they made a lot of different product products, including, of course, hosiery, and this was certainly an advertising piece to sell that hosiery.

And this was made by a Chicago firm in 1932.

And it's very much that time period and really is a beautiful piece of advertising art Well, the TV you're seeing right now is is truly in a Fort Wayne original.

It was built in Fort Wayne by the Magnavox company in 1950 and it's probably a preview of things to come because it's a piece of furniture used to hold a TV and it's used to hide the TV.

You could close the doors and you wouldn't have to know it was even anything.

But a fine piece of furniture was used to use the corner of the room.

And it's it's sort of special to me because we had one like this in my house and my father worked for Magnavox, and so he was able to find one, although we have heard they were not in production for very long, that Frank Fryman didn't particularly like the use of the corner or the use of the wood.

So they quit producing them.

After 1950, after Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in 1927, a solo flight taking 33 hours, staying awake, which was no easy task.

He came back to the US as a hero, and of course, he's virtually unknown.

Before that, he was born up in Detroit and most people think he was from way out west.

But he was born in Detroit, but he flew airmail towards Saint Louis, and when he came back, everyone wanted a piece of him, so to speak.

He spent a few weeks writing his book.

We would talk about the flight and he and the aircraft, so to speak.

And then the Guggenheim Foundation decided to pay him in order to try to push the cause of civil aviation.

And what they wanted him to do was make a flight in the spirit of St Louis to all 48 states.

And he agreed to this, but he set two conditions on it.

One would be no matter what, he tried to be on time because he wanted to push commercial aviation in its future and on time was one way to do that.

And number two was if he didn't feel it was safe to land someplace, he wouldn't do so.

In fact, he ended up getting in fights with numerous photographers who would get in front of his airplane where he couldn't see.

You try and take pictures of the props starting up.

He almost killed one during the flight, but on the flight, he flew directly over Fort Wayne.

He was going to land up at Sweet Rock Airport, which is just north of the city here.

And he decided that what he would do first was fly around the downtown area.

Now, this is before Lincoln Tower was built.

There were no skyscrapers in Fort Wayne.

So he's able to get down 500 feet right over the courthouse and zoom up and down Main Street in the spirit of St Louis.

And in the process of doing that, he dropped a sock out of his airplane, which is this yellow thing right here with a streamer on it.

And in the sock had this poster of greetings from him in the spirit of Saint Louis signed by him.

He then headed up towards Sweet Rock and once he got up in that area, he found that there were a couple of dozen airplanes doing stunts over the airport to greet him coming in and thousands of people sitting down on the field.

You really felt this was not a safe situation.

So he continued on this flight and didn't end up landing here.

But he did leave this behind to greet people of Fort Wayne, this shovel is a very interesting piece from our collection.

It was used during the groundbreaking for the Lincoln Bank Tower, and I always thought it was interesting that the Lincoln Bank Tower was the construction of it was begun only 30 days after the great crash, the stock market crash of 1929, so that they decided to go through with the construction of the bank, even though it appeared that the economy was in a severe decline and it showed the optimism for a way at that time that even though the economy was not in the greatest of conditions, that they were still going to move forward and were determined to put up, which was going to be at that time, the largest and tallest building in the state of Indiana.

This particular shovel was used by Samuel Foster, who was one of the officers of the First Lincoln Bank.

And we're fortunate to have this piece.

And we also have a video that we're going to be showing of the groundbreaking of Lincoln Tower, which people would find to be very interesting.

It shows the construction of the vault and how the vault was supposedly burglar proof and has so many feet of thicknesses of steel and so on.

And it's a very interesting video to go along with the groundbreaking shovel that we'll have on display then to well, this is a pen and ink drawing that comes from 1836, and it was done by I have to look here, Marianne King.

It was given to Marianne King by her granddaughter in 1836, and it's called The Endless Knot.

And it starts out, Oh, man, behold.

And thou shall see.

And it goes into all the problems with sin and what can happen to your life.

And it's all entwined in this knot throughout the drawing.

And you have to twist and turn to see the knot and read the drawing.

It's all done with vegetable inks and by pen.

And this was a type of art that was very much in vogue during the 1800s.

And we just think it's really wonderful, it's very fragile, and we're pleased that we can show it to people.

It's an early automatic washer produced by a local company, the Horton Manufacturing Company, and it dates to about circa 1950.

Don't know exactly.

The old record says 1949 to 1950, so I just use about 1950.

It's it opens and there's a top it opens from the top.

And in the inside is a is the the wash bin that's set horizontally.

So when it when it washed it twist this way the company didn't the company was found in 1871, but it didn't last much beyond the production of this unit because they were in the early fifties.

They went out of business or moved away.

I'm not sure which, but they are dont show in the directories anymore after 1953-54 that I would guess it's, it's, it's a very early automatic.

Most of the time we're probably wearing our washers.

I'm sure we do have an operating manual for it and so it holds 10lbs of dry clothes, but I don't know how much that is, but and they use 16 gallons of water in a cycle while the wedding dress that we have on display is from the 1930s and we just received it last year.

A woman was going into a nursing home and her daughter decided that we should have this wedding dress.

And she gave us the wedding dress, the flower girl dress, and even her father's tuxedo that he wore for the wedding.

They were married in 1930 and they were married for 52 years.

We really liked the dress.

Although I myself wonder about a woman with a 22 inch waist.

But it's a it's a beautiful dress and it's a great contrast to some of the other clothing we had.

That's from the late 1800s.

You could see a real change in the style of the dresses, whereas in the late 1800s they were very fitted form fitting.

This one is much more in the style of a flapper dress, long waisted and not quite as confining, constricting.

So it's a beautiful dress and we're so lucky to have so much information on it.

That's what's great about it is that we know the woman and we have the pictures and and we have a whole we even have the newspaper articles that tell the whole description of the bride.

And you can see a totally different way of describing a wedding, even in the newspapers at that time.

So it's a great, great thing.

The courthouse desk, again, is a relic room artifact.

When the the DAR was in the in the relic room over there, the county commissioners had this old desk sitting around and they just gave it to them to use it.

It shows a lot of use.

There's ink stains on it, nicks, scratches, all kinds of stains on it.

So it saw a lot of use.