(bright music) - Hello, and welcome to "Journal," I'm Steve Kendall.

From the history of a unique local school to free First Fridays, the Wood County Museum welcomes you into the stories of the people and places of Wood County.

We're joined on "Journal" today by the director of the Wood County Museum, Annette Wells.

Annette, thank you for being here.

- Yes, thank you for having me.

- Now talk a little about the fact, obviously people know about the Wood County Museum, but talk a little about the background, the history, and then we can talk about all the things that are going on both at the museum and then all the things you do where you basically travel around all of Wood County.

So talk about the history of the museum a little bit.

- Sure, sure, so our museum is housed in the old poor house which the state had, basically every county in the state of Ohio had a poor house in the 1800s and that's where you would live if you were elderly and had no family, if you were poor, if you had disabilities, mental or physical.

All of those things, that's where you could come and live.

So it was sort of the precursor to the nursing homes in the 1800s and so our building was built in 1868, a few years after the Civil War, opened in 69, and then we were in business until 1971 which is the not-so-distant past really, 71.

- Sure, because people would assume that long before that, the county home, is what they would call them, would've been out of business by then.

There would've been other means.

- No, no, in fact, we have people that had relatives that were basically elderly, living in the nursing home, in the home, the county home in the 60s, so yeah.

So we closed in 71 and the Historical Society had kind of gotten underway at that point.

And so they decided okay, we are going to turn this place into a museum and we opened in 1975.

So we've been open since then.

And we're not just Bowling Green, we are all of Wood County.

So we try to represent all of the cities.

We have items in our collection from all over the county, even maybe outside the county too.

And so we house the artifacts and we have three exhibits right now on display.

- Yeah, and I know that one of the exhibits which it's always a go-to, it's been around for a long time, is the Bach Exhibit with the fingers and all that kind of stuff.

And people have probably heard that, but there are still people who are going, "What are you talking about?

But that's a go-to, that kind of tragic murder, dismemberment kind of thing that for some reason always intrigues people so.

- [Annette] Yes, people do like, I mean, look at the crime podcasts.

They're so popular nowadays, right?

Everybody loves those, so the exhibit that we have is called "The Mary and Carl Bach Story" and that was a murder that took place over in Milton, here in Wood County.

And Carl brutally attacked his wife and killed her and then there was a trial here at the county courthouse, and I believe he was the last person to be hung here in Wood County, yes.

And the coroner at the time kept the tips of Mary's fingers.

That was evidenced during the trial, so that's why those were kept and then they were actually stored in the courthouse for many years.

And when we opened as a museum, the courthouse says, "We're a courthouse, you're a museum."

- [Steve] We'd be glad to hand these off to you.

Yeah, more up your alley than ours, got it.

- Exactly, so we have adults now that remember coming as school kids and seeing those.

But what we've tried to do with that story is to, at the time it was very sensationalized, of course, which a lot of high profile crimes tend to be.

And so we've tried to take a step back and say hey, this was a person.

This was a mother actually, and I believe she was pregnant at the time we found out through the records.

And so trying to put a different, not a spin on it, but humanize it a little bit more.

- [Steve] Find out more about her as a person versus just a murder victim.

- [Annette] Exactly, exactly, but yeah, that's probably one of our most, it's definitely our most controversial set of artifacts that we have at the museum.

And as I said, people that have lived in the county came here as a school kid and remembered seeing those.

Still ask if we have those.

Yes, we have them.

They are on exhibits.

- [Steve] They're not going anywhere anytime soon basically.

- [Annette] Right, right.

- And then if you look through because I was looking online, of course, you go to your website, there's a huge amount of information there.

And I think I was surprised at some of the, not surprised, but I thought wow, I didn't know that.

There were stories on there that, I've lived in Wood County or near it all my life and it's like who knew that?

I mean, now some of the other things you have, there's called "Allure and Illusion, a Rose-Colored Romance."

So we've gone from murder to romance in 30 seconds, so talk a little about that one if you can.

- So that is one of the, it's actually a temporary exhibit.

Every few years we try to put a really large temporary exhibit in the museum.

That one opened, I believe it was in spring of 22 and it's kind of neat because it covers sort of all of the phases that you would have for a relationship, but sort of told through the eyes of people and couples in Wood County.

So the first part of it has art that we got on loan from the BG Pop Culture Library, and it's by Frank Kalin.

I believe it is Harlequin romance covers, so nothing too scandalous.

- [Steve] Nothing too racy, but strictly romance.

Strictly romance, okay.

- So that is in the first part of it and then you go downstairs to the first floor, and we have a wonderful collection of wedding dresses from weddings that took place here in Wood County.

I believe there are 41 on display.

They go from 1855, that's our oldest dress, to 2001 and our curator, Holly, did some of the genealogy with it.

So you can see the dress.

You can sort of meet the couple, right?

You've got the names and sort of where their families are from, and also of course, people love the fashion too so that's a big part of it, walking through the exhibit.

You can basically look at a dress and you can tell okay, that was 1920s.

Oh, look at that.

That's really mod looking, that's definitely 60s, and then you can kind of check and say oh, yeah.

- And just seeing the evolution of what wedding dresses and that sort of thing, that whole part of that evolving you said from the early time now to basically the 21st century.

and how different things could be.

And we've got just a moment here in this segment.

Is there, obviously besides the Bach exhibit, is there one that you've maybe currently have or have had in the past that really drew a lot of attention?

That one like oh, if we could do that one again, we'd do that one every year and people would flock to see us?

- So anytime we do a war exhibit, it's very popular.

We did World War I a few years ago and that was extremely popular.

We actually had a trench built in one of the rooms, so it was very, it really transported you when you walked through.

So coming up, we are going to be doing World War II, slated to open next year and we do plan on that being a very immersive exhibit.

Obviously, there's no trench, different time period.

- [Steve] Foxhole instead.

- Exactly, but we have tons of artifacts in our collection from people that lived in Wood County.

Maybe they had grandpa or great grandpa's military uniform or letters and things like that.

So we're really excited that we're gonna be doing that in.

- Yeah, we can talk about that a little more and then some of the other activities because there's a long list of things.

I say I was just amazed at how much you guys do not only there at the museum, but all over Wood County and all the schools and things.

Back in just a moment with Annette Wells, Director of the Wood County Museum here on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with us on "The Journal."

Our guest is Annette Wells, the Director of the Wood County Museum.

Annette, we were, in that last segment, talking about some of the exhibits and the temporary ones or the short-term ones.

There's a whole list.

"For Comfort and Convenience," talk about that because that one, if you hear that, well, I can go any number of ways with that.

So what is the exhibit, "For Comfort and Convenience?"

- So that is, that's actually the story of the poor houses, the poor farms, and we had a photographer that went all around the state and took pictures of these because there's supposed to be one in every county except for Cuyahoga because Cleveland had their own.

So all 88 counties, there's one of these buildings just like we have and they were established to take care of the poor and the infirm back in the day.

And so some of them don't exist anymore.

It's just a field.

Maybe they fell into disrepair and were torn down.

In some places they might be a private use or even county government offices.

In fact, our land used to be 200 acres of a working farm.

So we have a chicken coop, a hog barn, a corn barn.

There was a livestock barn on the property.

And then where the JFS, where the sheriff's office, all of those, that was the farmland back in the day.

So that was the part that they farmed and then all of the other buildings were in the back half.

- [Steve] On the other side, on the south of Route Six or whatever we would now say.

- [Annette] Yes, exactly, so that exhibit, if you are from a different part of Ohio, you can go through and look by county.

Actually it's by region I believe, and you can see oh, I'm from this county.

So let's see, does it still exist?

Oh, my gosh, yeah, I think I remember driving by that.

So it's kind of near.

- Or I'm gonna have to drive by and take a look.

- Exactly, I don't remember seeing that and I've been all over the county, so that's what that exhibit talks about.

It's really kind of neat.

Our curator did a book that pairs with it as well.

So if people really wanna know what happened to the poor farm that was in their county, they can look that up.

Research has all been done for them so.

- [Steve] And I know that sometimes you'll drive through a county and obviously these locations were probably away from, or yeah, wherever the land was because sometimes you'll drive and you'll see a road that says County Home Road, and that means that was the road that the county home was on.

It was probably out kind of by itself because they did whatever, but yeah, so people can kind of get a reasonable, what's the County Home Road?

Well, that's what it was.

- [Annette] That's probably where the house was.

- We talked about the pandemic was what it was, but one of the exhibits, it talks about a clean bill of health and it talks about the way we dealt with public health and the advancements, the history of that.

So talk a little about that.

- Sure, sure, so as I said before, our property has multiple buildings on it like the chicken coop and the hog barn.

It also has two other buildings.

We have what is called the lunatic asylum.

That one was, remember this is the 1800s.

They did not know how to treat mental health back in the day and so that's what that building was constructed for.

Not for treatment, but more for a holding facility, and then also there were a series of very small buildings.

They were called pestilence houses and they didn't have electric in them.

They were pretty simple.

Everybody had to use the latrine, so of course, there was no bathroom in those either.

But if you were staying in the home maybe in 1918 and you got influenza, right?

You the Spanish flu, they would say look, we've got 60 people living in this building.

We don't want all 60 of them getting Spanish flu.

You're gonna go live out in the pest house for a couple of weeks until you get over that.

- [Steve] Yeah, gee, thank you so much for sending you to the pest house.

- [Annette] We'll send meals out to today.

- [Steve] Oh, boy, yeah, that sounds like a wonderful time.

So that's basically isolation.

They would quarantine people.

- That was about all they could do, yeah.

I mean, you had cholera.

You had things like that that would pop up and they really were concerned about having the whole population infected.

You had a lot of elderly people that were living in the building that could get that stuff easily.

- Very susceptible because of their immunity and things, sure, sure.

- So we only have one pest house that remains, but they had several on the property when it was functioning so.

- [Steve] And what do those, I mean, size wise, what are we talking?

- [Annette] I mean, they're... - [Steve] Pretty small obviously.

- [Annette] They're bigger than a she shed or a man cave.

- [Steve] Oh, okay, yeah, but not nearly as nice probably.

- [Annette] No, no, they're fairly simple.

- [Steve] Fairly simple, yeah.

Now and you talked- - [Annette] No accommodations.

- [Steve] Yeah, and you talked about the lunatic asylum.

Were those rooms built?

- They were small as well, and those were meant to be just one occupant per room.

Whereas in the main building, just like in nursing homes today, sometimes people have to share rooms and the main building was like that.

Usually nobody got a room to themself.

They had to share with other residents, so those two buildings are the exception.

- And again, it gives us that look at the way, how much we've advanced in treatment and just the way we help people compared to the way, that was the only resource.

That's what you did.

You quarantined people in maybe not the best surroundings, but still better than having them contract Spanish flu or cholera or whatever happened to be the infectious disease of the day.

The other, well, now talk to me a little bit about "Chasing the White Rabbit" because I saw that one.

I don't know if you're all familiar with that one, but that's an interesting.

I will say one thing, the titles are really good.

Well, I got to look at that.

The title is so intriguing.

I've got to look at the rest of it so.

- [Annette] Everybody's thinking "Alice in Wonderland."

- Yeah, that was my first thought, but that's not what it is.

- No, no, that is the exhibit that we have in the lunatic asylum right now and so it goes into several rooms.

The asylum was two floors and as I mentioned before, our building was just a holding facility.

It was not a treatment facility.

But really they did not understand mental health back in the day.

They didn't know what dementia was.

They didn't understand any of these things, and so the treatments were vast and probably very ridiculous to us, certainly didn't help.

People were very mistreated and some of them maybe didn't even have illnesses at all, but were put in these places because maybe it was more of a disability than an illness type of thing so, because things were so misunderstood back then, and that's kind of what the exhibit talks about.

So for our purposes, our building was built because Toledo Hospital did have some treatment areas for people that had mental illnesses, but they had limited space.

And so people would be sent to our building, maybe they would have to live there for a while until a bed opened up.

- [Steve] Opened up in the Toledo facility.

- [Annette] Exactly, and then they would move up them.

They didn't understand those things, so we do have bars in some of the windows.

- [Steve] That's what I was gonna say.

There probably are restrictive things because obviously they didn't know how those people were gonna behave.

They didn't understand why they were behaving the way they were, So yeah, that's interesting.

Now we've got just a note to the other nice, interesting building there is called the Ice House which is pretty much what it says.

It was a house that provided refrigeration, but not in the way that we obviously deal with it these days.

- Yes, so it is double-blocked concrete.

There is sort of a space in between the block where they could put sawdust and things like that, insulating.

- [Steve] Insulation, okay.

- Exactly, and then when the property was constructed, they dug two large ponds in the back.

And so those were for water, of course, but then in the winter time, they would freeze.

- [Steve] They would harvest the ice.

- Yeah, they would get out there.

They had these huge saws, and so you would cut the blocks, and then there was actually a pulley system on the end of the ice house so you could fill it all the way to the top.

- And that's where you stored, to keep probably the food for the facility.

Yeah, for the poor house and the residents unfortunately, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- [Annette] Exactly, yeah.

- Well, when we come back, there's obviously a lot of educational stuff, but we also will talk about how people can support and become members of the Wood County Historical Society and the Wood County Museum.

Back in just a moment with Annette Wells, Director of the Wood County Museum here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal."

Our guest is Annette Wells from the Wood County Museum.

Obviously the Wood County Museum, open to the public and there are a variety of times and things like that, and you welcome people to come out anytime that you're open.

Except for one day maybe this year where you're probably asking people not to show up.

So talk a little about, and there's an educational segment on the eclipse, but talk about that eclipse piece and then how you'd really like people maybe not to figure to show up that day on April 8th and use the Wood County Museum as the place where they're gonna watch the eclipse, but talk a little bit about that.

- Right, right, so our grounds are a county park and so they're open, what is that?

Sunrise to sunset every day of the week, and the museum itself is open during the week and then on Saturdays.

But for April 8th, that's a Monday which normally Mondays are pretty quiet around there.

But our building is located basically at the corner of 75.

- [Steve] And Route Six.

- And Route six so.

- [Steve] Easy to get to.

- [Annette] Yes, so for people that are not from the area but really wanna see the eclipse and we're right off the freeway, and so that might not be the best day.

We are renting Porta John's.

- [Steve] You're being prepared.

- We're trying to, I don't think that we'll have exhibits open that day just because I don't think we could handle the volume of people.

But there's a lot of trees on the property, so honestly it might not be the best to place to be, - [Steve] The best viewing location.

- [Annette] Yes, we have a lot of very old trees so.

But any other day we welcome you.

(both laughing) - [Steve] Yeah, yeah, so yeah, but it is interesting because that is the concern that there'll be this huge overload of people and especially as you said, you're right there at 75 and Six.

Easy to find, easy to get on and off the expressway theoretically that day, we'll find out.

The other thing that you guys do a lot of is that besides the things that are at the museum, there are all the things you go out into the community.

I mean, all over Wood County schools and there's things called the Traveling Trunks or whatever, the trunks that have things that people can take out to schools and basically do sort of a mini exhibit in your school with history background.

So talk a little about some of that because that's obviously a huge part of what you do.

- It is, and it's a great resource too.

I think a lot of school groups or church groups and things like that really haven't realized the potential and have tapped into that.

So our education coordinator, Mike McMaster, he goes out and he will do traveling programs on quite a few subjects.

He's probably got 20 in his back pocket I think that he can go around and talk about.

He visits senior centers.

He visits all of the different school ages.

Elementary, high school, whatever.

But then also we have Traveling Trunks that he has put together and those can be rented, there's no charge, and so they can kind of fit into lesson plans or into a program.

There's replica items in there.

We don't actually let our artifacts travel out to the school, so everything is kind of a replica.

But still it's a really untapped resource that I think more schools might wanna take advantage of and there's no charge for that so.

- [Steve] Yeah, so it's like a, and we have a thing called, kind of like camp in a box for educational things, but it's sort of like that.

And I looked at some of the topics like the American Civil War.

There's a trunk for that.

There's colonial School boy and girl so you could see what it was like to be a colonial.

Native American, there's one for World War I.

There's one for World War II.

Lots of things like that.

Yeah, and just really cool stories that go with those and a lesson plan that comes self-prepared to some degree for educators or groups in general, so yeah.

The other thing I noticed too there also, you travel out and do, as you said, talks and things like that, presentations.

And I was looking through some of the topics and one of them said, "November 1957, Flying Saucers in Wood County."

And I don't know what that's about and maybe I don't wanna know what it's about, but obviously there was some event or someone thought there was an event back in the late 50s in Wood County that dealt with UFOs.

So there's one I think people would like to hear about given there's this resurgence now of UFO concern.

So yeah, but things like that and some of the topics.

"The Night is Sky Fell, November 13th, 1883" which is some sort of celestial event.

- Yeah, I think Mike will be doing that one a lot actually because people are interested in the eclipse and it's like oh, other things have happened that people have been really enthralled with here in Wood County in the night sky so.

- And we've talked with people about the eclipse and the cultural impacts of the eclipse because obviously hundreds and thousands of years ago when people saw eclipses, they thought something was really wrong.

So even probably in the 1880s, people looked at things and went, "What's going on up there?"

- [Annette] Right, right, are all my crops gonna die?

- [Steve] Exactly, yeah, yeah, and so, and even with the UFO thing, it's like well, what's that about?

And it's interesting though, but I was not aware of the November event in 1957.

So you go on your website, you learn something.

Even if you only spend a minute there, you learn something, it's really incredible.

In terms of supporting the museum and things like that, talk a little about how you are able to fund some of these things and obviously you have memberships, donations, things like that, but how can people participate, and help you help tell these stories, and keep bringing all these neat things for the people of Wood County and people who just wanna stop in and look?

- Yeah, so we do have memberships that people can get, all different levels and they're valid for a year.

They include free admission, admission to a lot of our events.

Some of our events are geared just towards the membership and so there's discounts or there's perks involved.

So it's a nice thing to get involved with.

Also if you've never just been out to our grounds before, we really try to make use of the whole site when we have events.

We tend to have porch concerts in the summer that are free, open to the community.

Put the band right up on the side of the porch which is where the residents used to sit back in the day, and we have a safety fair.

There's a lot of ways to just sort of check it out and see what we do out there, and then maybe get a membership or get more involved.

We'd love to have you.

We try to be a very community friendly place out there so.

- And if somebody's interested in, just without even setting foot out there, so you can go to your online, all your social media sites and it gives you a real nice look and a real great description of what's there, and as I say, very intriguing when you look at the titles and the exhibits and that sort of thing and realize just what a resource it is out there as well.

And a lot of times I think too, when something is that near to us, we don't think of it as being that special.

- Yeah, when it's in your backyard, you don't pay any attention to it.

- Because I remember for years, people would say, "You live near Cedar Point.

Oh, you must go every week."

Well, it's like to us, it's nearby but for them it was this unique place, and the museum's kind of like that.

You don't wanna take it for granted because it does have all these neat things.

And when you talk about World War I, World War II, all of our relatives from World War II.

I had a great uncle that was in World War I.

He's been gone obviously a lot of years, but I can remember him talking about that.

And so when you had that exhibit, you got a feel for what it must have been like for those guys that were over there and the women who were in the nursing corps and things like that, what it was like to be near the front line in World War I.

Not a place you wanted to be, but you got a feel for just how amazingly difficult that was and what they went through.

So you can sort of put yourself in their place in all of these different exhibits, these things like that.

That's what's neat about it, so yeah.

- Yeah, we try to pick a topic that's really sort of global and then well, how is it seen through the eyes of people that live in this area?

- Yeah, cool, very good, very good.

Well, Annette Wells, thank you so much for being here.

Appreciate it, and please go out and look at the Wood County Museum website.

You can see all of this information, find out how to support it and all the events because you've got events every weekend.

There's something going on out there through the summer as we get into the warmer weather.

So appreciate you being on.

Thank you so much.

- [Annette] Thank you, Steve.

- Yeah, and you can check us out at wbgu.org and of course, you can watch us every week on WBGU-PBS, Thursday nights at eight o'clock.

We'll see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.

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