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Prairie Village Museum holds open house for volunteers

By Sue Sitter - | Apr 8, 2023

Sue Sitter/PCT Prairie Village Museum Executive Director Shane Engeland, center, greets volunteers at the museum’s open house along with Dr. Hubert Seiler, left, and Board President Dave Bednarz, right.

Prairie Village Museum board members shared snacks and plans for a busy season with volunteers at an open house March 30 at the museum.

Executive Director Shane Engeland led some of the volunteers around the main building, pointing to semi-empty rooms he said would soon house collections of toys or items unique to Rugby’s history.

To reach the rooms, visitors will walk through an area set to be transformed into a hallway of natural studies that tells Pierce County’s story from the days of the dinosaurs.

“The room in the back on the west side is going to be the new doll house,” he said. “I already have the circus over there and we’re setting up some of the trains over there.”

New displays

The circus is a large collection of miniature figurines and tents he said dated to the mid-20th Century. Tiny metal animals and plaster of Paris clowns painted in bright colors take up a table that occupies most of the room’s space. All are arranged around small circus wagons and other items that appear to have been collected over several decades.

Dr. Hubert Seiler, a former museum board member, donated the collection after buying it from Ken Peterson, a former Orrin resident who had purchased it at a yard sale in Washington State.

“There were three trunks full of stuff,” Seiler said. “It’s a mix of things,” he said. “There’s some plastic in there, some plaster of Paris, and some of the horses are metal.

“There are more tents that don’t even have room to set up,” he said, adding he was in the process of doing some maintenance work on the set.

Engeland said the museum’s toy display has been known as The Doll House.

“Ever since I was a kid coming here, I think most kids would say their favorite exhibit was the Doll House. It was one building specifically dedicated to all the toy artifacts the museum has,” he said.

Engeland and volunteers moved the Doll House collection out of its original home next to the Prairie Village’s barbershop building due to mold issues.

He said after the collection gets a Plexiglas barrier to protect it, “we’ll bring in about five boxes of toys to be put on display here. And this circus is almost a whole exhibit by itself.”

“There will be two more (themed) rooms,” Engeland said. “Our Native American collection, I did some research, came from Jack Hosmer, who owned the Hosmer Department Store in Dunseith.”

“I heard this story about these items being traded at the store,” he added. “I thought at first it was like a trading post, but no, these items were traded for radios, appliances, department store stuff.”

“He had a very notable collection, and this is basically what’s left,” Engeland said. “And I want to tell the story of the department store, too, because he was just collecting these items on trade and wound up with, as I said, a substantial amount of Native American artifacts.”

“I want it to tell both stories, the story of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, through these artifacts that were collected and held in Jack Hosmer’s basement,” he said. “It’s just unique, when I think of a department store trading in Native American artifacts.”

Next to the room housing Native American artifacts is another with big plans.

“This is our Rugby-specific room,” Engeland said.

“We have in the front, Queen Victoria’s dress. That’s Rolla.”

“We have Clifford,” he said, referring to a mannequin depicting Clifford Thompson, once billed as the World’s Tallest Man. “That’s Silva,” he said.

“The department store, that’s Dunseith. I want to talk about Rugby,” he said.

“I’ve got a couple of items in here, but that’s it,” he said.

“I have a tobacco machine from the Rugby Cigar Company,” he added.

Engeland said signage at the museum for The Rugby Cigar Company sparked a project for area high school history students. “I’ve been meeting with different teachers at the school about that, and I’m asking them to have their students research this.”

“There’s so much history that is in this area, I’m hoping that we’ll find someone who will say, ‘I know so much about Rugby history, I’d love to help design this exhibit we’re going to do here,'” he said.

“I’m going to talk about the geographical center, a couple of other things I’ve come across in the newspaper,” he added. “And I want the cool, interesting stuff that I could put on the wall and put posters up.”

Other plans include furnishing the gas station building constructed last year.

Activities for students

Engeland said he hoped warmer weather came to the area before the school year ended, “because we’re able to offer school tours for free this year because of an endowment set up by Donald J. Rupp.”

Students and visitors will be able to take advantage of new technology at the museum with an augmented reality viewing software application that works with a smart phone’s camera.

“This is an in-browser augmented reality experience,” he said. “I added a button under the picture of (Queen Victoria’s dress) and I linked the bottom of this,” he said as he pointed to a sign on the dress exhibit. “You point your phone, give it the option to use your camera, allow it and then scan.”

The scan brings up video of Engeland speaking about the Queen Victoria dress display.

The museum’s season begins with a scheduled exhibit of work from North Dakota Folk Artist Emily Lunde in its main building May 1.

Engeland said the opening date for the entire facility would depend on the weather.

Engeland invited long time Rugby residents to contact him with information about the city’s history. The museum can be reached at 776-6414 or prairievillagemuseum@gmail.com.