Union County Museum Opens March 7

The Union County Museum in downtown Cobden is scheduled to open for the 2009 season at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 7. Admission is free.

The museum's general store also is scheduled to be open.

The revolving exhibit at the museum features sheet music written by Southern Illinois residents about Southern Illinois.

Most of the pieces of sheet music have been loaned to the museum by a private collector.

Two artifacts, a tin coffee pot and a rare photograph, have been added to the permanent Anna Pottery/Kirkpatrick Brothers exhibit at the museum.

Both artifacts will be on display for the first time.

The photograph shows the long-lost Pioneer Farm made of painted stoneware by Wallace Kirkpatrick of the famed Anna Pottery.

The photograph is an albumen print which has been professionally enlarged and framed to enable viewers to identify the figures in the farm's layout.

The photograph, labeled "One of the First Farms in Ohio by W. Kirkpatrick of  Anna, ILL.," corresponds to a detailed description which appeared in the Dec. 8, 1883, issue of the Jonesboro Gazette newspaper.

The description made note of the people, animals, wagons, Indians, log structures, fences and landscapes which are included in the farm scene.

A reporter for the Farmer and Fruit Grower newspaper observed in 1878 that "Those ingenious gentlemen of the Anna Pottery, Messrs. C. & W. Kirkpatrick, are forever getting up something new."

Wallace and Cornwall Kirkpatrick received a U.S. patent in 1879 for a tin coffee pot with a removable sieve for filtering coffee grounds.

The coffee pot recently was donated to the Union County Museum.

Both the photograph and the coffee pot are part of the museum's permanent collection.

The Jane Clark Brown Resource Room at the museum is scheduled to open early this summer.

The museum will continue its policy of being open on Saturdays and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

The general store is scheduled to be open during special events.