Historic undertaking
The Butler County Historical Society is starting the new decade with a new executive director.
Jennifer Ford replaces Pat Collins, who retired Sept. 27 after a decade as head of the society.
Ford will join Sara Donaldson, 24, who was hired last fall to be the society's education and outreach coordinator, and has recently been named its collections manager.
Ford, who has a doctorate in history from the University of Pittsburgh, was chosen by the nine-member board of directors of the society.
A Pittsburgh native, Ford spent the last 10 years living in Bedford, the last five as executive director of the Fort Bedford Museum.
“Before that,” she said, “I was a historic consultant to museums and historic societies, helping them better organize and present their collections to the public.”
Ford thought she would be able to get a job in academia with her doctorate.
“But I was in the era of adjunct professors. You can't make a living as an adjunct professor,” she said.
Instead, she began working for Interpretive Solutions of Philadelphia, a business that works with museums, visitors' centers and historic areas to prepare exhibits and help visitors connect with what they are seeing.
Ford moved to Bedford in 2008, “thinking I was retired,” she said. “I was running an alpaca boutique when they found out what I did and dragged me down to the museum and that was that.”She said she wanted to come to Butler County to spend more time with her parents who live in Penn Township.The historical society board hired her Oct. 22, and she said, “It took a few weeks to pack up the dogs and the Keurig and get here to Penn Township.”For the last three months, Ford said, “I have really been getting my hands into the collection, the objects, the photographs.“Sara has been properly cataloging each and every object into a computer program, PastPerfect,” Ford said.Donaldson noted the historical society also has 35,000 to 40,000 old pictures in its collection.“Once it is done, it will enable us and everybody after us to easily access all that is here,” said Ford.Donaldson is originally from DuBois and graduated from Clarion University with a bachelor's degree in history and a master's degree in library and information science with a specialization in local and archival studies.“As collection manager, I will essentially be using my talents adding to the collection, making it more extensive,” said Donaldson.Once the cataloging project is complete, Donaldson said, people will be able to look up a letter or an object such as Sam mohawk's shackles, learn where it is in the collection and perhaps be able to see the actual object.
Ford said that together they will begin to formulate plans for the future.“This is a historic house museum,” said Ford. “It is an asset and part of the community.”The Senator Lowrie House, at 123 W. Diamond St., was built by the only United States senator to come from Butler, Walter Lowrie, in 1828.The senator sold the house in 1836 to local attorney, George Washington Smith, who sold the house and grounds to Charles Craven Sullivan in 1839.The house and its furnishings were bequeathed to the society in 1986 by Isabelle Shaw, a descendant of Sullivan.Major restoration projects returned furnishings to their appropriate rooms, recreated the original Wilton wall-to-wall carpet and returned the house to its late 19th century splendor.Ford said her first order of business will be to forge partnerships with the Butler Area Public Library, the county tourism bureau and the Jeep Festival, among other organizations.Ford said the society will mount the popular cemetery walk, Christmas open house and ghost tour events.Ford said, “I know you have a Christmas Parade. When it's over we need to be standing on the porch with carolers and hot cocoa inviting people in.”
She said she would be open to using the Lowrie House for teas, small family reunions and “micro-weddings.”“There is a history of people getting married in the front parlor,” she said.Ford said more distant plans call for opening a permanent Bantam Jeep exhibition in the garage section of the carriage house storage building behind Lowrie House.Ford said, “I would think that in the spring of 2021, we will have an opening of the Bantam Jeep exhibit. This will be a permanent exhibit.“It's amazing that we have an original Bantam. If we have it, why wouldn't we exhibit it?” said Ford.Sooner than that, Ford plans to have the society's Cemetery Walk, which brings history to life through costumed actors assuming the characters of Butler County's ancestors in the midst of the grounds of the North Side Cemetery, return on May 16.
Ford said the event will be confined to one day this year, perhaps with two different “performances” by actors from Butler County Community College.More immediate plans call for the society to open up Lowrie House to the public again in the spring.Presently the house's office is only open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays.The society is going to need a lot of help to make its plans.Ford said, “We are going to need volunteers. That's the thing we need the most. A lot of the work is labor-intensive. There are objects, letters, photographs that need to be cataloged and cleaned — under close supervision.”
