BOALSBURG — Pausing to straighten a small, reddish antique rug that has gone askew, Christopher Lee shows the way through the parlor at the Boal Mansion.

The gesture speaks of pride in ownership, correctly so since Lee is a direct descendant of the Boal family that settled the area, including one member responsible for shipping the chapel from the Columbus estate in Spain — lock, stock and confessional — to this small town in central Pennsylvania.

“This place has the strongest connection to (explorer) Christopher Columbus in all the United States,” Lee noted.

With Columbus Day weekend Oct. 8 to 10 comes a celebration at the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion, featuring a cultural festival, grand ball and religious service, reservations a must.

Two and a half to three hours east of Butler County by car, a tour of the estate begins with the mansion.

The homestead

Next Saturday, the Virginia reel and other dancing will take place in the Boal Mansion’s long, narrow ballroom, and delicacies served on china that’s more than 100 years old will refresh guests in the dining room.

“Once a year we use the china,” Lee said.

The events the mansion hosts are “living culture,” he said. In addition to the ball and dinner at the mansion Saturday and an invitation-only Mass in the chapel Monday, the site plays host to a concert in the spring.Now a public-private venture, the site attracts nearly 30,000 people each year, Lee said.That’s a lot of visitors tramping on wooden floors and Oriental carpets.“The other thing would be to not let people see it, and that usually makes things decline through disuse,” Lee said.The ballroom itself is bright and sunny midday in early autumn. “Terry added the ballroom in the 1890s to indicate that Americans were no longer cowboys,” Lee said.He is speaking of Theodore Davis Boal, also known as Terry, the family member who imported the Columbus Chapel.A brief history of the Boals of Centre County goes like this:Capt. David Boal and his family came from Ireland to the New World in the 1700s. He served in the Continental Army and after the Revolutionary War received land in the Lancaster area as pay, which he traded for land in the more rugged middle of Pennsylvania. With his wife and son, David, he built a stone cabin in 1789.David the younger went back to Ireland in the 1790s to join the rebellion against the British. With a bounty on his head, friends smuggled him in a large blanket chest onto a ship setting out for America in 1798. Visitors can see the chest — at approximately 2 feet by 5 feet barely big enough to hold a man — housed at the mansion.This David added onto the house and built a tavern nearby, where the community grew and took the name Boalsburg in 1823.Despite numerous additions, the footprint of the original cabin can still be seen near the middle of the structure, pointed out estate docent Charles Keener, once a resident of Butler County.The second David’s son George, among other things, was president of the county agricultural society that petitioned the legislature for the state’s first farmers’ high school, which became Penn State University.

George was the father of three sons: David, John and George Jack.It was George Jack and his wife Malvina who had the son named Theodore Davis Boal, who brought over the chapel.Terry also outfitted his own military unit in Boalsburg and after training at his Camp Boal, now the site of the Pennsylvania Military Museum and 28th Division Shrine across the street from the estate, the troop chased Pancho Villa at the Mexican border and then served in World War I.Terry lived at the Boalsburg estate in 1920s and ’30s, losing most of his holdings in the Depression. After he died in 1938, the mansion closed.Then in 1952, his son Pierre, after having served in the American and French armies and as U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua and Bolivia, opened the mansion and chapel to the public. Pierre spent 14 years restoring the property until his death in 1966.The chapelThe chapel from the Columbus family castle ended up here because of Terry Boal, who studied architecture in France in the 1890s. He married Mathilde de Lagarde in 1894. Their son Pierre was born in 1895.In 1898, the trio resettled to the Boal family property in Pennsylvania. Terry proceeded to transform the farm into an estate, adding to the house a ballroom and quarters for servants and farmers.Mathilde Boal, being of French-Spanish descent, was the niece of Victoria Columbus, owner of the Columbus Castle in northern Spain.Aunt Victoria died in 1908, leaving the interior of the 16th century castle’s chapel to Mathilde, including fine art, religious relics and an admiral’s desk said by the family to have belonged to the explorer himself.

Soon after in 1909, Terry brought everything to the United States and built a separate structure of Pennsylvania limestone for it on the estate in Boalsburg.In a little wooded area apart from the house, the chapel opens through an original door, a deeply browned oak, protected by an outer metal door. Visitors pass under a marble cross inset above the door, another original piece, said estate docent John Kriner.Inside, paintings from the Renaissance period, silver religious implements, and upholstered chairs and kneeling pads instead of pews line the walls of the small building.“There’s a prayer bench from the 17th century that Mathilde used when she came to the chapel to pray,” Kriner said, also pointing out a black lace Spanish mantilla, reminiscent of the days not so long ago when Catholic women were to have their heads covered while in church.Also with the chapel came two tiny glass-ensconced pieces of wood, said to be from the cross of Jesus Christ, given to the Columbus family by the Bishop of Leon in 1817.The confessionals, once functional, now store the approximately 165,000 documents dating from 1453, Kriner said. For safe keeping, they’ve already been stored on microfiche as well, he noted.Not original to the one-room chapel is a map chest. It’s perfect for its use, though: storing the vestments, or priest’s garments, of red, blue, green and lots of golden colors.“We get a lot of kids in here and one boy saw the skull on some (of the vestments) and said, ‘Cool! Pirates!’ but that’s not what it’s for. It was for funerals,” Kriner said.

Students and grownups alike also get a lesson about life at sea.“Sailors were very religious,” perhaps because of their dangerous occupation, Kriner said.Consequently, the chapel holds a portable tabernacle, which would have been mounted on a platform with spikes in the four pedestal feet when at sea.The other Columbus connection is seen in the admiral’s desk, which he would have used while on board. It has handles on its sides so it could be moved from ship to ship and places inside to hold the ship’s logs.The arched window area was where the chapel had been connected to the master bedroom at Columbus Castle.“We get people here from all over,” Kriner said. “A lot from foreign countries, a lot from Spain, to see … something very unique.”The exhibitsLike the Boal family in Centre County, the collections housed in the mansion, chapel and three exhibit rooms tell of history across hundreds of years.“The things exhibited and the things in the house are mostly all original — things that were there all along. The family bought them and used them,” Keener said.

The exhibits visitors can tour contain antique dolls and puppets, one of Mathilde’s day dresses accompanied by slim silk shoes, glass canes from the glassworks in nearby Bellefonte, and an architect’s cane — probably Terry’s, explained Keener.Early American items include a spinning wheel, flax comb and “weasel” for winding yarn that went “pop” when a certain amount had been wound, Keener said.There are butter churns and a butter press, saddles, carriages, and round metal bathtubs that flare out from a center bowl — one with a small ledge or seat on the edge.An extensive weaponry collection spans the 1100s to 1600s or 1700s.Interesting to the college students who come by, said Keener, is a 1817 ledger from the store in Springfield, what the town was first called. As noted in the book, a half dozen cigars could be had for 3½ cents.“The town was renamed because there were too many Springfields in the United States, so the town was looking for a unique name. They named it after the local prominent family,” Keener said.The newest item exhibited is a 1/12th-scale replica of the ship Santa Maria, made for the 500th anniversary of Columbus landing in the Western hemisphere.“For me, it’s about getting people to look at their own life and say, ‘Hey, we don’t know anything about that in our family,’” noted Keener. “It’s a collection that inspires people to think about their own heritage”He added, for a one-day tour, “Come and expect to be surprised.”

WHAT: Columbus Chapel and Boal MansionWHERE: Boalsburg, Pa., about 160 miles east of ButlerWHEN: Fall hours in effect through Oct. 31 are 1:30 to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Spring hours, which are the same as fall hours, start May 1. In the summer and through Labor Day, the museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. The museum is closed Mondays, even Columbus Day, but group tours are available at any time, in any season, by appointment. Times are subject to change without prior notice. Call to confirm.ADMISSION: $10 for adults, $6 for children younger than 12, and free for children younger than 7 with an adult. Groups of 10 or more pay $8 per person.INFORMATION: 814-466-6210