Lowrie House packed with people — and cookies — at annual historical society event
Several days of baking led up to a two-hour period Saturday afternoon, Dec. 6.
And as people lined up outside the Senator Walter Lowrie House 30 minutes before the Cookie Walk was scheduled to begin, it was clear that the few thousand cookies piled atop trays in the Butler County Historical Society museum were completely necessary.
Mackenzie Herold, executive director of the Butler County Historical Society, said that after running out of cookies for the first two years of the agency’s Cookie Walk, its organizers learned just how much preparation was needed for it.
“There are people who bake 80-dozen for us,” Herold said Saturday, from behind a table containing stacks of to-go containers. “You just keep going until you run out of space in your fridge.”
Saturday was the fifth annual Cookie Walk hosted by the Historical Society. The walk was the project of the society’s former executive director, Jen Ford, who introduced the idea as a way to bring people to the museum during the holiday season. For $10, guests could fill up a bakery box with cookies of all kinds, and tour the festively-decorated Lowrie House, which acts as a living museum for the Historical Society.
Although the event has taken place the last five years, some people were discovering it for the first time, like Shirley McCauley, who brought her grandson to the Cookie Walk to see the Lowrie House and stock up on cookies.
Candee Barnes, treasurer for the Butler County Historical Society board of directors, said she baked around 50-dozen cookies in preparation for the Cookie Walk, and tied some of her family history to the effort.
“I made my grandmother’s recipe, shortbread nuggets,” Barnes said. “I’ve been working on it since the end of October — it was probably four or five days of baking.”
In addition to staff of the Historical Society, the Cookie Walk also got help from students of one of its members, Brad Pflugh, who teaches history at Knoch High School.
Kaylee Bachman, a senior at Knoch High School, was passing out cookies at the event for the second time, and said she enjoys Pflugh’s class and history in general.
“It’s cool to come and see all the artifacts in the house,” Kaylee said. “It’s easy to come and pass out cookies.”
The event took place from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Lowrie House, and the line of people didn’t slow down throughout its duration. Herold said that although the walk takes a ton of preparation from many people, it is always the society’s final event of the year and is a good way to showcase the Lowrie House.
“It gets people in the door and it helps get them into the holiday spirit,” Herold said. “We love spreading the joy of the season.”
