This flour bin came from the Dave and Nina Cowan homeplace southeast of Greenland (Washington County). The ad is a page from the 1927 Sears catalog, showing a family proudly admiring their new kitchen cabinet complete with a flour bin much like the one owned by the Cowans. The ad describes an “easy-filling flour bin. Capacity, 50 pounds. Patented style lowering rods bring bin down to convenient level for filling. Has handy patent sifter.”
Guy Howard (seen here playing chess) made these chess pieces sometime in the mid-1900s in the workshop he had behind his home on Price Street in Springdale. The knight (horse-head) pieces were carved by Howard’s friend, Ralph C. Miller. The crowns on the king and queens are made of old bottle caps that have been filled with glue, set with beads or rhinestones, and painted.
William Guy Howard (1876-1965) moved to Northwest Arkansas from Nebraska as a young boy. He had a lifetime of public service in Springdale as city attorney during World War I, mayor during World War II, and municipal judge in the 1950s. To many local folks, Howard was known simply as “the Judge.” He was also a collector of prehistoric and Native American artifacts, which he displayed floor-to-ceiling in his home. In 1966 the Springdale City Council voted to purchase Howard’s massive collection of some 10,000 prehistoric and historic artifacts and 260 books and pamphlets on anthropology and archeology. This was the founding collection of the Shiloh Museum.
This circa 1900 needlework was sold as a ready-to-make kit. Sears and Roebuck listed similar items in their 1902 catalog as “sofa cushion covers.” The design to be embroidered was stamped on the front fabric; a back fabric was also part of the kit.
Donated by Virginia Garvey
This was used to apply dry pesticide to agricultural crops. Chemical powder was loaded into the duster, which was worn via a shoulder strap. The farmer walked up and down the rows while turning the crank, shooting pesticide out the barrel and onto the plants.
A similar duster can be seen on the Prince Edward Island Community Museum website.
Donated by Bruce Vaughan
This circa 1925 sculptoscope is a stereoscope viewer which creates a 3-D effect by using a card with two side-by-side images that become one 3-D image when viewed through the glasses of the viewer.
Richard R. Whiting and his brother Herbert sold stereoscope cards door to door from the 1880s to the early 1900s. In 1913, they formed the American Novelty Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, and sold viewers designed and patented by Richard. Both brothers passed away in the early 1940s.
For more information on the work of the Whiting brothers, visit Paul Rubenstein’s Yellowstone Stereoview website.
In the 1800s, before store-bought fabric became the norm, many a pioneer home had a loom where the woman of the house made the family fabrics. Shuttles like this handmade one carried yarns across warp threads, creating fabric.
Backwards “S” on the shuttle.
The shuttle most likely belonged to Temperance Caroline Searcy. (A backward “S” is punch-marked on the top of it.) Temperance, her husband Alfred H. Searcy, and their children came from Georgia to Arkansas in 1859, settling in the Friendship community east of Springdale where they farmed and raised hogs and sheep.
Temperance Searcy’s grandson, Lockwood, inherited his grandmother’s textile tools and other family heirlooms in the 1940s. Lockwood’s wife, Annabel Applegate Searcy, donated many of these pioneer era artifacts to the Shiloh Museum in 1968, the year the museum opened to the public.
Temperance Searcy’s grandson, Lockwood, inherited his grandmother’s textile tools and other family heirlooms in the 1940s. Lockwood’s wife, Annabel Applegate Searcy, donated many of these pioneer era artifacts to the Shiloh Museum in 1968, the year the museum opened to the public.