St. Mary's Church

Newaygo County Museum

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Newaygo County Museum
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The Museum is currently Closed (2007) and the Society is working with Fremont Area Community Foundation, who will seek a countywide museum advisory committee.  At that time, the museum collection will come under the care of the committee.  The Society embraces this endeavor and as well as eagerly awaiting the outline for the building renovation.

The Newaygo County Museum, situated on the south bank of the Muskegon River, on West Water Street in downtown Newaygo, has a vast collection of historical artifacts and materials that tell the history of Newaygo County.

The museum itself occupies a very historic site from Newaygo’s past. The museum is housed in the old hydro-electric power house that was constructed in 1899-1900 to provide hydro-electric power for the Newaygo Portland Cement Company, and later used by Consumers Power. The museum moved into the empty power house in 1970. Before the power house was built there, the site was the location of the great sawmill known as the Big Red Mill, built in 1854 during the height of the lumbering era.

During the early years of the museum, people like Olive Boyd, Martha Evans, Germaine Carpenter, Lynn Pangborn, William Babbitt, and many others converted what was essentially a vast, empty barn-like building into the compartmentalized and organized configuration that visitors to the museum now enjoy. Don Terrill was named the first official curator of the museum during the late 1980’s. Barb Billerbeck took over as curator of the museum until April of 2005 when Sandy Vincent was appointed as head of the museum.

The museum contains materials assembled from Newaygo County. There are exhibits of Native American relics, artifacts from the early industries in the area, memorabilia from the Civil War and World Wars I and II, hundreds of old photographs, and other miscellaneous items from around Newaygo County. Much of the floor space is partitioned off into smaller sections, each containing materials relating to a certain topic such as, the fur-trade, lumbering, farming, and the canning industry. There are photographs and artifacts from such sites as the Big Red Mill, the Henry Rowe Manufacturing plant, the railroads, and Croton and Hardy Dams.

The museum houses collections of old tools and blacksmithing equipment, old sewing machines and production equipment from local newspapers of the past. There are dug-out canoes, old farming implements, and a large assortment of log ends still bearing the branded-on symbols of various logging companies. There is even an old horse-drawn sleigh upholstered in red, suspended from the ceiling.

One partitioned off section contains a fully outfitted, early school room complete with wooden benches and desks. Another room on the main floor contains furnishings from the Grant Township Post Office, circa 1869; a reconstruction of an early general store, Thompson’s Meat Market, with shelved goods of the period; and a recreation of the old Newaygo Drug Store dating from the 1880’s. A third room is filled with kitchen and dining room furnishings from the past, as well as a living-room area with turn-of-the-century furniture, old pianos, and an early phonograph that played wax cylinders.

The museums upper floor holds a period bed chamber with an old iron bedstead, a large assortment of old clothing and footwear, household items, a collection of old toys, and an old fashioned beauty salon.

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