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The Williamson Museum

Williamson Museum


Last Updated: 6/3/2009

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Gender: Female
Status: Single
Age: 101
Sign: Sagittarius

City: GEORGETOWN
State: Texas
Country: US
Signup Date: 12/15/2007

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Friday, October 16, 2009 
Join us on Saturday, October 24, from 10 am to 3 pm for Archeology Day at Berry Springs Park & Preserve.





3:30 PM 
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Thursday, October 01, 2009 
Here are our Museum events for October.  We hope to see you at one or all!  For more information on times, etc., visit our website at www.williamsonmuseum.org

October 2-- First Friday
October 3-- Recuerdos
October 10-- Hands-on History
October 14-- The Salon @ Wildfire
October 20-- Books for Texans Book Club
October 23-- Archeology Field Trip Day @ Berry Springs Park & Preserve
October 24-- Archeology Day @ Berry Springs Park & Preserve
October 30-- Walking Ghost Tour
3:33 PM 
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Wednesday, September 09, 2009 
It's been extremely busy at the Museum this month. We had two events last week-- a special You Can't Do That, Dan Moody! performance in partnership with the Palace Theatre and First Friday. This week we have The Salon tonight at Wildfire. This month's speaker is Rodney Gibbs, co-founder of Fizz Factor and a game developer. 

We've been spending the last few months planning for our biggest event: Up the Chisholm Trail. (www.upthechisholmtrail.org)

The event starts on Friday night with a kids' chuckwagon cook-off starting at 5:30 pm and live music from AC Bible at 6:30 pm. Awards for the best kids' cooked dessert will be at 8:30 pm. Friday night also honors our men and women in uniform. So, if you wear your uniform, you'll get your dessert for free! Otherwise, tickets are $3.00 each.

Saturday morning begins with a cowboy breakfast (biscuits, sausage gravy, and coffee)served at 8:00 am. Tickets for breakfast are $3.00 each. We'll have live music, western art vendors, children's activities, demonstrators, and living history groups all day, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. The Chuckwagon teams will serve lunch at 1:15 pm, with tickets going on sale at 8:00 am. (Tickets are $10.00 each and includes a plate lunch with meat, biscuit, beans, potatoes and dessert.) The awards ceremony is at 3:00 pm.

The longhorn cattle drive begins along the San Gabriel River around 5:00 pm. Then across the road in the WCSP Rodeo Arena, the Ranch Rodeo begins at 6:00 pm. (Tickets are $10.00 for adults and $5.00 for children, and can be purchased the day of the event.)

So, in the two days leading up to Up the Chisholm Trail we're plenty busy. The competition food is being delivered today, and the meat is delivered tomorrow. We've got to get the rest of the signage printed and mounted. The chuckwagons start rolling in tomorrow, and we're beginning initial set up in the park-- tents, wood, tables, etc. Friday morning, most of the wagons will arrive early to be set up by noon-ish in preparation for wagon judging, which begins at 1:00 pm.

If you're free this weekend, stop by and see us!
2:28 PM 
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Saturday, August 29, 2009 
SPECIAL RULES 1. Eligibility—contestants must be between the ages of 10 and 15 years to compete in the cook-off. 2. Entry—each contestant must complete a cook-off entry application. Entry is limited to 30 kids. 3. Teams—contestants will be paired in teams of two (2). Each team will be required to work with their assigned chuckwagon crew to cook a dessert dish to feed 50 people using peaches. It is up to the discretion of the wagon and the kids’ team on what the dish will be and how it will be prepared. 4. Supervision—the Chuckwagon Cook-off Committee will be responsible for assisting kids to their assigned wagons. Only cook-off contestants are allowed within the designated wagon cooking area. 5. Dress code—all participants must wear close-toed shoes. NO EXCEPTIONS. Kids’ Chuckwagon Cook-off Competition SCHEDULE Friday, September 11 Check in and Wagon Assignment 5:00 pm Kids’ Cook-off Competition 5:30 – 7:30 pm Dessert Entries Submitted for Judging 7:30 pm Kids’ Cook-off Awards Ceremony 8:30 pm Prizes First Place Team $50 Second Place Team $30 Third Place Team $20 To enter the Kids’ Cook-off Competition Spots are limited. To sign up to be a participant in the Kids’ Cook-off Competition on Friday, September 11, fill out the Kids’ Chuckwagon Cook-off Entry form and drop it off or mail it to The Williamson Museum (716 S. Austin Ave., Georgetown Texas 78626) or fax it to 512-943-1672 by Saturday, September 5, 2009. Entry form and Release can be found at: http://www.upthechisholmtrail.org/kidsevents.htm.
7:48 PM 
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Wednesday, August 19, 2009 
Last night, Books for Texans met at the Georgetown Public Library. Our normal group showed up to discuss August's book selection: City on Fire: The Forgotten Disaster That Devastated a Town and Ignited a Landmark Legal Battle by Bill Minutaglio. The synopsis of the book given by the Library Journal: On April 16, 1947, two huge explosions rocked the port city of Texas City, TX, killing 600 people, injuring thousands more, leveling houses and buildings, and soaking the landscape with toxic chemicals. Cold War sabotage was initially suspected, but the true culprit was a shipment of ammonium nitrate, a chemical that can be a fertilizer or a deadly explosive. The chemical was being manufactured and shipped by the government with no warning label or instructions for safe handling. Angry at this negligence, attorney Russel Markwell brought the first-ever civil class action suit against the U.S. government under the Federal Tort Claims Act and won. Though the victory was overturned on appeal as a dangerous precedent, the government's responsibility wasn't in doubt. Over two thirds of the book is a poignant present-tense account of the hours before, during, and after the explosion, bringing to life the horror, pain, and bravery of the people of Texas City. The account of the lawsuit is secondary, as it should be. This terrible story deserves this passionate retelling. Here's the REALLY EXCITING part: a survivor of the Texas City explosion was visiting his daughter in Round Rock and read that our book club was discussing the book. So, Floyd Walker joined us for the evening and talked about his recollections of the explosion. He was 5 years old. His mother, sister, and brother were at home, which was located about 2.5 miles from the port. His older brothers were at the high school, which if you've read the book means they were in the thick of it. And, his dad, who was reporting for jury duty in Galveston wasn't at his job and survived. If he didn't have jury duty, chances are he'd been killed in the explosion, too. Floyd's stories about that day, his memories of growing up in Texas City (he still lives there), and his years working at the refineries made the book come to life. Thanks, Floyd!
8:30 PM 
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Saturday, August 01, 2009 
I just did a little bit of math out of curiosity. First, I figured out how many artifacts we've entered into the collections database in the past 2.5 years I've been at the Museum. If you're wondering, it's 2589. Doing a bit of research a while back, I read somewhere that it takes on average about 3 hours per artifact to completely document it-- catalogue, number, photograph, put in storage, and enter information into the database. 2589 artifacts at 3 hours each equals 7767 hours of work. Now, here's the interesting thing. 7767 hours of work equals 194.175 weeks of work. I've been at the Museum for 2.5 years. That's 116 weeks. I've had two 6-month collections interns. That's an additional 48 weeks, for a total of 164, 40-hour weeks. We're still 30.175 hours short. Of course, I do not spend all my time working on documenting artifacts. I conduct research, work with the volunteers, help with special events, design posters and postcards, and write and design exhibits, just to name a few things. And, the interns-- they didn't spend all of their 24 weeks with us working just on collections. It's the volunteers! Those wonderful collections volunteers who come in every other Tuesday and catalogue each and every artifact. The math proves it: we couldn't do it without them!
10:10 PM 
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009 
If you didn't attend the book club meeting last night, you missed a lively discussion. We had read The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier by Scott Zesch. We talked about everything from views of Native Americans, immigrants to Texas (especially Germans), and the death of the buffalo, among many other topics. If you haven't read the book, I'd recommend it. It read like a novel.

Next month, we're meeting on Tuesday, August 18, and we're readingCity on Fire: The Explosion that Devastated a Texas Town and Ignited a Historic Legal Battle by Bill Minutaglio. I've been interested in the topic since my first trip to Texas City a few years back.
3:54 PM 
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009 
The Chuckwagon Committee has been meeting monthly since February to plan for this year's Up the Chisholm Trail chuckwagon cook-off. We sent out information to a BUNCH of wagons in March. Slowly, entries started coming in. And NOW we have 13 wagons confirmed. That's more than we had total at the event last year! While we're sure that we'll get more (we're aiming for 15 total), here's who is coming: Bertie Bell from San Angelo Wish Bone from Axtell Crew 1298 C&C from Corsicana Rodgers Ranch Chuck Wagon from Bertram Wagon Wheel C from Prairie Hill Texas Stampede Chuckwagon from Watauga R-D Chuckwagon from Canton Break Away Wagon from Stamford Rocking K Chuckwagon from Slaton Dove Creek from Copperas Cove M bar S from Burton The Buckaroo Band from Houston Bear Creek Ranch from Kerrville Mark your calendars-- September 11 and 12. I promise you won't be sorry!
10:10 PM 
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Friday, July 03, 2009 
Just a quick reminder that we'll be closed on Saturday, July 4.

This morning I was reading about the first celebration of Independence Day.  This is from Live Science:

The following year [after we declared independence], no member of Congress thought about commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence until July 3 - one day too late. So the first organized elaborate celebration of independence occurred the following day: July 4, 1777, in Philadelphia. 
3:10 PM 
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Friday, June 26, 2009 
We've been working on writing captions for the photographs for the pictorial county history book that's due next month. Doing a bit of research on agriculture, here are a few facts I discovered. In 1920, there were only 225 tractors in the United States. Rubber tires for tractors were introduced in 1932. The John Deere company started out when Deere developed the steel walking plow. It wasn't until they bought a company called Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company in 1918 that they started producing tractors. In 1930s and 1940s, Williamson County was one of the top three corn producing counties in Texas.
7:08 PM 
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