Those who find small-town museums boring - or all the same - are missing a lot. Arguably, small museums keep local history alive in ways no one else can, by preserving the unique heritage that larger big-city institutions overlook. The sites I visited yesterday do a deep dive into the specific industries, families, and history that shaped their parts of Oxford County.
Ingersoll Cheese Museum
This cheesiest of all small town museums first opened in 1977 with a grant from the Canadian government, on a site donated by the Town of Ingersoll. It began as a recreation of a nineteenth-century Oxford County cheese factory, appropriate for this dairy capital of Ontario. In fact, it's just along the road from where cheesemaker James Harris' original factory was, the current site of Elm Hurst Inn. Harris and two other gents produced the 1866 Mammoth Cheese, as a display in the museum's gallery indicates:
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| Part of the historical signage featuring Oxford's Mammoth Cheese. |
Over time, the museum has acquired other buildings, including a local history gallery, blacksmith shop, barns, and a schoolhouse portraying two different time periods of one-room schools.
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| Some railway history in the main gallery. |
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| The Allen Dairy milk wagon. |
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| Blacksmith shop. |
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| The Museum Mouse, at large in the smithy. Every museum needs a Critter Curator. |
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| Children might be freaked out by the schoolteacher's desk, complete with straps. Ouch! |
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| The Reta L. Dickson classroom. How much could you learn, sitting on a bench, facing the wall, and writing on a slate, while the woodstove crackled behind you? |
Beachville District Museum
Beachville is one of Oxford County's earliest European settlements, but it probably has only about 1,000 residents, so it might still be surprising that it has such an imposing museum. But it does:
The ground floor of the historic main building dates to 1851, which was when owner Philander King had the home built out of local fieldstone. The second storey, made of limestone, was added by the Downing family in 1902. The Downings were big figures in the local limestone industry, John Downing being one of the founders of the local quarries. The family sold the home in 1969, but Beachvilime Ltd. retained the house for decades before selling it to the Beachville District Historical Society in 1992.* The cost?
$2.
The interior features a reproduction drawing room and a kitchen filled with antique equipment. Upstairs is a work in progress, but staff are completing a bedroom, antique children's toy collection, display on the lime industry, replica of a general store, and even an old-time bathroom.
What's unique, however, is the connection to baseball history. Beachville is the site of the earliest recorded baseball game in Canada:
In fact, we now know it was the earliest recorded baseball game in North America, predating Cooperstown by a year. Little did those pioneer players know they were literally making history. But it turns out that in 1886, Dr. Adam E. Ford, a Beachville doctor who moved to Denver, wrote a letter to Sporting Life magazine describing the match he witnessed as a child in Upper Canada. His letter is the first formally recorded account of a baseball game.*
Note that the game wasn't played on the museum site, but farther into the village. But the museum is making the most of the ballgame connection, including Assistant Curator Sidney Williams'
hands-on baseball-making workshops.
Some Other Thoughts on Small-Town Museums
The guides in such museums are often local residents or historians, eager to share the origins of their displays. Enthusiasm makes the driest history come to life.
The two museums above operate on a pay-what-you-can donation basis, which makes them accessible learning places for families and those without ample means.
There's an informal, non-intimidating aura about such museums. The world's largest, supposedly greatest, museums are daunting as heck. Not Ingersoll and Beachville. Go out and enjoy.
