Have you heard about the Doddridge Museum?

Families donate heirlooms to the cause

Don’t go to the Doddridge Museum if you don’t wish to be impressed. It’s all about living today, not in the past.

“Families in Doddridge made this museum. They’ve donated everything here and would do so more if we had the room,” curator Patsy Bricker Maddox said.

Thus, everything is in the one slender corner edge of the Atchison general store building and is fresh from the families that once owned the articles, but now have given them willingly to the village.

The building dates to 1905, having burned once in 1916 and been replaced with brick.

In its middle room, patriarchs of the village came on cold days to sit around a stove surrounded by sand. There, the gentlemen spit their tobacco as well as split hairs over every topic that mattered.

In one section, Nola Tidwell Harrison has her post office cabinets, cases, boxes and windows. She distributed the community’s mail for 35 years and is still eager to tell about it.

Maddox has her mother’s 1920 wedding petticoat in another room, and she worries a bit about its becoming brown and tattered, but what can one do?

An old telephone on the wall and a sparkling phonograph from the Victor Talking Machine Co. seem ready to be picked up and used.

Any children who visit will find themselves freely able to touch the articles that once belonged to family or neighbors.

To visit the museum does take a little planning. It’s open upon request. Call 870-631-3043 or 870-691-2895 to make arrangements, and a volunteer will be there to greet you. That’s when the fun starts because the volunteers will have special items they love or are from their families and they are eager to talk about them.

Doddridge has a special

sort of history, which makes it interesting to the general visitor. It was a village between a major river, a railroad line and roadway traffic. In its past, eight or nine retail stores were in the busy downtown area, which was essentially next to the railway station.

Today it has the serene Spring Bank Ferry Park, which hosts the dry-docked ferry tugboat. It helps to recall the past and may be the only such ferry-boat-ina-park in the nation.

That ferry operated on the Red River connecting Miller and Lafayette counties along state Highway 160 and had a 100-year-old

history of private operation until 1957, when the state took it over.

Now, of course, a modern highway carries the traffic that in the past would have stopped in town.

Incidentally, when that super-fast highway road and bridge opened up in 1992 and the ferry took its place on the bank between the Red and Sulphur rivers, the town opened its museum at the same for a dual celebration.

As the years pass, the road and bridge may be wider and last longer, but the museum’s tribute to the town’s history will be deeper and more interesting.

This will be especially true as long as local families give the museum their love, affection and historical items.

To help support the museum, Doddridge will host its annual Chili Cook-Off and Talent show at 5 p.m. Saturday.

The event is enhanced because it is free to everyone. Come to have a good time and leave a donation. And everyone will donate. Who could say no to a museum celebrating local life and families?

leftPatsy Bricker Maddox has saved in the town’s museum her mother’s 1920 petticoat worn on her wedding day. In such a way, the museum is all about families, she said.

aboveNola Harrison is answering the telephone in the Doddridge Museum. She’s extra pleasant because she knows everyone in the community will be listening in on the phone’s “party line.”rightDoddridge Museum curator Patsy Maddox, left, is speaking with Pat and Amy Henderson of Dallas who would like to see the town’s museum. Community member Nola Harrison is at right.

aboveDoddridge Museum artifacts tell local stories. Here’s one about the sewing machine which sold for $5 and a mule named “Ole Bill” who couldn’t be kept penned up.rightWho wouldn’t be pleased to sit beside this phonograph in the Doddridge Museum from the Victor Talking Machine Co.? Nola Harrison will be happy to wind it up to see if it will play.

■ Does this look inviting? It should. It’s the inside of the Doddridge Museum, which is more of a family home than a history shop. All items have been donated by community members.

■ The Doddridge Museum would not be complete without some fond memories of the Spring Bank Ferry about a mile away in its day.