In this week’s update: windmill restoration completed, Match Week results, historical presentation postponed, and more!
In our weekly update, keep up to date on what staff and volunteers at the Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage Museum are working on to lift up the history of Lindsborg and the surrounding region. This weekly update both looks back at what happened last week and looks ahead at what’s coming.
For March 3-9, 2025:
- We’re very excited that the museum’s 1908 Dempster No. 9 windmill has now been fully restored and reinstalled last week, and it looks great! Particular thanks goes to our Museum Handy Crew (restoration), Perfect Blend Construction (bringing down the vanes and reinstallation), and Homestead National Park in Beatrice, Neb. (with historical research help and documentation).
Pictured, in order, is: reinstallation on March 3 last week; members of the Museum Handy Crew working on installing the restored rotor; and the windmill early in the restoration process last year as a “before” image.
- We had a great Match Week through the McPherson County Community Foundation last week. In terms of raw donations, we are expecting the final amount that came in to our endowment to be $2,805 (we were informed of a $1,000 donation has yet to arrive, but we believe it was postmarked in time.) We will receive an additional match amount depending on what percentage that represents of all donations made to all of the participating organizations under Match Week.
Thank you so much to everyone who donated to this important opportunity and made Match Week a great success for the museum!
- SAVE THE DATE! The next online Swedish Genealogy Workshop will be on Saturday, June 7! Details and registration will be coming soon!
- The Amalia Rabenius presentation as part of the Historical Speaker Series has been postponed. Stay tuned for the rescheduled date and time of the online presentation.
- We’re looking at great attendance at Millfest for Kids this year, with about 700 adults and kids confirmed to be coming this year! We usually have about 600, so we’re excited to have so many coming to learn through this great living history event!
- We have an opportunity to help the museum while picking up a great computer tablet for yourself! THREE of these have already been sold; get one of the TWO remaining before they sell out!
We recently used grant funds to purchase five Lenovo P11 (2nd gen) tablets to implement our first augmented reality tour of the 1898 Smoky Valley Roller Mills, only to discover that Lenovo sells slightly different builds of the tablet under the exact same model name. Unfortunately, that slight difference – most likely in the GPS location services – means it won’t work with the Wintor augmented reality app we’re using for the tour, and Amazon is not accepting a return of the tablets.
This means a great opportunity for you! You can purchase one of these never-used tablets (specifications here) with charging cord and AC adapter, plus a heavy duty protective case (with hand strap, shoulder strap, and kickstand) for $265, which just represents the cost we paid for each tablet and case. This will help us to recover the grant funds and purchase different tablets that will work with the tour app.
Contact us at oldmillmuseum@gmail.com to make arrangements for your purchase!
- We have available now sponsorship opportunities for Millfest 2025 on May 3! Details for doing YOUR part and details on how to sponsor are on the flyer below! Just get in touch at oldmillmuseum@gmail.com for more information. ADDITIONAL MILLFEST NEWS: We will be partnering with the International Harvester Collection Club for the first-ever Millfest Tractor Show!
- Tyler and Lenora continued working on Svensk Hyllningsfest project, continuing to upload scanned images to Flickr. Most of the photos we have through 1952 have now been uploaded and they have also worked on the museum’s slide collection, which is about 800 images. We interviewed with the Lindsborg News-Record last Friday for a story about the project.
- The entirety of the museum’s multimedia collection has now been digitized and will be publicly available in stages as part of the Flashback Friday series.
- Adam continued on writing and designing the 2024 annual report. It’s about 80% complete and should be ready for release later this week.
- Adam worked on updating donation information in our tracking program.
- Aubrey is working with our insurance company on an insurance policy review.
- Aubrey had coffee meeting with several members of the community.
- Aubrey worked on new board member packets.
- Aubrey dropped off some cloth at the Ivory Thimble that we no longer needed for decoration purposes.
- Lenora met with a researcher last Friday and also started to work on a research request received by mail.
- Lenora worked on training Aubrey on daily bank deposits and financial record-keeping as part of the Executive Director transition.
- Lenora has continued working on an indexing project under contract with ArkivDigital (10 hours)
- If you haven’t yet “Liked” us on Facebook, can you take a moment to do so? We’d like to break 3,000 followers before springtime! (Currently our followers are at 2,696.) This kind of small action really does make a difference for our public visibility!
- Need a great gift for the genealogist or history enthusiast in your life? NEW in the museum gift shop, you can now purchase a gift certificate good for a free registration to one of the museum’s Online Swedish Genealogy Workshops anytime in 2025 ($50) or a 2025 Pursuing YOUR Past presentation ($10). Your gift recipient will receive a one-time-use code by email or mail good to pay for the registration fee for one of these popular sessions!
Thank you to our museum volunteers!
Last week, this included Leland Nelson, Karmon Almquist, Jerry Hammerton, Mike Koch, Betty Amos, and Julie Ann Neywick.