Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Middleville Museum, Part 1

I hadn't heard of the Middleville Museum until saw saw a link on Facebook. It's only open for a few hours in the afternoon Friday through Sunday, so at the beginning of birthday week we found an opportunity to visit.

Middleville, so named because it is located near the geographical middle of Lanark County is a pleasant 50 minute or so drive from Carleton Place in an area settled primarily by Scots who were unfortunate enough to be granted this miserable land. When I say miserable, I am thinking its relative isolation away from good waterways on rocky land that was not very conducive for pioneer farming. Of course, it's pretty enough to be attractive in this day and age.

The museum has dedicated itself to feature the early settlement history of the area. We found it to be delightful.

One of the first things we saw was a complete one-room log cabin has been reconstructed inside.





And here's a hearse with a manikin representing this actual attire of a diminutive lady who lived in the area.




And what would a Canadian pioneer museum be without including a sleigh for winter travel?



I loved this door to the old general store. A new store was built in the mid-forties, but now there is no store because Middleville is a very small place, making it difficult to support a store in an era when people are very mobile.



There was quite a lot more, and I will make at least one more post on this very interesting place.

7 comments:

Marie Smith said...

Great looking displays, AC. A great find!

Mara said...

I don't have plans of dying just yet, but that hearse was pretty special.

Silver in AZ said...

very cool! My hubby especially would love it, with his Masters in History. :)

Mage said...

Yes, a very interesting post about a very interesting museum. Did you get a closeup of the quilt?

MARY G said...

Good! There is a lot there and you take amazing photos. The store has only been gone for a decade or so and we really miss the gas pumps and Katy who ran both the pumps and the store.

Vicki Lane said...

Quite wonderful! I love these re-creations. We have several in our area which I've visited for research. They really help me to put my characters in authentic settings.

Jenn Jilks said...

We've never made it. We try travel mid-week, to escape the damn tourist!
Amazing how people can come from England and live like this...