Rare ship replica and more on display at Mansfield Memorial Museum

MANSFIELD - Curator Scott Schaut beams with pride when he talks about the newest exhibit at the Mansfield Memorial Museum.

A 4.5-foot-long replica of the USS Monongahela is on permanent loan to the museum by retired Judge Bob Konstam, a distant relative of the late U.S. Navy Commander Edward Parker Wood of Mansfield, who served on the ship.

It's now on display in the museum at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building, 34 Park Avenue West.

Wood, who entered the Navy in 1863, built the replica, Schaut said.

Wood made the replica of the ship, which served in the Union Navy during the Civil War, while teaching at Annapolis sometime between 1886 and 1890, Schaut said.

"We had it here once before, 14 years ago," he said. "The ship itself is fully rigged, exactly as the original ship would have been rigged. You see a lot of time with models it's all the same strings, the thickness. It's an exact replica of what the battleship would have looked like. We're very proud and honored to be the repository of this."

Schaut built an oak cabinet to protect the ship, which is displayed on the museum's second floor, which features an arched ceiling and displays of early military airplane and tank collections.

The floor also includes Native American history, early stoves, early military including the Civil War and pre-Civil War and more. 

Schaut said he tries to remain true to the original curator's theme. "The museum was eclectic, so there is literally something here for everybody," he said.

One of Ohio's oldest museums, the museum opened for the season earlier this month.

Schaut said he is always looking to preserve the Mansfield heritage.

An avid collector of history, Schaut has been operating the museum for 22 years.

"It is literally my entire life," he said.

The museum opened to the public in 1892 on the third floor of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building, which at the time also included GAR meeting rooms, a theater and the Mansfield-Richland County library. It now occupies the first and second floors, featuring an eclectic mix of Mansfield history — military, natural history, art, industry and other items donated over the decades from and about prominent persons of the past.

The building's beautiful woodwork and steep, second-floor staircase are inviting to guests of all ages. The museum is handicapped accessible with a ramp and a chair lift to the second floor.

Schaut grew up in Milwaukee, but moved to Mansfield 22 years ago from Washington after finding the perfect home.

He spent summers with his grandmother and said she used to tell him, "You were born old" because he was interested in old stuff.

He said he found the museum by accident when he was doing research on his house. He is the second curator.; the first curator was Edward Wilkinson. 

"When he died, the Smithsonian sent a letter to Mrs. Wilkinson that they were sorry he had passed in 1918, that they had lost a pre-imminent naturalist of the Midwest," Schaut said.

Schaut said he turned the page of an 1896 atlas, trying to learn about the history of the city, and he saw a photograph of Wilkinson, identified as curator of the Mansfield Memorial Museum. After his death, the museum was open sporadically. The fire marshal closed it in 1955 because there was only one staircase leading to the third floor.

"I must have talked to 50 people and they said, 'Oh don't bother. The second floor has collapsed onto the first. Everything is condemned. It's been stolen because no one had been inside for so long," he said. "Albert Allen Jr. tried in the '90s to get people interested in it, but it never came to anything. I finally found someone here who was interested and Gib Frontz took me upstairs and we walked all the way up to the third floor and we opened the iron gates," Schaut said. "It was like a movie and they creaked. When I got to the top of the stairs my heart stopped and I thought, 'Oh my God, this is really a Victorian museum.'"

Schaut said he finally told the board he wanted the honor of re-opening the museum. The building is virtually is in its original condition as when it first opened in 1899.

The museum re-opened to the public on Memorial Day 1999.

"This is my life. I have sacrificed everything for this place, literally. But it's important. If we don't preserve and save our past history who is going to?" he said. "So much has been lost already."

 "We're the third-largest repository of original Richland County documents going back to 1814," he said. "We're the only institution that is preserving film and recordings and transferring them to DVDs and CDs." The museum also has a collection of about 80 oral histories he has done with local residents.

There's only two rules for young museum-goers: no running and no pounding on any of the glass display cases.

"Unfortunately we're not a touchy-feeling museum, but kids do get to touch the elephant's foot upstairs, which was from Dick Stander," he said. 

"We have large archives that we preserve. It's a treasure in the community that should be utilized and unfortunately we're the forgotten child," Schaut said.

Visitors this month can see a Mansfield African-American exhibit, which had never been on display until last year and the World War I exhibit, among many things. The museum also has a zoomorphic collection, which means taking animals and putting them in human forms. Items in the collection were made from 1871 to 1876 by Wilkinson, the original curator. 

The original Elektro, the Westinghouse robot, is as always on display with a copy of Elektro as he looked at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

The museum and building has a seven-member board. Schaut is proud to say it stays afloat by donations.

"It is by the generosity of donors that this building still survives," he said. The Memorial building is a 501(3)C. 

Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and noon to 4 p.m. Sundays until November. Admission is by donation. Adult groups of 10 or more, including school students, are welcome to tour the museum weekdays by reservation by calling 419-525-2491.

More can be learned about the museum at themansfieldmuseum.com

lwhitmir@nncogannett.com

419-521-7223

Twitter: @LWhitmir