By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
The St. John Homecoming Hall and Museum is making strides to show all the history of Stafford County. Last month, the Lucille M. Hall Museum was awarded $10,000 by Humanities Kansas for a portrait project highlighting some of the county's lesser-known historical faces.
"We're just trying to tell more stories of diversity, while also telling the stories people are more familiar with," said Beccy Tanner, project director. "This year, we're focusing on Native Americans whose tribe would have been prominent in this area prior to the settlement of the first settlers."
This is the second phase of a multi-year project. Two years ago, the museum invited descendants of African American Exodusters who arrived in the area in the late 1870s. Photographer Bo Rader, using 19th-century wet plate glass negative technology, took portraits of the visitors and donated his work to the museum. The photos are now part of the "Hall of Portraits: Documenting Our Diverse Legacy" exhibit at the museum.
"Hopefully, by the time it's all said and done, we'll have more than 100 portraits," Tanner said. "There's a wonderful song in the musical 'Hamilton' that 'History has its eyes on you.' I think this will be a chance for people to see that history does indeed have its eyes on you as you come into this portrait room, and you see all these people, and you see their portraits looking directly at you as a visitor."
Museum volunteers will also do recorded interviews with each of the subjects in the portraits. Those interviews will be available on the museum's YouTube channel. A 30-minute documentary will dive deeper into the impacts various cultures have made in the area. Another documentary in production features St. John's national champion marching band from the 1930s.
Michael Hathaway volunteers as director at the museum, and his nephew, Seth Hathaway is filming the interviews. The group tries to keep fresh exhibits in rotation, including a current "Death on the Prairie" exhibit that features artifacts from five generations of the Minnis family who have worked in the funeral home business. The "world-famous triple-T" exhibit features historic toilets.
The museum, located at 304 N. Main in St. John, will have a Jubilee on Memorial Day weekend, and a Homecoming Festival in October.