5th Graders Visit Museum

Clayton Ridge 5th Graders at Garnavillo Museum

Thirty-three Clayton Ridge 5th grade students and their teachers, Mrs. Stannard and Mrs. Lawrence, visited the Garnavillo Historical Museum and Lodge Hall on Friday, October 25th.  It was a beautiful fall day for the walk from the school to the museum.  The students were split into two groups,and  took turns with one group “touring” both floors of the Garnavillo Lodge Hall while the other group enjoyed listening to the music box at the museum while they did a trivia scavenger hunt. Carol DeSotel led the “tour” at the Lodge Hall which included the first public library location (Union Library), furniture and information on Elias Williams, (a Clayton County Judge in the mid-1800s), Bernadine Fiete’s hats, an old pump organ (which students were able to try out), display of World War II uniforms and memorabilia, and a visit to the second floor lodge meeting room.  The second floor, arranged as a Lodge group meeting room, includes furnishings that belonged to the I.O.O.F. Lodge who built the building in 1860.  There are also displays with memorabilia of the various other groups who used the Hall for meetings such as the Ancient Order of United Workmen, Modern Woodmen of America and the Masons, which used the lodge hall for meetings up until 1976.   While at the Garnavillo museum, some of the things the students learned about were the mastodon bone found south of Garnavillo, the pre-historical Indians who lived in the Garnavillo area, a musical instrument used in the civil war,  President Lincoln’s assassination, who used “meels” or “indian clubs,” where you wear “puttees,”  who “Sleepy Eye” was,  and what the 1943 penny was made of.  David Beck and Jane Thein helped the students on their “hunt” at the museum.

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