Programs: We held five public programs this year on topics that included Projects in the History of the Midwest, Women in the Renaissance, County Government, Historic Ripon, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition: Myths and Misconceptions. Programs were well attended with between twenty and thirty at each one. In addition we held an open houses in August and one in December as part of the city’s annual "Dickens of a Christmas" festival.

Support Activities: In keeping with our policies of offering the use of our facilities to organizations, two groups met at Pickard House, The Wisconsin Council of Local History and a Ripon High School class reunion.

Educational Activities: During the past several years, we have been giving greater focus to educational activities with increased success. We have supported class and individual educational programs at the primary, secondary, and college level.

College Level:

1. We have continued our cooperation with Dr. Russell Blake of Ripon College in supporting his course "Ripon Local History: College and Community" Students used archival sources at our Society to complete research papers. They were given considerable aid in this by our Archivist, Dr. George Miller.

2. We have also continued our cooperation with Dr. Blake in a summer Ripon College "ProCollege" program. In this program, two students, spent eight weeks working with Dr. Miller on archives related projects and with our Museum Collections Curator, Mary Brandt working on projects and carrying out their own research projects.

Secondary Level: Dr. Miller worked with a high school student on an Eagle Scout project related to placing plaques on historic buildings in Ripon.

Primary Level:

1. We have continued and expanded our cooperation with Ripon Elementary teachers in making use of computer materials and course materials developed two years ago by Bobbie Scott for teaching a units related to foods and transportation in Ripon history.

2. Our Coordinator of K-12 Educational Programming, Jean Woolley, organized a visit in late November by all seven sections of second graders from Ripon Schools, a total of over 150 students. Students visited for an hour each in seven different shifts over a two-day period. The visits included a supervised tour of three areas of Pickard House and a follow up activity begun at the Society and to be concluded at the School. A similar visit by a dozen Tiger Scouts was held in February.

1. A "Pillars of Ripon" exhibit complemented the March talk by local writer Tom Montag who is featuring Ripon in a five-year book project aimed at capturing the essence of the Midwest. The exhibit was made up of pictures linked to characteristic features of our community complemented with artifacts and pictures from our collection.

2. Through late spring and summer we had an exhibit in the Children’s Room entitled "Boys and their Toys". This exhibit was featured in our Summer Open House.

3. For the Society’s December Open House we displayed a collection of "Father Christmas" figurines lent to us by one of our volunteers. Many of the rest of the rooms in the Pedrick House were redecorated following a "Night Before Christmas" theme to the point of mannequin family members lying "snug in their beds".

4. In addition, to maintain interest in the Pickard House, details in the normal

room settings such as dining room place settings, kitchen accessories, mannequin’s clothing are changed periodically

Museum Accessions: Seventy-eight gifts of artifacts were accepted as appropriate to our local history focus and, with the help of several dedicated volunteers, were accessioned and catalogued this year. Slow progress was also made on accessioning and cataloguing a backlog of artifacts accumulated in the past.

Gardens: The grounds around our two houses were landscaped in the past to form historic gardens with plants and shrubs from the period represented by the houses. Our ability to care for these gardens improved noticeably this year by having several volunteers adopt their own garden plot or shrubs to maintain.

Archives: Considerable progress has been made this year in the organization and cataloguing of our archives thanks to the able direction and work of Associate Archivist, Nedra Martz. Among the larger collections processed were the records of Ripon’s Council of Defense during World War I (1917-1919); the papers of Edgar Zobel, musician, pharmacist, farmer (1910-1960) and the papers of Jean Schwiesow, an active member of the Republican Party at the local, county and state level during the 1950s and 60s. We have also started a much needed reorganization of the mammoth Pedrick Collection, the heard of our archives. In addition, we continue of open our archives and offer considerable reference assistance to Ripon College students in their research papers.

1. We experimented with a "Projects Day" on a Saturday in mid-August allowing interested members the opportunity to help out with a number of small projects. We had over a dozen turn out and finished all items on our list.

2. Using desktop publishing software, we remodeled our Newsletter to look more like a newspaper and to include photographs of Society activities and members.

3. Using the expertise and long efforts of Jean Woolley the Society has opened its web page at http://my.core.com/~riponhistsoc/