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Ripon Historical Society Annual Report for 2005 Federal Employer Number: 39-1034964 1. Change the President to Mr. Todd Berens W12281 Olden Road Ripon, WI 54971 (920) 748-6279 2. Our last meeting was Thursday, November 17th, 2005 at which time elections were held for the coming year. 3. This coming year’s officers will be
Our Board members for next year are listed below. All live in Ripon. None are paid
5. We have been quite active this year. Please see the attached list of activities. 6. We have no paid staff 7. Membership as of Dec. 31, 2005 was 172 8. Budget: Income (Including gifts to our capital campaign) $51,319.39 Expenditures $36,767.00 9 We receive no public funding. 10. Web page address: http://my.core.com/~riponhistsoc/ 11. Our Society owns and operates three buildings, two houses and a barn. 12. Total estimated attendance: 580. This number is hard to determine. We have a guest book, but are not rigorous in getting people to sign. We do count crowds at programs and open houses, so that this number reflects the number who signed the guest book plus attendance at Society events. It does not include members and volunteers who came in to work during the day almost every day of the work week, the dozen+ college students who came in for class twice a week in the spring, students who came in to work on research projects, and the two student interns who came in daily for eight weeks during the summer. Report submitted by William J. Woolley, President February 1, 2006 Ripon Historical Society Annual Report for 2005 Programs and Activities for 2005 Programs: We held six public programs this year on topics that included “Tools through the Ages” a preview of an outreach program we have developed for elementary schools, “World War II in Ripon” featuring two papers written by college student interns, “Frank Farvour, the Man and the Builder” a look at the architect and builder of some of Ripon’s most impressive 19th century homes by his grandson, a report by John Porter on the restoration of Ripon’s Odd Fellows Hall as it now becomes the headquarters for Tracy Porter corporation, and, finally, two programs on doing genealogy, one a general introduction and the second focused on doing genealogy in Ripon using the Society’s resources. In addition, we held two Open Houses, one in the summer featuring our historic Lawson House, and the second at the beginning of December, with our traditional family-oriented theme of “The Night Before Christmas”. Educational Activities: We hosted two visits by Ripon second graders, one in May and the second in November. During the visits the second graders spent an hour on a structured tour of historically furnished rooms in the Pedrick House using a curriculum that stressed “Then and Now” comparisons. We also had visits by two groups of Home School students, one from Ripon and the other from the area around Pound, WI. At the college level we, again, hosted a local history course carried out by Ripon College in which students used materials in our archives as the basis for carrying out original research projects. In addition, we, again, hosted two student interns from the Ripon College “ProCollege” program this summer who helped us organize museum artifacts as well as carrying our their own research. .Museum: Considerable progress was made this year in accessioning and cataloguing items in our backlog. Our thanks to the increasing number of volunteers who have helped with this ongoing project. We set up three exhibits this year. The first, “Scouting in Ripon” was one of the most successful ever with visits by two scout groups as well as special comments from visiting second-graders. Our second was an exhibit of Children’s and Women’s clothing which was mounted in time for our second visit by second graders. Finally, as before, we mounted our traditional family-oriented “The Night Before Christmas” exhibit in time for our Christmas open house. Gardens: We continued to expand the number of volunteers for our “Adopt-a-plot” program that helps us maintain the historic gardens that surround our two houses. Archive, Reference, and Library: We are continuing our cataloguing of the Society’s library. In addition, the library mounted a special exhibit of books on Wisconsin and Ripon Women. The Society’s web site has been generating an increasing number of reference enquiries, mostly genealogical, and a system has been developed to respond to those enquiries quickly and efficiently. We are also continuing our effort to index obituaries in local and regional papers, an effort that has given us an index of nearly 8000 names so far. Finally, the Ripon Library, which holds a photocopy version of the Pedrick Genealogical Notebooks has begun a project to digitize that collection. The results have been so promising that we may continue the project for the entire Pedrick archive that we hold. Archeology: Using the volunteer efforts of a local student we are continuing to catalog electronically the nearly 7000 items in our pre-Columbian Native American artifact collection and to enter these items into a usable data base. .Society Activities: 2005 was a notable year for capital improvements and acquisitions. Thanks to a grant and several generous gifts, we acquired a sound amplification system for our meeting room and a new computer. Another gift allowed us to replace a dying tree in front of the Pedrick House. An effort to “de-bat” the Lawson house led to the discovery that the metal roof, possibly over a hundred years old, was no longer safe. We were able to replace it with a similar roof while taking care of several other roof-related items and repair of the porches at the same time. Support Activities: In keeping with our policies of offering the use of our facilities to organizations we hosted several group meetings at our Pedrick House headquarters. |