CENTERVILLE—Centerville’s history is getting a fresh voice for Women’s History Month as the Whitaker Museum launches a new exhibit dedicated to the women who shaped the community. 

Since last summer organizers have been gathering the stories of local women who made significant contributions to Centerville. 

The goal of the exhibit which will highlight more than 20 local women is to make the museum “come freshly alive with the women’s voices and their life experience,” said museum intern and project lead Fawn McArthur. The exhibit, which runs throughout the month of March, focuses on the contributions of women from the town’s early days through 1947.

The museum plans to highlight several main featured women – Elizabeth Whitaker, Hannah Waddoups Whitaker, Myrtle Butler Evans, Martha Rich, Elizabeth Waddoups, Mary Rockwood, Esther Rockwood Evelyn Engen who influenced the local ski economy, Eva Hancock, an advocate for social work and mental health, Elizabeth Waddoups, Mary Rockwood, Esther Rockwood, Helen Bavelas and local school teachers: Lucille Reading and Jennie P. Stewart – on large boards throughout the building. 

It will also spotlight two long-standing community groups: a local quilting circle and a literary group, the Literature, Music, and Art Club of Centerville, originally started by Elizabeth Whitaker. Women from local families Tingey, Parrish, Streeper, Smedly and Porter will also be spotlighted.

Along with the posters the exhibit will include some local oral history. Visitors will be able to use their phones to scan QR codes and listen to audio clips of Martha Rich, a lifelong Centerville resident who celebrated her 90th birthday in February. In the recordings, Rich shares memories of her childhood, including what it was like to go to school and live in Centerville during World War II.

“She’s sharing little snippets of what it was like to be a child in Centerville... to play, to go to the grocery store,” McArthur said. “Just a really sweet capture of childhood in Centerville.” 

Beyond the posters and audio tours, the museum will offer several tactile experiences. Judy Gunn, a local “spinster”– a traditional term for a woman who spins wool – and several of her students will be onsite to demonstrate her craft during museum hours. 

“She will be the one spinning wool, and she’ll also have that available for children or anyone coming into the museum to practice spinning wool and then make like a little bracelet out of it,” McArthur said.

Children will also have the chance to participate in a scavenger hunt and a tea-leaf reading activity, inspired by Elizabeth Whitaker’s original literary group. Using dried mint or tea leaves in the bottom of a cup, children can practice the historical pastime of finding shapes and meanings in the leaves.

The museum will host a special free community event on Saturday, March 14, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. This event will feature even more interactive history, including butter making in the kitchen and food samples based on historical recipes used by Centerville women. Other hands-on activities will focus on the roles of nursing and midwifery in the early community.

As well as having photographs and small highlights of women throughout the museum – we’ll be bringing some of the images we have in our archives out into the museum, whether we have the stories attached to them or not – in the hopes the faces of the women can tell something of their story or that some guests may recognize the ones we have not been able to identify,” McArthur said. 

The research process headed by McArthur has been eye-opening, revealing how women built Centerville through everything from farming to social advocacy, she said.  “Every different contribution... all of these women have just built up Centerville to be what it is today through their various contributions.” 

The Whitaker Museum at 168 N. Main St., Centerville is open to the public on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. While the March exhibit focuses on history up to the mid-20th century, organizers hope to eventually expand the project to capture the stories of Centerville women leading up to the present day.