Support Stuhr Museums 2008 Annual Fund Drive

$180,000 in 2008

Current Totals - 90% - $162,781

July 14, 2007

We spent Friday, July 6 at your museum. We enjoyed our entire day and came back for the evening’s activities, featuring agriculture. Our daughter, Brooke (age 5 1/2), especially enjoyed exchanging her money at the Railroad Town bank and purchasing a piece of candy at the mercantile. What a special treat for our “pioneer-loving little girl” to play the old-fashioned games—hoops and sticks and pennies in the straw—with “real pioneer children.” We would like to extend special thanks to Ashley [Ashley Taggert is a Living History Apprentice, a young living history interpreter with Stuhr Museum]. Stuhr Museum was the highlight of Brooke’s vacation and, in our hearts, our favorite memory of our rural Nebraska trip.

Sincerely,
Susan and Brendon Nafziger
Canton, Kansas

Your Gift Preserves History

Artifacts are primary sources of history and primary resources for museum exhibits and programs.
- $50 provides one museum-quality archival textile storage box or 500 artifact tags -$125 provides 500 ft. of acid-free textile storage tissue
- $750 provides 96 ft. of research library shelving
- $3,000 provides one moderately sized exhibition enclosure
-$20,000 provides 4,000 sq. ft. of cedar roofing

Your Gift Portrays History

Depicting historic lifestyles is “living” interpretation and the ideal in education.
A core of 50 adult interpreters and 20 teachers offered 45,429 individuals an unforgettable living history experience in 2007. From hands-on visitor activities to special classes and representative events, these individuals are versed in the trades and customs of the period —from blacksmithing, woodworking and farming to gardening, domestic duties and social etiquette. Additionally, a Living History Apprentice (LHA) program trains 12 youth annually in museum-quality interpretation.

Printable Pledge Form

A Letter From The Fund Drive Chairs

To champion a cause or recommend a course of action, one often returns to history to shape an argument, to “build a case.” Why history?

In a manner of speaking, history is like the root system of a plant. Roots anchor, or stabilize, a plant; they also absorb, store and conduct water and nutrients to and from the shoot. The unseen roots are as important to a plant’s growth as are its visible leaves and stems. Roots are strength.

Throughout 2007 the communities of Hall County celebrated their Nebraska roots, their histories. To tap the earliest years of a proud 150-year heritage, media, community organizations, and individual families turned to Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer because our case, our cause, our mission, is history. Stuhr Museum’s Curator of Research gave hundreds of hours of archive assistance for commemorative publications and events. Also producing its own sesquicentennial events, Stuhr’s Curators of Collections and Exhibits worked months carefully choosing and presenting artifacts for a cultural exhibition titled “Survival of the Fittest: Life on the Plains.” In addition to a regular seasonal schedule of living-history enactment events, the historical interpreters of Stuhr Museum were joined by colleagues from Kansas and Colorado for one special week in July; replete with authentic costumes and provisions, they populated the museum’s replica railroad boom town and portrayed nineteenth-century trade, commerce, politics, transportation and society 40 years after its founders had established a town site in 1857. Among 60,000 annual visitor contacts, over 3,000 occurred during that week as visitors traveled to Stuhr Museum to experience music, crafts, cultures and teachings rooted in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century America.

The Heritage Activities for Today’s Students (HATS) Program, which provides a series of authentic, interactive learning experiences, continues to function as roots for the social studies programs of K-6 classroom teachers in and beyond Central Nebraska. During the 2006-07 academic year, 775 on site class sessions were conducted with 18,284 students and adults; another 41 customized educational programs with 4,280 students and adults were held off site. Finally, 750 children participated in weekly summer class offerings during 2007.

Individual and corporate families alike nurtured the stems and leaves of their family trees at Stuhr Museum, using the museum’s buildings and grounds as settings for weddings, reunions, retreats, meetings and picnics—quality time for 12,000.

Now, if you will further consider this likely comparison, we proudly affirm that donors, like prairie groundwater and soil nutrients, are vital to the root strength of the Stuhr Museum Foundation.

Since 1992 the Foundation has conducted an annual giving program. A necessary complement to earned income from admissions, memberships and fees and to county property tax support, income from individual and organization gifts to the Annual Fund Drive are used to help the Museum and the Foundation meet annual strategic operational goals. For beneficiary visitors, schools and patrons this means the opportunity to visit, to learn and to personally experience a proud heritage, to share in an identity that continues to shape our world.

We are also proud to announce that CNH (Case New Holland), recognized locally for its Case IH and New Holland brand agricultural products, has generously offered $15,000 toward a 2008 fundraising goal of $180,000. Authorized as a challenge, this funding will be used to match the contributions of donors who sustain their recent contribution level; these donors have “built a case in history.” These donors are our strong roots, the stability underlying seasons of successful annual campaigns.

This is a combined giving opportunity from a corporate community partner whose heritage

—beginning in 1842 with Jerome Increase Case— is deeply rooted in pioneer-era innovation and has through subsequent mergers —with International Harvester in 1985 and with New Holland in 1999— continued to shape the world by raising agricultural production to new levels.

Combined giving yields a more abundant harvest; we ask you to become the roots of a successful 2008 campaign with your gift to this 16th Pride of the Prairie Annual Fund Drive.

Sincerely,

Renee Goble, President
Densel Rasmussen, President
Stuhr Museum Stuhr Museum Foundation
2008 Pride of the Prairie Annual Fund Drive Co-chairs