The Wayne County Historical Society will reopen to the public on Saturday, July 17, ending a 16-month shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tours of the historical society’s eight-building campus and permanent collection will be available every Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m., with the last tour leaving at 3 p.m. Tour groups will be limited to no more than five visitors each, and visitors and docents will be required to wear masks in all indoor venues.
Visitors will also be able to enjoy a special exhibit, “Votes for Women! Woman’s Journey to be Heard and Treated as an Equal.” Originally scheduled to open last year, it commemorates the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended voting rights to women. Visitors will learn how the suffrage movement fit into the larger context of women’s political and social activism in Wayne County, from abolition and the Underground Railroad to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
The Votes for Women exhibit is a joint effort by the Wayne County Historical Society, the Wayne County Public Library, and the League of Women Voters of Wayne County.
The indoor mask requirement and limitations on tour group size are for the protection of the historical society’s visitors and docents alike in an environment in which new, more highly transmissible Covid variants are beginning to appear, and vaccination rates in Wayne County and surrounding areas are lagging significantly behind statewide and national rates. (According to the Ohio Department of Health, as of July 6, only 34 percent of Wayne County residents are fully vaccinated, versus 48 percent nationwide. The comparable figures for Ashland and Holmes counties are 31 and 14 percent, respectively.)
The Wayne County Historical Society is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of Wayne County. Founded in 1904, today the historical society operates a campus with eight buildings, including a pioneer-era log house, a mid-19th century general store, and the Beall-Stibbs homestead, begun in 1816 and completed in the early 1820s by War of 1812 veteran General Reasin Beall.
For more information, call 330-264-8856.
