Friday, June 26, 2009

Learning new things

We've been working on writing captions for the photographs for the pictorial county history book that's due next month. Doing a bit of research on agriculture, here are a few facts I discovered.

In 1920, there were only 225 tractors in the United States.

Rubber tires for tractors were introduced in 1932.

The John Deere company started out when Deere developed the steel walking plow. It wasn't until they bought a company called Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company in 1918 that they started producing tractors.

In 1930s and 1940s, Williamson County was one of the top three corn producing counties in Texas.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

What we're doing

It seems like it should be quiet, and really it kind of is. School tours are over now that school's out. Pioneer Days are over. Summer is usually our planning time.

Here's a little of what's going on:

Mickie is starting to plan Up the Chisholm Trail and Archeology Day. She's marketing the Williamson County Courthouse for weddings and receptions. And, the really big thing, she's planning Summer History Explorers' Camp: two weeks of history and fun.

Celina's been working to get our Up the Chisholm Trail brochure printed and approved for distribution at Texas Travel Centers. She's dutifully keeping up with our Twitter and Facebook pages. Celina and Mickie continue to plan First Friday celebrations, getting food, drinks and special guests.

Chris and I are working on writing a pictorial history of Williamson County to be published by Arcadia Publishing. We're using images from our permanent collection, and doing all of the research and writing ourselves. No small task, lemme tell you.

Me? I'm working with the volunteers to keep up with cataloging artifacts. Planning for our quarterly acquisitions committee meeting. Meeting with potential artifact donors. I've taken down the map exhibit, and I'm trying to see if we can be an additional venue for an art show later this year.

I've been meeting with the chuckwagon committee since February, and I think that we're farther ahead of schedule than we were last year at this time. We even have 6 confirmed wagons! And Books for Texans book club and The Salon are trucking along with monthly meetings.

So, even though is *seems* like it's quiet around here. It's really not. We're working hard...very, very hard. We just make it look easy.