By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent TRENTON, Ohio — Do “good fences make good neighbors?” This question is explored in the Smithsonian exhibit “Between Fences” on display at Chrisholm Historic Farmstead, a Butler County MetroPark, from May 12 until June 10.
The exhibit is part of the Museum on Main Street, the Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibition service. It will be on view May 12 until June 10, Wednesday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Additional activities are planned during the weekends.
“The idea is to get some of the Smithsonian exhibits out to areas and to people that normally wouldn’t have an opportunity to see them,” said Anne Jantzen, project leader.
The “Between Fences” exhibit has five scenes for visitors to walk through. The first scene is titled “This Land is our Land,” Jantzen said.
“It talks about property and property rights and our understanding of property as being different from a Native American’s view of property,” Jantzen said. “From there it goes on to talk about fences and farms; the history of how farmers didn’t really need fences because there was enough land and animals didn’t disturb anybody else’s property.”
Eventually there came to be a need for fences and the exhibit displays the many kinds that people began to build. The “Don’t Fence Me In” section examines our American attitude about fences and about the barbed wire fence wars in the West. The barbed wire fences were invented in the 1870s – before that all the fences were wood.
“There was a scarcity of wood so that speeded up the invention of wire fences and barbed wire fences,” Jantzen said. “Out in the west, there were wars going on between farmers who wanted to be able to fence their properties with barbed wire and other people, ranchers, who wanted to be able to let their cattle roam free so they could make good use of the pasture land.”
“Good Fences make Good Neighbors,” is another section in the exhibit. It’s about how people tend to build fences around their homes and what those fences mean.
“The last section is on building borders; it’s about our Canadian and Mexican borders and how we have different attitudes about those borders and how they historically have evolved,” Jantzen said.
The exhibition is touring eight communities in Ohio from September 2009 through July of 2010. The Chrisholm Farmstead was chosen by the Ohio Humanities Council to host the exhibit. Chrisholm is a remnant of the farmstead that was originally settled by Christian Augspurger, a pioneer to Butler County in 1819, Jantzen said.
“He was Amish and was the leader of an Amish Community in Butler County that is now extinct,” Jantzen said. “The Amish people here very quickly evolved into being Mennonite and then just assimilated into the general population.”
The Chrisholm Farmstead, which is open to the public, tells the story of the Amish Mennonite Community “but we also tell the story of early agriculture in Ohio. For both of those reasons the “Between Fences” exhibit fits very nicely,” Jantzen said.
The Friends of Chrisholm Historic Farmstead produced a book, Fences and Farmsteads of Butler County, in conjunction with the exhibit. The publication, by local historian Steve Gordon, contains an introduction to types, uses and history of farm fences. It contains 37 reproductions of exquisite lithographs from the Combination Atlas Map of Butler County, 1875 and a locator for finding the still existing farmsteads. The book will be available for $10 at the farmstead during the run of the exhibit.
Chrisholm Historic Farmstead is located at 2070 Woodsdale Road, Trenton, 45067. Admission to the exhibit is free. A $3 MetroPark vehicle pass is required to enter the park, however.
For information call 513-867-5835 or toll free 1-877-PARKFUN or visit www.chrisholmhistoricfarmstead.org |
