History Museum of Monroe County, Illinois

Last fall the Post Dispatch, our local newspaper here in St.Louis, featured an article about the History Museum of Monroe County. The museum is located in the town of Waterloo, and as we were planing on dining at a restaurant north of the town, John and I, as well as my sister Julia and her husband Cal, decided that we would make the trip worthwhile and check out what the museum had to offer.  Until we made that trip all we knew about the town was that it was the home of the Waterloo German band, which we have had the pleasure of hearing in the past.  Our first stop in Waterloo was the history museum, which has many artifacts donated by Colonel Edd Kueker, a Monroe County native and Western trail rider.  Over the years he collected many items representing the settlement of the west, as well as artifacts connected with agriculture, local commerce and transportation.  In that exhibit we saw a milk truck used by the Waterloo Milk Company, Inc. as well as a wagon used in the 1904 St.Louis World's Fair.

Another item in the museum, which caught my eye, was a ice cream sandwich maker.

Recently we toured the Blue Bell Creamery in Texas and saw ice cream sandwiches being created rapidly on an assembly line- we certainly have come a long way since that small tool pictured above was once used!  In the museum was also a number of local historic homes and farms.  The buildings were constructed using pencils.  Below is the homestead of Emma Buck, a pre-civil war home built in the mid 1880s.

There is also a small exhibit in the museum related to the Waterloo Band.  It was interesting to learn that it was formed in 1946.  As far as I know, they are still performing today.  We also learned more of the history of Waterloo by touring some of its historic cabins and buildings located on the grounds of the museum, as well as in another area of Waterloo.  More on that in the next posting.