MONDAY MORNING MUSEUM UPDATE – July 21, 2025 – Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage Museum

In this week’s update: Sunflower Summer – week 2 of 3 (use your tickets soon!), SPRINT Grant completed media coverage, upcoming workshops and events, and more!

In this update, keep up to date on what staff and volunteers at the Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage Museum are working on to lift up the history of Lindsborg and the surrounding region. This weekly update both looks back at what happened and looks ahead at what’s coming.

For July 14-20, 2025:

We are in week 2 (of 3) in Sunflower Summer 2025!
This state program and app makes more than 230 (!) Kansas attractions and events available for FREE to Kansas school-age kids and one accompanying adult, July 12-August 3.

The full list of attractions is now available at www.sunflowersummer.org and – of course – includes the Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage Museum! Also in Lindsborg, we have participating: Broadway RFD, Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, Small World Gallery and the Red Barn Studio Museum!
An important note: This year, there is a hard limit on what is being spent on the program statewide. If the program runs out of funding before August 3, it will close before August 3. This means it is important to make your plans for using the Sunflower Summer app and attend them as soon as you are able!

We encourage everyone with school age kids in Kansas to take advantage of this wonderful program!
We had a lot of great coverage last week on the final results as we close out our $250,000 SPRINT Grant projects! Check out the stories in The Salina Post, The Salina Journal, Ad Astra Radio, and KSAL. The story also appeared in a “Kansas Proud” segment on KWCH Channel 12 television last week.
Other notable recent coverage is McPherson County Community Foundation posting a YouTube feature and Dala Town putting up a video about the Midsummer’s Festival Kubb Tournament winners.
The upcoming workshops from Pursuing YOUR Past – “DNA: There’s No EASY Button…Yet!” – on September 13 and the next daylong Online Swedish Genealogy Workshop on November 8 are now open and available for registrations!
Prepurchase is also currently available for the second annual “Magic at the Mill” card tournament held at the museum on Saturday, September 20, in collaboration with local gaming store Spelbok. It will be a prerelease “Spider-Man” set themed prerelease tournament for $54.99 or Open Casual Commander for $10. Both registrations come with a guided tour of the 1898 Smoky Valley Roller Mills!
With stability repairs on the 1904 World’s Fair Swedish Pavilion now complete, we are now in the “Raise the Roof” portion of the Pavilion repairs fundraising campaign.
Tax credits are still available for the 2025 tax year for donations under this campaign. Proceeds go to help with a new planned Pavilion roof that will be more durable and with a more historically accurate look! There will also be opportunities to have a “roof tile” with custom wording added to a permanent honor wall to recognize contributions to replace the roof; details will be coming soon.
The total contributed to the new roof is now more than $35,000 after a $250 donation processed last week. (Also last week, Adam finished and submitted the required quarterly report for this grant.) There is still capacity for more than $52,000 in donations possible under the grant, with eligible donations qualifying for a 70% fully refundable tax credit on Kansas taxes.
Learn more at www.oldmillmuseum.org/raise-the-roof.
On a community note, you can still see museum staff member Adam Pracht on stage this week in the Broadway RFD production of “The Music Man” as “Ewart Dunlop” (one of the quartet members). The remaining shows are July 25 and 26; the Sunflower Summer app may be an option for some families.
The second tablet for the Old Mill augmented reality tour arrived this week and tested working correctly, so Adam is continuing to work on developing content for the tour.
Aubrey worked on the final report for a Nutt Grant for technology purposes the museum received last year.
Aubrey worked on writing several grants, including for funding a unique advertising opportunity.
Aubrey set up several meetings with individuals at Bethany Collect. She also set up a coffee “meet and greet” with members of the McPherson County Community Foundation and arranged for hosting a McPherson Chamber of Commerce meeting on October 30.
Lenora had the opportunity to interview with the great-grandson of one of the Lindsborg contractors who disassembled the Swedish Pavilion in St. Louis and reassembled it on the Bethany College campus in 1905.
Lenora worked on the SPRINT Grant quarterly report.
Lenora helped a woman from Lenexa with local Lindsborg and Swedish research.
Lenora finalized a grant on behalf of the Smoky Valley Historical Association (in partnership with the museum) to update the Lindsborg Business Director book.
Tyler continued working on the Historic Image Database on Tuesday and Thursday, currently working on several binders of photos on loan from Covenant Church. Lenora also met about scanning photos from the Bethany Church archives.
Lenora has continued working on an indexing project under contract with ArkivDigital.
Need a great gift for the genealogist or history enthusiast in your life? NEW in the museum gift shop, you can now purchase a gift certificate good for a free registration to one of the museum’s Online Swedish Genealogy Workshops anytime in 2025 ($50) or a 2025 Pursuing YOUR Past presentation ($10). Your gift recipient will receive a one-time-use code by email or mail good to pay for the registration fee for one of these popular sessions!