In this week’s update: Midsummer’s Festival, museum restoration, KSN Road Trip, and more!
In our weekly 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 last week and looks ahead at what’s coming.
For June 3-9, 2024:
- Midsummer’s Festival is an annual Swedish tradition celebrated every June in Lindsborg, and the museum campus hosts many of the event’s celebrations! Midsummer’s is THIS Saturday, June 15.Events at the museum are:
- Lindsborg Swedish Folk Dancer’s Bake Sale: 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. (main museum building)
- Kubb Tournament: 11 a.m. registration; play starting at noon (Heritage Square green)
- Viking reenactor encampment: All day (Old Mill Campground, 600 Old Mill Road)
- Procession, Swedish Dance, and Raising of the Midsummer Pole: 6:45 p.m. (Heritage Square)
- Swedish Pancake Demonstrations: 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. (Main Museum Building, main gallery)
- Swedish Genealogy mini-workshop: noon (Main Museum Building, main gallery)
- Swedish language mini-workshop: 1 p.m. (Main Museum Building, main gallery)
Learn more about Midsummer’s including a full schedule of events at: www.midsummersfestival.com.
- Restoration work continues across the museum campus. Perfect Blend finished one last piece of work on the Old Mill of capping the parapet walls to preserve the earlier tuckpointing work. (This completes the work done under our Heritage Trust Fund grant.) Our Museum Handy Crew volunteers continue making restoration repairs to our windmill on Heritage Square. Sprowls Construction has installed more new, historically accurate Pavilion windows, and Wheat State Paint Co. continues on the work of priming to redo the exterior paint of the one-room schoolhouse.
- Adam presented to the City of Lindsborg at their regular council meeting last week to give an update and make a funding request. If you were unable to attend in person, you can also watch archived live video of the presentation on the City of Lindsborg Facebook page.
- A group of 15 Land Institute employees and international researchers took a personal tour of the Old Mill on Wednesday night.
- Adam represented the museum as a town sponsor at the KSN Road Trip event in Lindsborg at the Hemslöjd downtown last Friday.
- The Lindsborg News-Record donated five boxes of archive photo prints to the museum last week, which we are now in the process of scanning and adding to our Historic Image Database project.
- We held a virtual Swedish Genealogy Workshop last Saturday. The four presentations were well-attended with 50 people registered for the learning opportunity.
- Processed one new museum membership (total now 164 members).
- Registration is open for an hourlong genealogy workshop on July 13 on the FamilySearch tool! Sign up for this great opportunity today!
= - Sunflower Summer is here! Now through August 11 with the Sunflower Summer app, Kansas students and their parents/guardians can get free admission to the museum! While you’re at it, use the app to also get free admission to more than 220 attractions and events across the State of Kansas!
- NOW OPEN: “Skeleton-Of-Dog… Selected Geology & Natural History Artifacts from the Bethany College Collection Archives” is a temporary mini-exhibit at the museum featuring some unique artifacts not seen in public for decades!
- Our Endowment Campaign 2025 is ongoing to add $1 million to our endowment in supporting our annual operational budget to make sure that not only do we preserve these historical treasures, but we can also “keep the lights on.” Read more on the flyer and giving form below, or visit to www.oldmillmuseum.org/donations to learn more!
Social Media Feature of the Week!
Check out the live shoutout we got as part of the KSN Summer Road Trip last week! You can also check out highlights from all the stops on the road trip.
Thank you to our museum volunteers last week!
Jerry Sperling, Tim Stewart, Betty Amos, Julie Ann Neywick, Jerry Hammerton, Karmon Almquist, Mike Koch, and Leland Nelson!