De Kalb Meeting House Museum - Part 2

When I was done looking at the displays in the foyer, I called to the historian who was working upstairs, for he had to let me into the meeting hall. It was unheated, with large sheets of insulation over the doors. I entered and looked around. It clearly had once been a place of worship with rows of pews. Now it is a museum:

There was fancy glassware. That odd shaped "bowl" on the right with a hole in its top was a "Hair Receiver," apparently to store hair for use in making hair wreaths, a popular hobby and art form in the 1850 to 1875 era:

Fancy glassware from Europe. There must have been some folks with money in old De Kalb:

I loved this old washing machine and flat iron. I walked over to remove the soda bottle from the top of it before I snapped the picture, but discovered that it really was an old time bottle of bluing:

Two baby cribs:

Quilts, rockers, dolls and toys:

This cradle was built about 1900 and was so small that I wondered if it was really for a baby or for a doll. Apparently, it was for a real baby:

A spinning wheel:

This was a yarn winder, used to wind yarn off the spindle of the spinning wheel. It measured skein lengths by clicking every so many revolutions:

If you thought the previous washing machine was old timey, take a gander at this beauty - complete with bars of soap. Now who keeps bars of soap long enough to become museum artifacts?:

And of course, a washboard:

Table, chairs and dinner plates. But there was lots more to see at the museum, so I'll post Part 3 tomorrow: