New Young County museum gathers history in Olney

Officials from the new Young County Museum of History & Culture manned a table at the Olney Heritage Museum for a week in November, gathering oral histories from longtime local families.

The museum, located at 401 Echo St. in Graham, aims to collect, preserve, research and retell the history of Young County from the 1800s through the 1950s.

The Museum curators recorded hourlong audio and videotaped interviews with descendents of longtime Olney families, and encouraged them to bring artifacts that illustrated life on the North Texas plains.

“We conducted about six interviews. We did some audio video and just some audio,” Tony Widner, collections manager said. “Overall I think that we accomplished the goal we wanted to: we started getting the stories that families remember around the founding of Olney - the stuff that history books don’t talk about.”.

The interviews will be edited for clarity and housed in archives on the Museum’s web site (www. ycmohc. com). They also will be shared with the University of North Texas archives and the Olney Heritage Museum, Mr. Widner said.

Mr. Widner also hopes to have the interviews posted on the Museum’s YouTube page by January, he said.

Mr. Widner, Museum Treasurer Shannon Potts and Museum Board President Kelly LaFarge conducted the interviews between Nov. 14-17.

“I really enjoyed Mr. [Robert] Stewart talking about the history of his family and how they progressed into the business they own today,” Mr. Widner said. “There were people who talked about the railroad and a lot of stories about the Jeffrey Ranch. There was a ton of history that was made available in the video and family lineages.

The Museum’s goal is to remedy a lack of knowledge of the seminal role that Young County and its founders played in the shaping of the state and the nation, he said.

“There is so much here,” he said.

The Museum’s hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 10 a.m.. to 5 p.m. and some Saturdays, he said. Tours can be arranged on other days usually within 30 minutes of a call to the museum office at 940282-2887, Mr. Widner said.

The museum is located at 401 Echo St., Graham.