By Madelyn Braho · Staff Writer
For more than 25 years, the Grove City Historical Society has been preserving 200 years of local history. Located on College Avenue across from Colonial Apartments, the society resides in the old Traveler’s Hotel.
1998 marked the bicentennial anniversary of Grove City and a renewed interest in the town’s past.
“This town put on a shebang that will never be replicated … they wrote a musical … they had something going on all the time,” Becky Sopher, who works at the society, remembers.
Residents began bringing things to the bicentennial headquarters from their basements and attics, items that would eventually become part of the historical society’s collection. Everything in the collection from that time forward is a donation, except one.
“We bought our refrigerator, an old General Electric refrigerator, for $100,” Mary “Skip” Sample explained. Sample and her husband were founding members of the society, and now she is the caretaker of the aluminum room in the basement of the society dedicated to his memory.
Grove City College was numbered among the founding donors to the society at its formation in 1999. Over the years, the college and the society have collaborated on projects related to town and Grove City College history.
“Some years ago, Alice Ketler gave us a large amount of Ketler paper. The college started to digitize it for us,” Sopher said.
Alice Ketler, who graduated from the college in 1939, was the daughter-in-law of Grove City College President Weir Ketler.
“Alice Ketler opened up her attic and said, ‘Take everything,’ and it was a lot. I was the one who went back in the eaves and dragged the stuff out,” Sample said.
The papers now reside across the street in the college archives, which are managed by Hilary Walzack ’09. The college archive is in possession of the papers associated with college history, and others, more connected to family and town history, are in the historical society’s keeping.
Richard Jewell, who became the college’s president in 2003 after graduating from the college in 1967, was instrumental in the preservation and display of the Cunningham Wheel. Grove City College students found the wheel from Cunningham Mill, established over 200 years ago, and it is now on display at Cunningham Mill Park on East Main Street. Jewell and the college donated it to the society for display.
The most concrete sign of the connection between the historical society and the college is the Grove City College Room. Located on the second floor of the society building, this room looks out over lower campus and is set up as a replica of the Ketler office Isaac and Weir Ketler used. It contains memorabilia of the college throughout the years, including scrapbooks of photos, furniture and Weir Ketler’s suit.
“You could spend a day in any one of the rooms,” Sample said.
According to Sopher, the society has received so many pictures of Wolf Creek that most of them are not on display.
Students can be involved in the historical society, although opportunities are limited. In the past, a student was on the board of the society, although the position is currently vacant.
Sopher explained that the society does not have “a lot of projects” for volunteers, but for those interested in local history, the society’s library, located on the first floor, contains genealogical records as well as documents related to the Grove City School District area, including cemeteries and yearbooks.
The society is closed to the public until April 11, but it is open for most of the fall semester. The society will also install a window display celebrating America250 in May.
For more information about the historical society, please visit grovecityhistoricalsociety.org.
