Expanding the Mission #museummonday #capefearmuseum

The New Hanover County Museum and the Courthouse Annex

When the Museum reopened in the court house annex, two big institutional changes took place.

The institution’s mission changed. And so did the women’s group charged with running the place.

The U.D.C worked to bring their collection back to town. And members of the group were still involved in the reconstituted New Hanover County Museum.

But they no longer officially responsible for the institution. Instead, in 1930, the New Hanover Historical Commission turned the Museum's day to day administration over to Sorosis, another longstanding local woman’s group.

Sorosis float from About 1915.  The group organized in the 1890s. 

 

When Sorosis took over, the Museum’s mission shifted.
According to the newspaper, its goal was to collect “…every possible relic of Wilmington’s historic past, and things that have any interesting personal association that would be of general interest.”

The Museum still collected items relating to the Civil War.  But now, the Museum also collected other items of more general historical interest.

Antebellum nutmeg grater donated to Museum in 1930s

Sketch of Wilmington, dated 1837, given to Museum in 1936

Collections Conundrums: Reclaiming Artifacts #museummonday

Sending artifacts to Raleigh also created a second collections conundrum -- how to prove who owned what!   

Almost from the start (if not from the moment the artifacts came back to Wilmington) the Cape Fear Chapter of the U.D.C. knew more stuff went to Raleigh than came home.  At the chapter's March 1933 meeting, “in a discussion of the county museum, it was brought out that the chapter has never recovered all of its articles placed in the state museum in Raleigh for safekeeping at the time of the war."

So, since those first two boxes of artifacts were returned to Wilmington in 1929, there have been a number of local efforts to retrieve items from the North Carolina Museum of History.

Getting Gaston's Hat and Sword

Two of the earliest additions to the U.D.C.'s collection belonged to Confederate Colonel Gaston Meares.

Colonel Gaston Meares, about 1861

Gaston Meares was born in Wilmington.  He attended West Point briefly and served in the Mexican-American War in the 1840s. Meares married Catherine (also known as Kate) Douglass DeRosset in 1850, and the couple moved to New York in 1855.  They were still living in the North in 1860.  By the Spring of 1861, the family was back in Wilmington, and Gaston, aged 39, was commissioned into the Field and Staff of the 3^rd Regiment N.C. Troops. 

Colonel Meares was killed during the battle at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862.  

In 1898, Colonel Gaston Meares' sword and hat were donated to the U.D.C by his widow.  In an article entitled “The New Museum” from April 23, 1898, the Wilmington Morning Star reported “Mrs Kate DeRosset Meares, widow of the late Col. Gaston Meares, presented to the museum her husband’s military hat which he wore during the Mexican war and for some time during the civil war, before he fell, a martyr in protection of his country’s honor.  Accompanying the hat was also Col. Meares’ sword.”


According to a  17 July 1862 in the letter in the Southern Historical Collection from Ann Claypole Meares to Catherine Douglass DeRosset Meares,  Gaston had both hat and sword with him when he died: "... he was standing with his hat in his hand, & his sword under his arm, & was walking back & forth in a little prominence, from when his men had begged him to come down. & he had once done so, & taken a seat, but feeling anxious went up again. when turning his head a little back, the ball struck his him just above the left eye I think, & fractured the skull, he was immediately removed by two men & carefully attended to, no one heard him say any thing..."

Both the hat and the sword were not returned to Wilmington in 1929.

The sword came back to Wilmington in the early 1980s. 

In 1979, then Museum Director Janet Seapker began to campaign to get items back.  This effort yielded some results.  In the early 1980s, a number of items were returned to Wilmington and the Museum, and one of those items was Gaston Meares' sword.

The hat was another story.

It was only returned to the Museum in 2010, as a part of the Museum's most recent efforts to reclaim items from the founding collection.   That effort yielded Meares' hat, as well as a number of other items. 

Gaston Meares' hat

This gavel was also returned in 2010.  It was made out of flooring from the Executive Mansion in Richmond, Virginia.