DOWAGIAC — As visitors pass through the display cases of the Dowagiac Area History Museum’s new temporary exhibit, “Dowagiac Treasures: Highlights of the Bainbridge-Lee Collection,” they are only viewing about 10 percent of what was donated.

The museum, which received a donation of more than 1,000 individual items from David and Carol Bainbridge in 2017, spent the next two years cataloging and compiling a list of the artifacts, a process the average museum visitor may not realize even exists.

As the largest collection of artifacts to be donated to the museum at once, museum director Steve Arseneau, along with a volunteer, spent months sorting throughout the artifacts to compile a list of all the items. Then, artifacts were divided into categories. Items would be divided into where they originated. Some were placed with the Beckwith Theatre items, the Lee family stuff or Round Oak items.

“When we get collections, each item gets assigned a unique number,” Arseneau said. “It’s a number that takes you back to the donor and the donation.”

After the 1,000 artifacts were assigned a number, museum volunteer Chris Northrup measured and recorded the dimensions of each item. She also wrote a general description of the item, a condition report and noted any significant flaws. All the information is inputted into a computer so Arseneau can go back through and find a specific item and view any special history related to it.

Bainbridge, who was a museum curator himself at the Northern Indiana Center for History in South Bend for more than 32 years, self-curated his own collection in a way, Arseneau said. Still, as with any donation the museum receives, there is a decision-making process.

“I have to think of how significant an item is to Dowagiac’s story or Cass County’s story,” Arseneau said. “Are there research possibilities for some items?”

The museum receives newspapers and documentary items that sometimes do not fit into a permanent collection but can be used for research purposes. The museum will also sometimes reject donations of duplicate items. Annually, the museum receives old Dowagiac High School yearbooks from the early 1920s and 30s, which it already has copies of, Arseneau said as an example.

One item in particular from the Bainbridge collection really got Arseneau excited. A marble table that was presented to Round Oak Stove Company’s founder P.D. Beckwith by his workers in 1882. Previously, the museum did not own any items belonging to Beckwith.

“P.D. Beckwith was arguably one of the most important people in Dowagiac history,” Arseneau said.  “Without P.D. Beckwith, Dowagiac probably never would have become a small city. It would have stayed a small village. His Round Oak Stove Company helped the city grow.”

Another unique piece of the collection is an instruction manual on how to operate a Round Oak heating stove.

In the 21 years that Arseneau has been taking care of the collection, he sometimes yields questions about how to operate these vintage items.   

“I always thought they never had an instruction manual, and the people of the 1800s just knew how to start it,” he said. “Beckwith actually had a set of instructions for operating a Round Oak heating stove. I was surprised at how excited I was to see that, but that actually caught my eye when we were going through the collection.”

Another interesting part of the collection to Arseneau is artifacts from the Lee family. He found items from Kate Beckwith and Mary Lee to be interesting in helping further tell the story of the two families in Dowagiac.

“Mary Lee is sort of a tragic story in Dowagiac history,” he said. “She inherited a large estate when her mother passed away. When she inherited that estate, she was probably the richest 20-year-old girl in America at that time. She gets married in 1908 and dies after giving birth in 1910. I think she had a charmed upbringing but the way she passed was really tragic. To get some pieces from her life is really good for the collection.”

Arseneau said he had no idea the collection would be donated back in 2017. He had heard of its size throughout the years and noticed Bainbridge checking the museum out to confirm its viability and care of its collections. Currently, Arseneau does not have a closing date for the exhibit, but expects it to run into the summer of 2020.

“I am glad he made the decision to bring the collection back to Dowagiac,” Arseneau said.