Preserving Ellwood House History
Donna Gable retired from the Ellwood House Museum in 2022 with more than 33 years of experience, expertise, and knowledge. Beginning as a volunteer in the 1980s and joining the staff shortly after, she worked in nearly every capacity at the museum from volunteer management to youth programming organizer to collections specialist and exhibit designer. She saw the museum transform as we built the Patience Ellwood Towle Visitor Center in 1997 and acquired Ellcourt in 2011. She met members of the Ellwood family including Patience (Patty) Ellwood Towle, joining along for Mrs. Towle’s unique tours of the mansion from her perspective in her childhood home.
When a long-standing staff member retires, they take with them a wealth of knowledge - in the case of a museum like Ellwood House, not only knowledge of barbed wire, the Ellwood family, and local history, but also of past decisions made by the staff and board, and important events in the organization’s past.
Over the last two years, Donna has worked with former Collections Manager Brian Cory to record her institutional knowledge. In this nearly one-hundred-hour oral history project, Donna has shared her memories of the museum’s history in a series of video and audio-recorded interviews. They encompass every room in every building on the museum property, as well as key objects and photographs from the museum’s collection and archives. Topics have included the acquisition of objects, decisions to restore parts of the estate, recurring conservation issues, and previously-unrecorded stories shared by members of the Ellwood family.
These interviews are an invaluable resource as museum staff seek to maintain the property and understand the decisions of previous staff members. They will be transcribed in full and made available as reference material.
The Ellwood House Museum thanks Donna Gable and Brian Cory for their thoughtful and dedicated effort to ensure the history of Ellwood House Museum is preserved, preserving the Ellwood House Museum in turn.
