The Faison Museum of History is overflowing with priceless documents and artifacts. Opening a drawer at random, Anne Stroud Taylor pulls out a book by local author and daughter of a tenant farmer, Linda Flowers, who wrote about her family’s struggles. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Faison’s historic train depot houses the town’s library and history museum. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
The old versus the new: architectural details of the 1800s train depot contrast with modern, plastic, stackable boxes. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Acid-proof archival boxes will help protect the museum’s most important documents from deterioration. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Plastic bins (some empty, others full) and miscellaneous items strewn on a table are signs that the museum has outgrown its current home. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Piles of odds and ends are starting to accumulate in a corner. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
This doll, with no identifying information, is one of the more mysterious items anonymously dropped off at the museum. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Faison’s history museum collects and displays items that help preserve the history of the town’s schools. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
FAISON — Stepping past a box of pictures sitting on the floor, gesturing toward a group of plastic bins in the corner and eyeing a mishmash of items strewn on a table, Anne Stroud Taylor says, “It was organized, but we’ve outgrown ourselves. We’ve just gotten so big now, we’ve got to have a better place.”
The Faison Museum of History is currently located at 106 Park Circle, in the town’s pre-1890 train depot, which — with much of its interior architectural detail intact — serves as the perfect backdrop for historical displays, but here’s the two-part problem: First, the depot is home not just to the museum, but also to the town library, which itself could use more space; and second, an influx of new items during the height of Covid (when people used their forced stay-at-home time to clean out closets, cabinets and drawers) has the museum bursting at the seams.
“When I walked back in [after the Covid hiatus], I could not believe the things that had been left,” Taylor says. “People brought a boxful of this and that and the other, and I’m just putting it in categories.”
The list of categories is long, running the gamut from schools and churches to the town’s prominence as an agricultural market from which produce from surrounding areas was shipped, via rail, to points North. Also on the list: local physicians, military veterans, and ball teams. Oh, and one must not forget Faison’s astronaut, William E. Thornton. And the list goes on and on.
One anonymous donor provided “a complete, marvelous railroad history,” Taylor says.
The museum has no paid staff and no official director, and the committee that oversees it was prevented from meeting for a couple of years due to Covid, which explains why documents and artifacts were brought in and dropped off — and then left untended for some time. Now, says Taylor, it’s time to press forward with sorting and organizing, and to that end, there are stackable plastic drawers, large plastic bins and acid-free archival boxes. Several folks have offered to lend a hand after the holidays, and more volunteers are always welcome.
But all the plastic storage containers in the world won’t provide the museum with what it really need — more space. It’s time to move, says Taylor, and although she has been talking with others in town about one location in particular that she says would make a fine new home for the museum, those talks are preliminary and it’s too early to know if the move will work out.
“Whatever happens,” says Taylor, “this stuff has to be saved. It is real, honest-to-goodness history.”
