Women’s museum sees growth ahead
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times Cat Bigley, left, explains to Linda Showalter, right, the vision of the Marie Antoinette Festival and new women's museum, La Musee Rose, Tuesday.
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times Jenny Powers, left, presents the mission of La Musee Rose, to a crowd of more than 30 locals at the Betsey Mills Club Tuesday.
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times More than 30 men and women gather Tuesday to listen to the first story featured in a new women's museum, La Musee Rose, currently hosted by the Betsey Mills Club.
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times Betsy Cook, of Lowell, sports a Women's March t-shirt as she eagerly listens to the story of Helen Josephy, a Washington County native from the late 1800s, Tuesday at the grand opening of the new women's museum exhibit in the Betsey Mills Club.
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times At the grand opening of La Musee Rose Tuesday, Nancy Luthy, president of the advisory committee for the Bestey Mills Club says she's excited for the stories to be told in the new women's museum currently housed as an exhibit at the club.
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times Cat Bigley, left, explains to Linda Showalter, right, the vision of the Marie Antoinette Festival and new women's museum, La Musee Rose, Tuesday.
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times Jenny Powers, left, presents the mission of La Musee Rose, to a crowd of more than 30 locals at the Betsey Mills Club Tuesday.
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times More than 30 men and women gather Tuesday to listen to the first story featured in a new women's museum, La Musee Rose, currently hosted by the Betsey Mills Club.
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times Betsy Cook, of Lowell, sports a Women's March t-shirt as she eagerly listens to the story of Helen Josephy, a Washington County native from the late 1800s, Tuesday at the grand opening of the new women's museum exhibit in the Betsey Mills Club.
JANELLE PATTERSON The Marietta Times At the grand opening of La Musee Rose Tuesday, Nancy Luthy, president of the advisory committee for the Bestey Mills Club says she's excited for the stories to be told in the new women's museum currently housed as an exhibit at the club.
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With more than 30 men and women in attendance Tuesday the grand opening of La Musee Rose was a success.
“We want this museum to not be one of things, but rather of stories,” said Jenny Powers, one of the three museum founders.
Currently the new women’s museum is an exhibit in the Betsey Mills Club in Marietta with goals to grow into a more permanent location in the future.
The mission: to share the untold stories of inspiring women from the Mid-Ohio Valley so that future generations of women may be inspired to pursue their dreams.
One such woman, Frances Barker Gage, was a suffragette from Marietta. She was quoted Tuesday as the three founders, Powers, Cat Bigley and Jessica Wielitzka explained the goals for the museum.
“I deny that as a class, the women of America, black or white, are idle,” said Gage long ago. “Go out upon your streets, go through the world where you will and every human soul you meet is the work of women.”
Tuesday the woman to be featured lived a life of reinvention, of pursuing one’s dreams.
“Helen Josephy is a perfect example of how to make yourself over,” explained local historian Jann Adams. “She started out as a journalist with The Marietta Times, then became an editor, an author, a mother and a mental health advocate. She kept remaking herself into the best version of herself. Her life teaches us to keep going after your visions, persist, make your way and make it happen.”
Roxanne Marshal, 71, of Marietta, said a feature of women’s history is “long overdue.”
“There are stories like Betsey (Shipman Gates) Mills, the namesake of this club, and Bertlyn Bosley who not only renovated the Castle with her brother but was also a well-respected nutritionist who not many people know about,” Marshal explained. “It’s time their stories were told.”
Ryan Zundell, 46, of Marietta, said he wished he had brought the young teen women he coaches with swim team to the event.
“It would be nice to get the girls to see these stories and understand the struggles of women who have come before them, but to also place them there, that these women grew up or lived in their neighborhoods,” he said. “I think it could be a teaching opportunity to give them perspective and it could be inspiring, knowing here’s this woman that overcame so much not even a hundred years ago and she used to live down the street.”
Sporting a Women’s March shirt from this past spring’s protests Betsy Cook, of Lowell couldn’t contain her excitement Tuesday.
“I love that it’s stories, as a former history teacher it will be good to see these stories written that can be included in male-dominated history books,” she said. “Stories like the first female riverboat captain, Capt. Mary Greene, who was from Marietta.”
Other stories the museum hopes to gather include the likes of Mary Gates Dawes, Frances Bosworth Dawes, Caro Blymyer Dawes, Sophia MacTaggart Russell, Willa Cotton, Catherine Fay Ewing, Margaret Blennerhassett and Dorothy Webster Mills.
“But we’re not limiting this to women who did big things, we want homemakers and shop owners and women who ran farms as well,” said Wielitzka.
The criteria for submission into the archives of the museum are the following:
A woman who has lived or was born in Washington or Wood county and has passed at least five years hence.
A woman whose letters, journals, diaries, pictures, etc. are available to be used to tell her story.
The museum is also in search of four additional members to add to its nine-member board who can contribute financial, legal and/or marketing skills as the museum grows and looks to its next schedule of events: The Marie Antoinette Festival, Nov. 3-5.
“We’re expanding, we’ve had the Marie Antoinette Masquerade Ball for the past three years and now this year we want to make it even bigger,” said Bigley.
The festival will still include the traditional adult ball on Nov. 4, to celebrate the city’s namesake, Marie Antoinette, but will also see a “Let them eat Cake Walk” on Nov. 3 and a children and family masquerade ball. Then on Nov. 5 the festival will conclude with mansion tours in Marietta and a Bloody “Marie-tta” Contest with submitted recipes.
For more information on how to get involved or to donate to the 501c3 nonprofit, visit lamuseerose.org.
If you go
≤ The new La Musee Rose exhibit sits in a side parlor of the Betsey Mills Club in Marietta.
≤ For entry visit the club’s main office at 300 Fourth St., Marietta.
≤ For more information on how to get involved or submit a story of a notable woman from the Mid-Ohio Valley, visit lamuseerose.org.
Source: La Musee Rose.