This Museum Monday, we're sharing another story from our Annual Meeting. This one came from our Oral History Coordinator, Kayt:

"A few months ago I had the opportunity to interview Denny and Erlene Senseney. They came to Saranac Lake to see Will Rogers; Denny’s father, Sam Senseney, had taken the cure at Will Rogers Memorial Hospital. While at Saranac Village at Will Rogers, they happened to hear about the museum and came to pay us a visit. We were lucky to get to talk to them while they were here, and ended up sitting down for a last-minute oral history interview!
While curing Sam learned ceramic and leather work. When he returned home to Kansas, Sam brought these new skills with him. He got a job at a TB Sanatorium teaching patients the ceramic and leatherworking skills he learned here in Saranac Lake!"

You can hear a snippet of Denny and Erlene's interview here.

[Photograph of Sam Senseney, courtesy of Denny Senseney]

It’s Museum Monday, so we want to share the news of an exciting collections donation we received this week! On Thursday, we were honored to receive six boxes of materials from the Baldwin Family. You may recognize the Baldwin name from last week’s Tuberculosis Thursday post about Dr. Edward R. Baldwin, but the collection also contains papers, photographs, journals, correspondence, and more from Mary Ives Baldwin, Ernest H. Baldwin, and Anne Leonard.

As we shared on Thursday, Dr. Baldwin was a close friend and colleague of Dr. E.L. Trudeau, and was the Director of the Saranac Laboratory. Mary Baldwin was the wife of Dr. Baldwin, and was active in local civic and philanthropic organizations, including the Village Improvement Society. Mary was also a talented photographer. Ernest Baldwin was Dr. Baldwin’s brother, and together with his wife, Anne Leonard, founded the Baldwin School in 1907. Ernest was also the first director of the Saranac Lake Free Library in 1907.

The collection was donated by Barbara Baldwin Knapp, Dr. Baldwin’s granddaughter, with assistance and accompaniment by her son and daughter, Gunnar and Tina (pictured in front of the Baldwin House). This donation is a thrilling addition to the collections here at the Saranac Laboratory Museum, and we can’t wait to share the contents (and future additions!) with you as we process them!

We want to share just a few snapshots of items from the collection, starting with photographs of Dr. Baldwin as a scientist, father, and outdoorsman; correspondence from Dr. Baldwin to his son Henry and his membership certificate for the Stevenson Society of America; travel medicine kits (including this one with Dr. Baldwin’s handwritten instructions); photographs and pamphlets from the Baldwin School; a travel diary from Mary Baldwin’s (pictured) trip to Europe in 1924; and photographs of Saranac Lake life (including Winter Carnival scenes) from a scrapbook from the 1910s.

Thank you to the Baldwin Family for their generosity and hard work in preserving (especially Gunnar!) and sharing this fascinating material with us!

To learn more about the Baldwin Family, visit our wiki!

For Museum Monday we want to share this nurse's cape from our collection to highlight the work for nurses in Saranac Lake for Women's History Month! This particular cape belonged to Juanita "Nita" Hayman Worthington, who trained at Bellevue School of Nursing and came to Trudeau Sanatorium for her health. Following her cure, she began a nursing career in the area that saw her serve first at the Trudeau Sanatorium, where she met her husband-to-be Ed when he arrived as a new patient. Later she worked as doctor's nurse for Drs. Woodruff, Merkel, and Decker.

Worthington was one of many hundreds of nurses who worked in the TB industry in Saranac Lake. Many of these nurses were patients who stayed to care for patients following their own treatment for TB. To read more about the fascinating and inspiring stories of Worthington and many other nurses, as well as about the history of the D. Ogden Mills Training School for Nurses at Trudeau Sanatorium, visit our wiki!

[Historic Saranac Lake collection, courtesy of Jan Worthington Dudones.]

It's Museum Monday, so we want to use a recent addition to the collection to tell a story about a Saranac Lake woman! This 1899 calendar and undated advertisement were created by Katherine E. McClellan. McClellan was an accomplished photographer and began her career in Saranac Lake after she moved to the area when her sister was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

In Saranac Lake she produced and sold photos of the Adirondack landscape, operating out of her Highland Park studio on the corner of Park Avenue and Old Military Road (see ad). She later became the official photographer of Smith College, her alma mater.

McClellan was connected with John Brown farm, as she produced and sold artistic booklets of John Brown's grave, but she had another unusual connection to the men killed at Harper's Ferry. Click over to our wiki to read the strange story, and learn more about her photographic career and see examples of her work!

Stay tuned for more posts in honor of Women's History Month all month long!