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Christmas past
A Dade City museum offers holiday decorations, music, refreshments and a sugar grinding as part of its Country Christmas.
By PAMELA DAVIS
© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 29, 2001
DADE CITY -- Searching for a traditional Christmas connection? Want that old-fashioned feeling one gets from watching a sugar cane grinding or hearing the somber notes of an organ played inside an old wooden church?
For the first time in its 40-year history, the Pioneer Florida Museum will create this holiday card vision for its visitors with a Country Christmas, starting tonight.
All of the museum's exhibit structures will be adorned with lights and Christmas decorations. There will be organ music and local choirs, refreshments and four Christmas trees located throughout the grounds.
The event kicks off tonight and continues Friday and Saturday. It picks up again Dec. 6-8 and 13-15 from 7 to 9 each night. The once-a-year sugar grinding is scheduled for Dec. 9.
Country Christmas is a fitting occasion for a museum that frequently opens its doors to community events ranging from craft shows to an annual steeplechase.
The Pioneer Florida Museum, which moved to its present site from the county fairgrounds in 1975, covers 20 acres and includes 10 restored buildings filled with antiques and pieces of Florida history.
The main building, featuring a wide, rustic front porch, houses numerous collections including a set of dolls dressed in replicas of the inaugural gowns of the state's first ladies, as well as Roseville pottery, military memorabilia, antique cameras and fashions from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
There's a small gift shop, an original 13-star American flag, replicas of doctor's and dentist's offices from the early 1900s and a frontier back porch complete with washboard and lye soap maker.
A quick walk from the entrance is the Trilby depot, a small structure filled with antique lanterns and railroad items. Nearby is a 1913 steam engine once used by a sawmill company. Visitors are allowed to climb aboard for a closeup inspection.
The self-guided tour continues to the Lacoochee School, a one-room schoolhouse originally used as a first-grade classroom, and moves on to the Enterprise Methodist Church, which contains the original pews, pulpit, floor and ceiling.
One of the focal points of the Pioneer Florida Museum is the John Overstreet house, from the mid 1860s. Like many Florida homes of this period, this one has a kitchen (with water pump and wood-burning stove) connected to the house by a dog-trot.
The furnishings are not original to the house but represent the period. There's a parlor, dining room and three upstairs bedrooms.
Other museum buildings include the Bromley Shoe Shop, a tiny building filled with shoe repair equipment, which was located in Dade City from 1913 to 1930; the Mabel Jordan Barn, containing a horse-drawn carriage collection, antique farm equipment and a 1921 fire engine; the Fiber Arts building, with quilts, spinning wheels and working looms; and the General Store (looking very Waltons-like). It's the museum's newest building and displays items such as a dress form, tobacco tins and washboards.
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