Isett Heritage Museum

We are closed today! We hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving! Our normal hours will resume on Friday!

While we were rearranging our J.C. Blair display we noticed part of this shelf was looking faded! The pictures below are a before and after! Does anyone know what common refrigerator item we used to restore the shelf to its original color?

Happy Halloween! Did you know? There is a full moon tonight! A full Moon occurring on Halloween is not a common occurrence and only happens every 18 to 19 years. This year the full moon is called a blue moon! Sadly, the moon won’t actually be blue. The name blue moon is used to talk about the 2nd full moon in a month. This typically happens every 2-3 years. However, tonight is the first time since 1944 that a Halloween full moon will be visible (weather permitting) in all time zones in the United States! Not only is this a blue moon it is also a Micro Moon which means that the moon is about 270,000 miles away from Earth! The moon usually orbits us at around 239,000 miles away! We also want to remind you to wear your mask (not just your spooky one!) and be safe this Halloween!

#LAKESIDELEARNING - For many students, school looks very different right now. That's why we're proud to offer lodging and dining options with breathtaking fall ...foliage AND internet for guests. Check out our sensory educational experiences, too. https://raystown.org/blog/lakeside-learning Terrace Mountain Alpacas East Broad Top Huntingdon County Historical Society Swigart MuseumIsett Heritage Museum Rockhill Trolley Museum Lincoln Caverns, Inc. Penn's Cave & Wildlife Park Broad Top Coal Miners Museum See more

Today is National Voter Registration Day! If you aren't registered to vote you can register to vote here - https://nationalvoterregistrationday.org/register-to-vote/

We will be closed on Monday, September 6th, 2020 for Labor Day! Below is a photo from our archives of people helping to clean up a broken train at the train station in Huntingdon! We want to remind everyone to wear a mask, wash your hands, and have a safe Labor Day! Below is some history on the first Labor Day! On September 5th, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off and marched from City Hall to Union Square in New York City in what many people consider the first Labor Da...y parade. The first labor day was an important step in changing the working conditions in the United States. The average American was working 12 hours a day 7 days a week. In the hopes to make a basic living. Children aged 5 and 6 were working in mills, factories, and mines all across the country while earning a fraction of the money of adults. People faced horrible working conditions. They typically didn’t have regular access to fresh air, bathrooms, and were rarely given breaks. Horrendous working conditions sparked riots. One of the most well-known riots of this time was the Haymarket riot in 1886, during which several policemen and workers were killed. Congress wouldn’t legalize the holiday until 12 years later in the hopes of ending the Pullman strike. The Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike on May 11th, 1894 to protest wage cuts, long hours, and union representatives being fired. On June 26th, 1894 the American Railway Union called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars, which crippled railroad traffic all across the nation. The federal government dispatched troops to Chicago to break the strike, however this unleashed a wave of riots which resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen workers. President Grover Cleveland signed Labor Day into law on June 28th, 1894. See more

This ribbon was found in our archives! We believe it was made in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus 'discovering' America. The date on the bottom has two different days because the Julian calendar (proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC) was being replaced with the Gregorian calendar (the one we currently use) when Columbus set sail. The 400th anniversary in 1892 was part of an effort to placate Italian Americans and ease diplomatic tensions with Italy a...fter 11 Italian Americans were lynched by a mob of thousands of New Orleans residents. The Italian Government demanded the mob be punished. However many Americans sided with the mob. The New York Times printed an editorial which called the victims "desperate ruffians and murders...cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins are to us a pest without mitigations." President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day a one-time national celebration. The killings were investigated and a grand jury claimed that none of the killers could be identified despite also stating that the crowd included some of "several thousand of the first, best, and even the most law-abiding, of the citizens of this city." In 1937 FDR proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday as a result of intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus. In 1966 Mariano A. Lucca founded the National Columbus Day Committee which lobbied to make Columbus Day a federal holiday. The National Columbus Day Committee succeeded in 1968 making Columbus Day one of 10 federal holidays! See more

Over 100 years ago people in the United States were being told to wear a mask! In 1918 the Spanish Flu pandemic was spreading through the United States. The government suggested closing schools, wearing masks, avoiding large events, and holding events outside when possible. A few schools even held class outside! The Red Cross headquarters in San Francisco made 5,000 masks, handing them out for free at 11 AM October 22nd, by 12 PM October 23rd they had given away 40,000 masks!... Newspapers were even printing instructions on how to make your own mask! People who refused to wear masks faced potential prison time, fines, or having their name printed in the local newspaper! One incident in San Francisco an officer for the board of health shot a man who refused to wear a mask, unfortunately wounding 2 bystanders. At a boxing match, the San Francisco mayor was photographed not wearing a mask and was charged $50 (Which equals $937.86 today)! However, just like today, people fought the orders to wear a mask. Everyone at Isett Heritage Museum encourages you to wear a mask when out in public! #WhyIWearIt See more

Check out this article on things to do in the Raystown Lake Region! It includes the Huntingdon County Historical Society, Swigart Museum and Isett Heritage Museum!!

We will be closed on July 4th! We will be open from 8am-5pm on July 5th. We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

Happy St. Patrick's day from everyone at Isett Heritage Museum! We found this postcard in our archives!

Due to Governor Wolf's ordered shut down of all nonessential businesses we will be closed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience and we hope to see you soon!

While archiving today we found a receipt with the words 'War Tax'. When we looked up war tax we found out that in 1917, six months after WW1 began, the United States Congress passed the War Revenue Act; because the war had greatly increased the government's need for revenue and so an income tax increase was established. Thanks to the War Revenue Act, one-third of the cost of "The Great War" had been paid for.