Spring Clean

Spring is here, although snow flurries are in the air, and the flowers are starting to emerge.

Daffodils, squill, myrtle and hyacinths are blooming now. The crocus are done for the year and the spring beauty plants are breaking through the ground. Soon violets, trillium and tulips will be blooming. April 2nd is the annual Park Day where an army of volunteers will gather and cleanup the grounds. The leaves will be raked from the gardens, mulch will be spread and the grounds will be prepared for the various activities and programs. Come to visit and join in the fun of Park Day!

Scaffolding Returns

The construction crew has replaced the bucket lift they used in the fall with old-fashioned scaffolding. It looks like these final phases of the exterior Study Restoration Project will resemble when Lew Wallace first built it. I can just imagine him standing on the grounds, overseeing the final days of construction of the "pleasure-house of his soul".

Think Green

Top of the morning!

St. Patrick's day find the Museum lawn starting to green up and the siberian squill blooming.

Daffodils are budding and the tulips are sprouting. After a long, ice and snow filled winter, spring cannot come soon enough.

Saturday, April 2nd, is the annual Park Day. In conjunction with Civil War Preservation Trust, Park Day is an opportunity for volunteers to help museum, battlefields, memorials with a variety of jobs. The Museum ground will be cleaned of copious amounts of tree debris, gardens will be raked of their protective layer of leaves, mulch will be spread, perennials and shrubs will be pruned. An army of volunteers will be needed to clean up the 3.5 acres.

Park Day will be held from 9 to 12:30 on Saturday, April 2nd. Bring your rakes and work gloves and join in the fun! Refreshments will be provided to those who participate.

Agents of Deterioration

The 2011 exhibit, Agents of Deterioration, officially opened with a members' sneak preview Friday night.

Guests looked carefully to find one of the featured artifacts in an historic photograph of the Study building as Lew Wallace used it.

Members enjoyed a variety of sweet and savory treats, from sugar cookies to bacon-wrapped dates, as they took in the exhibit.

The wall clings detailing the different agents of deterioration were a focal point of the exhibit. Each graphic consists of a close-up of something on exhibit, making a scavenger hunt that intrigued guests...

...including our youngest visitor!

Come take a close look at the exhibit, open now through December 11.

Daffodils!

Anyone on the grounds at the same time as the Grounds Manager will hear an enthusiastic lesson in plant identification as the first sprouts of the season poke above the soil.

Right now they look pretty short and, to the untrained eye (like mine), unrecognizable....

...but soon they'll be beautiful blooming daffodils! We'll also have tulips as spring approaches, and that's just the beginning.

Winter Gardens

The study gardens have been very active this winter. Since the first of December, the icicle gardens have flourished. Every other week, it seems, a winter weather advisory has been issued. The snow and ice have taken over the grounds. An ice storm left 5.5 inches of ice, to be later covered with 6 inches of snow. A drift between the buildings, after snow removal, left ice 7 inches deep, and had to be chipped away layer by layer. Just late week, the ice and snow melted over most of the grounds, leaving piles in the parking areas.

Many varieties of icicles have grown this winter. The padlock freezing icicles, short and fragile, made life difficult getting into the museum. The eaves icicles have taken over the Carriage House, seeming to grow by the hour.

The gigantic furnace vent icicle grew in huge proportions! The constant dripping from the vent created a stalagmite near the basement entrance. Standing approximately 4 feet tall and 5 inches diameter, the icicle grew and grew. Finally last week, the weather turned 50 for 2 days and all the icicles melted.

Another storm is predicted to bring rain, sleet and snow. It great to see that the crocus and daffodils are starting to emerge from the frozen ground. Mother nature at her best!

The Art of Lew Wallace: Over the Deadline

1865 was a year of events and activity for Lew Wallace. Early in the year he was sent to Mexico to prevent Mexican support of the dying Confederacy. While in Mexico he learned of the end of the Civil War and the death of Abraham Lincoln. Upon his return to Washington, D.C. he served on the tribunal that tried the Lincoln conspirators and he was the presiding judge of the tribunal that tried Commander Henry Wirz for war crimes. Wirz was in charge of the infamous Civil War prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia. After a two month trial, Wirz was found guilty on eleven of thirteen counts of murder and sentenced to death. On November 10, 1865, Wirz was hanged on the site that is now occupied by United States Supreme Court.

During the trial of the Lincoln conspirators Lew Wallace made small pencil sketches to pass the time. During the Wirz trial he also spent time sketching. As the trial unfolded one story in particular haunted the general. He heard stories of the deadline—a line within the stockade which the prisoners were forbidden to cross. Just beyond the deadline was a small stream. In gripping testimony the court heard about a prisoner of war stretching his emaciated arm toward the stream, his hand holding a tin cup. When his hand crossed the deadline, he was shot and killed by one of the Confederate prison guards.

Wallace sketched a vivid image of this unnamed man in tattered pants lying in the mud with his outstretched hand over the stream. This sketch survives, but the whereabouts of a painting based on the sketch is not known. The finished painting was exhibited in Chicago in 1867, in Boston in 1873 and in Indianapolis in 1878. The painting was generally praised for its boldness of conception, technical skill and somberness—although the Boston Advertiser did find it too “horribly realistic.”

Sometime after its exhibition in Indianapolis, the painting disappeared. Whether Wallace retained ownership of the painting and gave it to a friend, whether it was damaged and discarded by family, or perhaps was given to an association or museum and resides deep in a vault somewhere has been lost to history. While the fate of the painting and the name of the subject are both shrouded in mystery, we are fortunate that the sketch survives to convey both the extent of the General’s talent and the personal side of the trauma of the Civil War still so fresh in 1865.