daviess county historical society

Awesome place to visit; and @ only $2 a person for a guided tour, it's also a super deal. Perfect place for a family activity. They are open 12 to 5 Tuesday through Saturday.

I'll say right off that this is not your standard museum with marble floors and velvet ropes to keep you away from the carefully curated displays, and it's not in a marble edifice that bears the name of a nationally known donor and a world-class architect. Instead, it's in a former Masonic temple, up a looooooong flight of stairs (or in a creaky one-person-at-a-time elevator). That said, they have an astonishing about of historical stuff about Daviess County -- all aspects of it.Start with the huge photo mural of the Ku Klux Klan of Daviess County at the top of the stairs. This is an unfortunate part of the county's history, but there's no sweeping it under the rug. There it is, and if your grandpa is in the photo, well, that's history talking!The most notable part of the museum is a wonderful display of the history of undertaking and embalming through the years that one local funeral home (that buried a lot of my ancestors) set up at the museum. Again, it's history they are depicting, and you are advised to leave your delicate sensibilities at the door. You can see the gear that the traveling embalmer took to homes where someone had died; you can see the gear that was used in the early embalming parlors, and you can see all the appurtnances that went along with the trade, including a great historic collection of coffins and the like. Death today is pretty sanitized and prettied up. That wasn't always the case, and this display documents the progression from then until now. If you wonder how your ancestors lived (and died), this place is at least worth a detour, if not a trip, to see. They have experts who can take you through it, but you can self-tour it pretty easily as well, since there's considerable in the way of explanatory signage. They also have an extensive collection of paper related to local history: directories, memorabilia, ephemera, genealogy, clippings, etc. If you're planning on doing well-organized, systematic research in Daviess County, you probably belong over in the genealogy department of the Carnegie Library just a few blocks away (it's a great collection there and with highly knowledgeable people to help you with it), but if you have got a day or two to spend and are willing to browse through old scrap books and file drawers there is absolutely no telling what you might find here.This museum is definitely not for everyone, but if you like your history un-pasteurized and with a lot of the rough edges still intact, this might just be a place for you. And don't fail to add a push-pin to their map of where visitors come from!