One of the rooms at the museum that has been used as a catchall and storage room for years was recently cleaned up and renovated into a more pleasant display and storage room. The room had served as the resting place for a pre-civil war barn loom but couldn’t really be accessed due to other materials in the room and the rooms condition. It was decided a couple of months ago to clean the room up and make it a part of the display and storage space in the basement of the museum.
WCHS president Sam Lattuca took on the task of converting the room and with the assistance of volunteers Ursula Richey and Scott Pierce the room was cleared and the walls, ceiling and floors were painted. Lattuca built four 8 foot long shelve sections in his garage and they were moved into the museum basement room as sub-assembled pieces where they were completely assembled with the assistance of his daughter and son-in-law, Angie and Damon Carter. During the process, the large barn loom which occupied the center of the floor had to be moved out of the way and then back in place. Bruce Carter helped wrangle the loom along with WCHS board members. The shelves were painted by volunteers Khani Duncan and Debbie Lattuca.
New lighting helps illuminate the barn loom and its associated pieces along with a Grand spinning wheel, wool carding tools and a spinning weasel which was used to measure yarn lengths. New display signage is currently being installed to help explain the process of converting not only raw sheep’s wool but rags and flour sacks into usable materials used by generations of pioneer families.