Historical items on display in museum at Penfield

PENFIELD, Ill. — It will be a memorable year at the Historic Farm Days, set for July 9-12, with the celebration of special anniversaries.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the I&I Antique Tractor & Gas Engine Club that organizes the annual four-day event. In addition, it is the 150th year for the town of Penfield, where the showgrounds are located.

“We are commemorating Penfield and our club,” said Betty Bensyl, chairwoman of the museum located in the former Penfield school.

Penfield items are on display in the hallway of the museum.

“We have a lot of memorabilia from Penfield and we are going to put a banner above the displays,” Bensyl said. “We are also working with the Legion to get some of their stuff to display.”

The Penfield grade school had band uniforms.

“There is a tag inside of the uniform that says it was made in Illinois, but not too many small-town schools had band uniforms, especially Penfield,” Bensyl said.

A second band uniform has been donated to the museum.

“People pass away and they have a uniform hanging in a closet and all of a sudden it shows up at our museum,” Bensyl said.

The household area includes a wooden tabletop model radio and a Singer sewing machine.

“There will also be a display of different maps,” Bensyl said. “Everybody likes the pink stove and they talk about it because that’s a little more in the modern era.”

The household exhibit has an old-fashioned kitchen area with several washing machines. A donated kitchen cabinet will be on display for the first time this year.

“It is kind of neat. It is the type of kitchen cabinet I grew up with,” Bensyl said. “It is a wooden cabinet with a flour bin inside it and an enamel countertop.”

In the hallway, visitors to the show can view a display of toy implements that Glenn Miller made during the war when people could not afford to purchase these items.

“He made miniature toys, too, and those are on display,” Bensyl said. “To me that’s interesting how he took a wheel off an old washing machine and made that the front tractor wheel — it’s just amazing how he did things.”

Sometimes people bring things to the show that they want to display in the museum.

“We have a form to fill out if they want to loan it and then they pick it up after the show,” Bensyl said. “Or, a lot of people want to gift it to us and we have a form to fill out for that.”

The chairwoman enjoys spending time in the museum each year at the show.

“Every time someone comes in, I learn so much from people who are talking to their grandkids or spouses,” she said.

A large variety of farm-related items, ranging from hand tools to implements, fill two floors of the building that once was a place for students to learn from the Penfield area.

Most of the items in the museum have been donated, and some are on loan from members of the I&I Antique Tractor and Gas Engine Club.

Visitors have the opportunity to see two very special items in the museum that are on loan from the Smithsonian Institution.

The first one the club got is the 1961 International Harvester HT-341 Turbine Tractor. The next year, the 1903 Hart-Parr tractor was added to the museum display.

Along with the two tractors, the former gym features a couple of additional tractors, as well as larger items such as a sheller, hay equipment and a couple of buggies.

The stairway to the second floor goes to the small farming items. The display includes tools that might have been used for farming from the 1920s to 1950s.

The four former classrooms on the main level of the school have been transformed into exhibit areas by the club members.

One room in the museum is a replica of an International Harvester store. It has shelving and there are displays of all kinds of IH things.

The members of the IH Collectors Club Illinois Chapter 10 staff this area of the museum during the show.

In the corn room of the museum, visitors will see items that include planters, seed corn sacks, signs and shellers.

The I&I club uses the former cafeteria in the school as its meeting room.

On the walls of that room there are posters and memorabilia from the Historic Farm Days from the beginning and also the Half Century of Progress show since day one.

Work has begun by the club members to build a new shed that will be part of the museum starting with the 2027 show.

“The shed will be between the blacksmith shop and the feature building,” Bensyl said.

“We are already thinking about what we can move there and things that are in storage that we can get out and display,” she said. “We are going to be able to spread out our big equipment and make our gym a little more presentable.”

Visitors to the show also have the opportunity to tour the former Penfield Methodist Church on the showgrounds.

“This year we are thinking about displaying pictures in the church,” Bensyl said.

In the past, displays in the church have featured church plates, crosses, nativity sets, hymn books, bibles, baby pictures, wedding photos and Christmas ornaments.

Many of the club members, Bensyl said, don’t know everything that’s in the museum, because they don’t have time to walk around the museum during the show.

“Come in, enjoy, relax and look around,” she said. “You don’t have to hurry through.”