10/19/2010
GIBSONVILLE — After two years of work to make it a reality, a new museum celebrating the history of Gibsonville opened recently in the nearly 130-year-old town that straddles the Guilford County-Alamance County border.
The museum, at 219 E. Main St., is adjacent to Gibsonville’s post office and features artifacts and photographs of early businesses and prominent residents, says Richard Kleeburg, a Gibsonville Museum and Historical Society Inc. board member.
Gibsonville, incorporated in 1871, was named after Joseph Gibson, whose ancestor, Andrew Gibson, settled in the area to farm and look for gold in the 1770s. The Gibson House still stands on U.S. 70 west of the town. Two descendants of the Gibson family were on hand at an Oct. 9 museum open house, Kleeburg said.
Museum displays and photographs include items chronicling: The Lahoma silent theatre (now Kimber’s restaurant); the Overman Chair factory; the Gibsonville Drug Co.; Mrs. P.T. Burke, the first secretary-treasurer of the state PTA; and former Gibsonville Mayor Berry Davidson, the builder of the Minneola Cotton Mill in 1886.
Museum curator Howard Hendricks, a history instructor at the Guilford Technical Community College, is a former Gibsonville planner and former curator of the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.
The museum hopes to have a second open house sometime in November, Kleeburg said.
The museum is “a work in progress” and museum officials are seeking donations to present a wider range of life in Gibsonville, said Kleeburg’s wife, Linda Kleeburg.
“We tell people … we haven’t got a lot of things covered that we would like to. We just tell them that they haven’t shared,” she said and laughed.
Money to pay for the museum’s photographic display that cost roughly $1,500 came from about 60 folks who paid $50 apiece for charter memberships. The Textile Heritage Museum in Glencoe and Burlington-Alamance County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and other groups gave varying amounts.
Society President and former Gibsonville Town Manager Deleno Flynn donated the museum space, and Tom Lindley Jr. provided office at storage space at Minneola mill. The nonprofit society is also selling second-year memberships and Christmas ornaments for $10. A volunteer staff maintains the society and the museum.
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