A Museum Behind the School: The Founding, 1946

Mishawaka, 1946

The idea came from a mother of the Eberhart family and was carried by the school system's own supervisor of its youngest pupils. Mrs. Carol (Samuel) Eberhart Hillier brought the idea of a children's museum to the School City of Mishawaka's administrative staff; she and Miss Hannah M. Lindahl, the School City's elementary supervisor, persuaded the district of the value of a children's museum to enhance the education of Mishawaka's children. The first meeting of a museum committee was held on January 30, 1946. The museum that resulted opened in 1946 behind Emmons School at 1402 South Main Street, and was named the Hannah Lindahl Children's Museum in Lindahl's honor.

It was conceived, in the words of the account the genealogical society preserves, as "a children's hands-on museum with artifacts representing Mishawaka history" — a teaching collection before it was anything else, seated on school ground, staffed through the schools, and opened and closed with the school calendar for the whole of its documented life. The woman it was named for belongs to this history's People file; her birth and death dates are not established in the sources read, and the gap stands there with the museum's own records and the School City archives named as its settling sources.

Principal sources

1. South Bend Area Genealogical Society, "Hannah Lindahl Museum" (sbags.org) — Hillier's idea, Lindahl's office, the committee meeting of 30 January 1946, the address behind Emmons School.
2. The Clio, entry 22458, "Hannah Lindahl Children's Museum" — the 1946 opening; the naming in honor of the former elementary supervisor.
3. This build's People pass — the Lindahl entry and its named gap.