The Worker's Home — one small house, two tellings

House of the 1870s — a museum from 1994

The house: Beside the mansion the museum keeps its counterweight: a working family's small house of the 1870s, moved onto the Oliver property in 1907 and lived in by residents into the mid-1980s, then moved to its present spot in 1992 and opened as a museum house in 1994. Where Copshaholm shows the family that owned the plow works, the Worker's Home was interpreted, at its opening and for most of its museum life, as the residence of a Polish immigrant family of the 1930s — one of the thousands of families the works employed.

The second telling: The museum has since re-interpreted the same house. Its own present account presents the Worker's Home as the residence of a 1950s African American family, through which it explores the community's African American history, the Great Migration and the Civil Rights Movement. Both interpretations are part of the documented record — the first carried in the museum's earlier published accounts and the city's visitor literature, the second in the museum's current description of its own campus — and they are printed here as the record gives them: a small house whose museum meaning was deliberately changed, from one working family's story to another's.

Sources:

1. Clio, "The History Museum, South Bend" (Haines and Adkins, 2018) — the Worker's Home built in the 1870s, moved to the property in 1907, residents into the mid-1980s, moved to its current spot in 1992.
2. Visit South Bend Mishawaka, The History Museum — the Worker's Home opened in 1994 and its interpretation as a Polish immigrant family of the 1930s.
3. The History Museum, "About the Museum" (historymuseumsb.org) — the Worker's Home interpreted as the residence of a 1950s African American family, exploring African American history, the Great Migration and the Civil Rights Movement.