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Each of the 8 buildings tells a different story.
Our Story
The Museum is a living tribute to the people who settled in what is now the Goessel community. Telling the story of Low-German Mennonite families who left the steppes of So. Russia (Ukraine now) in 1874, for the religious freedom on the Kansas prairie.
Dedicated in 1974, the Museum complex was established to preserve the memory of our ancestors and the artifacts from early households, farms, schools, churches and the hospital in our Mennonite community.
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In celebration for the Alexanderwohl Village Mennonites coming to the Goessel area in 1874, we are recognizing these Immigrants, with flags of gratitude.
Immigrant House replica
Turkey Red Wheat Palace
Schroeder Barn
Friesen House
Krause House
Goessel State Bank building
South Bloomfield one-room school
1906 Preparatory School
South Bloomfield School is a typical one-room rural school house. In years past one-room schools could be seen dotting the country side, about every two square miles.
The museum has three Mennonite Russian
clocks
These clocks were treasured possessions and were very carefully brought over from Russia.
In the Immigrant House building, there are about 30 family display cases that include belongings of our ancestors. Some of these artifact are the very articles that were brought with them from Russia in 1874.
Death shroud. Oral tradition has it that Russian government required each immigrant to have a shroud, in the event of their death at sea.
"Plowshares" an outdoor metal sculpture (the welded metal sculpture is 650 pounds) and depicts the biblical saying "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares"
Isaiah 2 : 4. It was presented to the Museum by A.J. "Arlie" Regier of Overland Park, to celebrate the Centennial of the Mennonites' arrival to Kansas in '74.
The destructive swords are sculpted into a plowshare, a tool used to produce food. The heavy plow beam has no handle, symbolizing that much labor formerly done by hands, is now performed through technological means. Various types of wheat heads symbolize change.
The families that settled here were farmers and brought with them the Turkey Red Wheat. For threshing the wheat they brought along a pattern to make this threshing stone to use in this country.
Mennonite furniture featuring hand-painted wood grain.
Each of the 8 buildings tells a different story.
1822 Mennonite Russian Clock
To read accounts of hog butchering and rural farm life.
The Three Area Mennonite Churches
