Mason Square Museum

The Mason County Historical Society is pleased to announce the opening of its new Mason Square Museum on Saturday, April 7, 2007. The festivities will start at 10 A.M. and continue throughout the afternoon.

The museum is located at 130 Fort McKavitt Street on the north side of Mason's courthouse square. The recently renovated building was originally a tinsmith's shop and dates from 1905.

"We encourage everyone to come see this marvelous addition to Mason's attractions," said Lee Graham, president of the historical society.

The Mason Square Museum will feature displays on Fort Mason, the Mason County "Hoodoo" War, Indian captives, the early German colonists, geology and archaeology, and the first banks. A shop at the front of the museum will sell gift items and books on regional history.

One of the highlights of the museum's displays is North America's largest gem-quality topaz, discovered in Mason County in 1904. The pale blue crystal weighs 1,296 grams (almost three pounds). The Smithsonian Institution purchased the topaz in 1913 and recently agreed to lend it to the Mason museum.

The celebration on April 7 will begin with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Dennis Evans, former chair of the Mason Square Museum Committee, will speak about the origin and development of the museum project. Refreshments will be served.

Two special guests on opening day will be Gerda Lehmann Kothmann and Esther Lehmann, who are believed to be the last two living children of an Indian captive in North America. Their father, Willie Lehmann, was kidnapped by Apaches near Loyal Valley in 1870. He managed to escape four days later, but his older brother Herman spent all of his adolescent and teenage years with the Apaches and Comanches. Herman Lehmann's autobiography, Nine Years Among the Indians, was published in 1927 and is still a popular seller. Visitors to the museum on April 7 will have a chance to talk with the two sisters about their firsthand recollections of their father and uncle.

The Lehmann brothers exhibit will feature a pair of beaded moccasins made by Herman Lehmann and loaned to the museum by the family of William "Sonny" Bawcom. Lehmann gave the moccasins to his nephew, Otto Keyser, who later gave them to Travis Bawcom of Llano.

Wilburn Shearer, who has hunted for artifacts from Fort Mason for more than fifty years, will be present at the open house to discuss his collection of rare buttons, pipes and other objects used by officers and soldiers.

Planning for the new museum started in 2002, when a group of interested citizens met to discuss the possibility of opening a downtown facility that would draw tourists' attention to the colorful history of the region and serve as an adjunct to the existing museum in the old schoolhouse. Several fundraisers for the project attracted widespread interest and enthusiastic support.

"Those of us who have worked to see this project come to fruition are extremely excited," said Van Rea, who currently chairs the Mason Square Museum Committee.

The museum's exhibits will focus on the most eventful three decades in Mason County's history, from the first settlers of the late 1840s through the end of the Hoodoo War in 1877.

In 1847 German colonizer John O. Meusebach explored the area during his expedition to negotiate a peace agreement with the southern Comanches. He first met the Penateka chief Ketumsee where the town of Mason now stands. Not long after that, Mason's earliest German settlers established their homes on the Llano River.

The town of Mason grew up around a military post that the federal government created in 1851. Fort Mason was home to the U.S. Army's elite Second Cavalry and proved to be a training ground for twenty future generals, including Albert Sidney Johnston and John Bell Hood.

However, Fort Mason is most famous for having been the last military post that Robert E. Lee commanded for the federal army. In January 1861, he wrote from Fort Mason: "I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union."

When he left Mason the following month, Lee made his first recorded statement indicating which side he would choose in the impending war between the states: "I shall never bear arms against the United States, but as it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in defense of my native state Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty."

The same month, Mason County voted against secession by 97 percent, the highest margin of any "unionist" county in Texas. During and after the Civil War, while the fort was in disarray, Mason was one of the counties hit hardest by Plains Indian raiders. At least five children from Mason were abducted by Apaches or Kiowas.

In the 1870s, cattle rustling in Mason and Llano Counties led to the Hoodoo War, which author David Johnson called "the most bitter feud in Texas history." This bloody range war divided German and non-German settlers along ethnic lines. A number of men were lynched, ambushed and gunned down, and the Texas Rangers were called in to quell the violence. One of the participants in the conflict was the famous gunfighter Johnny Ringo.

The museum will feature a rotating exhibit on early Mason settlers, starting with Conrad Pluenneke. Rev. Pluenneke, a Methodist circuit rider and self-taught homeopathic physician, was one of the first residents of Mason County's oldest settlement, the Lower Willow Creek community.

Antique gun enthusiasts will enjoy the museum's firearms display, which includes a Carolina long rifle, a Winchester Model 1873 rifle, a muzzle-loading German shotgun, a Remington New Model Army 44-caliber revolver, and a Colt 45-caliber "Sharpshooter."

The Mason Square Museum is the latest addition to the sites operated by the Mason County Historical Society, which also maintains the reconstructed officers' quarters at Fort Mason and the Mason County Museum in the Historical Building south of the square. "All three of these projects have required a huge effort by volunteers and serve as a source of pride for this community," said Mason Square Museum Committee chair Van Rea.

The new museum is still a work in progress, and the committee will continue to expand the collection. Anyone interested in lending or donating artifacts is encouraged to contact Mr. Rea at (325) 347-5103 or vvxr@ctesc.net.

The Mason Square Museum is scheduled to be open 10 A.M. till 4 P.M. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. For the latest information, call the museum at (325) 347-0507.