Throwback Thursday: The Ripon Historical Society continues to offer internships in partnership with Ripon College.news

For the past two years, the Ripon Historical Society has worked with Ripon College student volunteers on projects related to Ripon’s history.

Time spent at the Historical Society is of mutual benefit to both society and students enrolled in subjects such as museum studies and art history at the university level.

The Student Volunteer and Intern Program was initiated by Travis Nygard, Director of the Ripon Historical Society and Associate Professor at Ripon College. He leads the classes, workshops, and student volunteer activities that are critical to the success of this collaboration and partnership.

“It’s been great to see this relationship grow over the last few years,” Nygaard said. “Students love learning about their communities and love being able to get their hands on artifacts, scrutinize them, explore archives, and write for historical societies.”

Recently, in the Fall 2022 semester, the Ripon Historical Society welcomed Doshin Friedauer, a senior at Ripon College, as an intern. Friedauer, a native of Omlo, Wisconsin, plans to graduate in English with a minor in Women and Gender Studies and Museum Studies.

Friedauer cataloged and analyzed gender role models and our current lives in the Society’s Toy Collection at the Pickard House Museum Headquarters at 508 Watson Street. Over the past few decades he has identified the use of color palettes for children’s role-playing, toy functions, written messages, photographic illustrations, and consumer marketing. Registered toys for professional archiving. Accessioning is the modern museum practice of documenting and numbering items within a museum’s collection so that storage areas are assigned for easy access for future exhibitions or research requests.

This process is a natural extension of Friedauer’s museum research skills and ongoing hands-on learning experience.

Friedauer was supervised by Pat Grahn, vice president and curator of the Ripon Historical Society.

“I’m sure Doshin learned a lot about how boys and girls were portrayed and interacted as children in past American society,” she said. It reflected the “traditional male and female roles” of Motherhood and housework are social expectations for women, so girls played with miniature kitchens, cleaning supplies and other household items. Boys played with toy guns, cars, airplanes and mechanical engineering products. I was there. Many of her potential career paths included the possibility of entering roles in the military, manufacturing, architecture, or even business and travel. It is now common to allow children to choose what they want to play, instead of assigning toys solely by gender. ”

Many of the toys in the Ripon Historical Society archives were donated by two living Ripon families, the Kruegers and the Zobels.

Both of these families had two children who never married and continued to live in the family home as adults.

“When these members of the family passed away, most of the contents of their homes were donated to the Ripon Historical Society,” Grahn said. Until now, we have provided toys for two, sometimes even three generations of children.”

In addition to recent internships, Ripon College students working for the Historical Society have created professional exhibits and exhibits, written articles for the Commonwealth Press’s “Ripon Now” column, posted on Facebook, and visited the Ripon Historical Society Cemetery. has been activated. Architecture walking tour.

“As students learn, they gain experience in relevant subjects outside of the university campus,” said Steve Arbor, administrator of the Ripon Historical Society. “In this way, we can all collectively benefit from collaborative planning, perspective and project completion.”

The Ripon Historical Society is the oldest continuously operating historical society in Wisconsin.Open Friday and Saturday from 10am to 1pm

For more information, follow us on Facebook/riponhistory or www.riponhistory.org.