Faith In Brown County: Bells are Ringing

The Dacotah Prairie Museum proudly presented a major new exhibit entitled “Faith in Brown County: Bells Are Ringing”, the exhibit touched on two separate but related themes. The first explored the part religious faith played in the settling of the County and the second featured a wedding scene, highlighting the museum’s extensive wedding dress collection.

The Homestead Act brought a steady flood of settlers and land seekers to Brown County, many of whom gave up after meeting the primitive conditions and backbreaking labor of homesteading. Some brave pioneers stayed and in a strange land had little to fall back on except the faith traditions they brought with them. Baptisms, confirmations, weddings, funerals and care of the sick were some of the ways faith touched the everyday lives of county pioneers.

The exhibit included two adjoining museum rooms, one assembled as an 1880’s country church during a wedding. This room contained a stained glass window, pews, baptismal font and piano harp and is complete with a minister, groom, and weddingguests. The connecting room was the dressing room for the bride and bride’s maids and displayed seven of our vintage wedding dresses.

As a special addition to the exhibit, Brown County churches that wished to participate were featured, sharing their history and artifacts of their time in Brown County. Three churches were highlighted in the three large window displays and alternated three times per year. One of he three churches that opened the exhibit was: Trinity Episcopal Church in Groton, no longer operating, but the first church in Brown County.

To view other past exhibits, click here.