The story of the Slidell museum...
A Museum Behind Bars: an article from 1987
The
yellowed pages of an old school playbill, a sewing basket, and the
jacket of a World War I uniform are displayed in one cabinet. In another
are old newspapers and family photograph albums. An antique pump organ
and gramophone stand in a corner. These items are now a museum
collection housed in Slidell, Louisiana's, old city jail and town hall
that was built in 1907.
"We're a local-history museum. We tell about the place and the people," says Director Dale Tidrick.
The
objects in the museum are far less valuable than those found in many
larger and more well-endowed Louisiana repositories. But for the people
who live in Slidell or whose families once called the town home, the
eclectic collection is priceless.
Genealogists may discover
valuable pieces of history from the papers of several founding fathers.
The tax receipts from a former boardinghouse reveal that the owners
received an astounding $8.15 bill for property taxes in 1909. A
photograph taken in the early 1940's shows Lions Club members
installing street signs.
Slidell grew up as a railroad stop on
the line between Jackson, Mississippi, and New Orleans. The town was not
chartered until 1888, even though a post office was established four
years earlier. The museum displays the 1884 certificate presented to
Jacob F. Hufft commissioning him as a postmaster at Slidell Station.
Tidrick
says there was plenty of excitement in the museum building during the
four decades that it was used as a jail. He repeats a favorite local
tale about the man who got intoxicated every Friday. "They would haul
him in, and he would get out on Saturday morning. Then he would show up
before the judge on Monday to be fined.
"Finally the judge
decided to try and teach him a lesson, so the man was kept in jail all
weekend," continues Tidrick. "But when he went before the judge on
Monday morning, he was still drunk. A buddy finally owned up to going up
the street to a drugstore and buying a bottle of whiskey. He also got a
straw from the soda fountain and let his jailed pal drink through the
bars of the window."
