Featured Artifacts

What's this artifact?

It is a Christmas ornament composed of glass beads.  
It adorned the Christmas tree in Sullivan House.

What's this artifact?

It is a raisin mincer, one of many specialized kitchen gadgets invented in the Late 1800's and Early 1900's.  At that time it was all the rage to patent time saving inventions.  Other inventions included:  apple peelers, cherry stoners, nutmeg graters and a green bean slicers. Note that each gadget performs only one task so that you need a different gadget for each task. Now that is clever marketing.

This is a madstone. When placed on a snake, spider or rabid dog-bite it is said to draw the poison out. Madstones are only found in the stomach of wild deer. The madstone is placed on the wound, if there is poison present the stone will stick to the wound. As the madstone draws the poison out it is said to turn bright green. When it is full or all the poison is drawn out the stone will fall off. The stone is placed in warm milk to extract the poison. The wound is free of poison when the madstone no longer sticks to it.

This madstone was owned by William Brown Miller the man who built
Miller Cabin and Millermore

Actually it is a piece of fossilized coral, don't tell Mr. Miller.