History Mystery - Solved!
The Internet came to our aid in December, helping us to identify some objects recently moved from the Forbes Mill annex (former home to the history exhibits presented by the Museums of Los Gatos, now NUMU) that we were struggling to identify and date. Collections Registrar, Alexandra Schindler, submitted photos of these objects to a subgroup on Reddit - yes, the same platform which recently made headlines in financial news. This “sub”, r/whatisthisthing, is dedicated to the identification of odd, mysterious and random objects people find. And within hours, these helpful strangers gave us the answers we were looking for!
The first object, which truly stumped us, is an ox bow yoke pin, used to secure the yoke to the ox bow. The second object, which looked to us like some sort of jack, but that we could not definitively identify and date, is indeed a jack, but for covered wagon wheels. Both these curious objects date to the mid 1800s, and possibly could have arrived in Los Gatos with settlers on the Oregon Trail.
Fun Finds!
Lochie Rankin
It was quite a pleasant surprise to open one of our boxes and discover a beautiful, intricately designed, and very well-preserved silver service set that belonged to former Los Gatos resident, Lochie Rankin. Lochie was the first unmarried woman to be sent abroad as a missionary by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. She established a school for girls in Nanxiang, China in the late 1800s, and a school for boys not too far away, in Huzhou, in the early 1900s. In appreciation for her efforts, Lochie’s colleagues at the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society gifted her this gorgeous silver set made by renowned Chinese silversmith Luen Wo. This set was most recently displayed in NUMU’s exhibition Los Gatos: 1887 (2015-2016) and was donated by beloved townswoman, educator, and columnist, Dora Mae Rankin.
-Alexandra Schindler, Collections Registrar
