Allen County Museum

We visited this museum in Lima, Ohio for one reason — to see the display of objects that had been swallowed by people. That was enough of a draw for us. It wasn’t a large collection, filling just one case on a hallway wall.

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Here are some close-ups.

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Nearby was an exhibit about John Dillinger. He was arrested and jailed in Lima for bank robbery. On October 12, 1933, three of his gang members entered the Allen County Jail, killed Sheriff Jesse Sarber and freed Dillinger. The four were caught in Tucson, Arizona. Two were sentenced to death, one to life imprisonment and one, Dillinger, was extradited to Crown Point, Indiana where he escaped again.

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We had an hour before the museum closed, so we made a quick tour and saw …

a milk wagon used by a local dairy,

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a 1925 Shay locomotive that was used in, and rescued from, a local stone quarry,

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a reproduction of a local canteen used to serve food to military personnel during World War II,

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A sausage-stuffer from 1852,

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a goblet from Martha Washington’s home,

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and an exhibit of cup plates. A sign explained that “tea drinkers of the last century usually poured tea from cup to saucer to cool. To protect the table, the cups were then placed on little cup plates, which were almost always of highly decorated pressed glass. The cup plates exhibited here were made by the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company on Cape Cod and the New England Glass Company in Boston and Cambridge between 1818 and 1858.” I had no idea.

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Oh, and this lovely clown bank.

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