Mid-America Windmill Museum

 Special Attractions
    Baker Hall Recption Center     Power Mill Building     Robertson Post Windmill     Samson (O'Connor) Windmill

 Newsletter
    Windmill Clipper

 

Museum Open
April – November

 

Hours

 Tues. – Fri. 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
 Sat. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
 Sun. 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.

 

Admission

 Adults $4.00
 Seniors 55+ $3.50
 Student/Child $1.50
 Children under 6 Free


Address

 732 S. Allen Chapel Road
 Kendallville, IN 46755
 260-347-2334


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History of the Museum Cont. Part II


Lights! Camera! Action! Official Grand Opening! Opening Day for the Mid-America Windmill Museum was May 23, 1994. The ribbon cutting ceremony was presided over by Kendallville Mayor Larry McGahen and world renowned windmill author and expert, Dr. T. Lindsay Baker. The celebration continued when the museum proudly hosted the 6th Annual International Windmillers Trade Fair in June. This was the first time the Trade Fair was ever held east of the Mississippi River. It was indeed an honor for the Mid-America Windmill Museum and Kendallville, Indiana.

Word of the museum was spreading and more windmills were being acquired. The museum was fortunate to be able to purchase its first big collection of windmills in March 1997 from Cornelius Friesen of Mead, Kansas. Included in the ten windmills purchased were an 1889 Aermotor, a Whizz, and 4 styles of Fairbury, a bob-tail Raymond, Raymond W and the garden Fairbury.

Work continued on adding buildings, restoring windmills, raising money, and recruiting volunteers. Plans were made in 1999 to get a grant from the “Build Indiana Fund” to construct a multi-purpose building for the museum. In addition to that building, the museum was working with Dreaming Creek Homes Company from Virginia to build a replica of the Robertson Post Windmill that is in Williamsburg, Virginia. Christmas was early for the museum when the opportunity to buy a large collection of windmills came in the form of an advertisement in the Windmillers’ Gazette in fall of 1999. The museum was able to purchase 54 windmills from the collection of the late Lefty Christopher of Monahan, Texas. January 2000 found four museum volunteers traveling to Texas to oversee the matching, marking, disassembling and loading 34 completely/partially restored mills and 20 unrestored mills for shipment back to Kendallville. Truck arrived January 25 and the work began to prepare to reassemble the mills to be erected later.



Continued