The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
By DAVID GRIMES, Quill Correspondent
CARTHAGE - To say Alice Kibbe was eccentric is an understatement.
The one-time head of the Carthage College biology department once dissected a pony in a bathtub. On another occasion, she brought the jawbone of a whale from Puget Sound to her home here, strapped to the top of her car.
The legacy left Hancock County by the lady who never married and more often than not forgot to cash her paychecks has now taken the form of the Kibbe Hancock Heritage Museum.
Museum displays are a blend of Kibbe's artifacts and bits and pieces of history from the county's past.
"The museum is a creature of the city," said John Adkins, a volunteer at the museum, adding that Carthage pays for the facility's utilities and upkeep.
But the staff of 12 is all volunteer.
Construction of the current building - completed in the mid-1980s - was funded by contributions generated by a fund-raising committee.
Displays include Sauk and Fox artifacts discovered in the area, an 18-star American flag that graced the balcony of the Hotel Carthage when Abraham Lincoln campaigned there in 1858 and furniture from the Kibbe home, including the first pump organ brought to Carthage for use at Trinity Lutheran Church in 1873.
Adkins finds the flag one of the more intriguing displays.
"There never has been a time in history when the American flag had 18 stars," he said. "We did research on it and think it may have represented the 18 anti-slavery states of the time. It was hand-sewn and we think maybe the ladies of Carthage were making a political statement with respect to that."
Another exhibit includes photos chronicling the Mormon influence in the county in the mid-1800s. The old Carthage Jail where Hiram and Joseph Smith were killed is across the street to the north of the museum.
When the Nauvoo Temple was opened to the public last spring, Adkins said the museum experienced an increase in visitor traffic no one could have predicted.
"We usually see 1,000 to 1,200 visitors in a summer. Last year, we had 19,000 sign the guest book and there were probably twice that number who didn't sign it."
Alice Kibbe arrived in Carthage to accept the position at the Lutheran college in 1920 from her home in Bellingham, Wash., where she had worked a variety of posts in the public school system.
Adkins, himself a former educator who retired as dean of the SCC campus at Keokuk in 1987, said it was not unusual for Kibbe to travel the countryside looking for unique items to collect.
"She was an eccentric and a scrounge," he said. "She would look for unusual items that caught her interest and bring them home."
Kibbe's home was a 3,500-square-foot, two-story house on Scofield Street that served as storage space for her discoveries, as well as a boarding house for college students. Female students rented out apartments on the second floor of the house; male students rented space above the garage.
"Some things she bought and other items were sent to her from colleagues and former students who had gone on to serve as missionaries around the world," Adkins said. "She had stacks everywhere. It was so crowded, it was all you could do to walk through the house."
The professor's treasures, found locally and globally, were first put on display at the college.
Kibbe's finds included fossils, bones, flora and fauna indigenous to the area and old tools and machinery.
"She would pull weeds out of the flower plots around the college grounds when she wasn't in class," Adkins said. "She preferred wearing a plain cotton dress and always had a shoestring with a bunch of keys on it around her neck. She would take an alarm clock with her so she wouldn't forget her next class."
While a frugal individual, Kibbe had a reputation as a caring, kind-hearted woman. She would take students along on her trips and often provided money for the care of low-income elderly in the community.
But she never slept in a bed of her own. Rather, she preferred sleeping in a chair in her living room so she could read and work on research between naps.
When Carthage College moved to Kenosha, Wis., in 1964, Kibbe was miffed. After 44 years at the college, she didn't want to retire from teaching, but she also didn't want to make the move to Wisconsin.
She donated her home and collections to the city, reasoning that the history of Hancock County should remain there. A seven-acre wildlife preserve she had maintained was given to the city's park district, while another acreage south of Warsaw along the Mississippi River was given to Western Illinois University.
Alice Kibbe, who cared more about her students and the needy than herself, died of cancer at the age of 87, four years after returning to Washington.
The Kibbe Hancock Heritage Museum, 306 Walnut St., in Carthage is open from 1 to 4 p.m. daily during the summer and limited hours during the winter. More information on tours is available by calling (217) 357-3119. 319-754-8461 Front Desk á 319-754-6824 FAX á 1-800-397-1708 Toll Free