Tecumseh Area Historical Museum will be closed starting Sunday, December 18 through March 2023.  Last OPEN DAY is Saturday, December 17, 2022 from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Thank you so much for visiting with us at the Tecumseh Museum.  We appreciate the time you spend with us.

December 18 through the end of March the museum will be closed so that during this time, our volunteers do a lot of cleaning, rearranging, and working with our archives.  It’s a big job with all the donations received during the year, as well as all the displays that need to be changed out.

If you email us in advance, when you might be in the area, we can try to arrange with a volunteer to meet you and open the museum if it’s not in disarray!.  Please give us time to get back with you, as we are all volunteers and are not always at the museum to answer the phone so if you’d email that would be better!.  Email at historictecumseh@gmail.com.

REOPEN ON SATURDAY, APRIL 1ST, 2023.

Join in the May Day Celebration!  Order your May Day Baskets to be delivered to neighbors, friends, co-workers, or that special someone!  Special Delivery options or pick up the basket at the museum!  See our May Day Basket under the Events page for all the details and form.  You can also call the office to leave a message or email historictecumseh@gmail.com us so we can talk with you about your order.

With a long and varied history dating back to before the Druids of the British Isles and the Romans, the most common acceptance of May Day is the welcoming in a change of the season–winter to spring.  The Romans celebration of Floralia, a devotion to their goddess of flowers, combined with the British celebration of Beltane, a festival between the light and dark periods of the year, another addition to this event was the maypole.  Tracing back to Medieval times, villagers would enter the woods to find a tree that would be cleaned and set up in the village centers to dance around as part of a fertility ritual.  However in the United States, May Day celebrations were discouraged by the Puritans. The May Basket, during the 19th and 20th century instead was celebrated, and were created with flowers, candies, and other treats and hung on the doors of friends, neighbors and loved ones on May 1st.

In an attempt to end inhumane working conditions in the United States, May Day is associated with the labor rights strike that began with the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, later known as the American Federation of Labor, who held a convention in Chicago in 1884, proclaiming “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.”  However, strikes, demonstrations and protests in 1886, along with prison and death sentences, hanging, suicide in America, and riots in the socialist and labor parties of Europe marred the history of May Day.  While recognized in many European countries, this labor event is ironically rarely recognized in the United States, and in President Grover Cleveland moved the US celebration of Labor Day to the first Monday in September.  President Dwight Eisenhower, in 1958, declared May 1st as “Law Day” celebrating this aspect in the creation of the United States.

At the Tecumseh Museum, we want you to enjoy May 1st as the celebration of spring time with our “May Basket” filled with goodies. Contact us with your order and surprise someone special or enjoy the basket for yourself.  Happy May Day!