Hornbine School Museum’s Historical Binders Saved

The Hornbine school Museum has closed for the 2023 season. Each year, we pack away items in plastic boxes so the mice can’t destroy materials during the winter. We store some items at our homes for safe keeping. In 2021, I, Dave Downs, took home the library of three ring binders that Beverly Pettine created during her 17 years as teacher-curator of the museum. Those of you who have visited the Hornbine School during the summer have probably seen the ten large binders.

Unfortunately, my water heater gave out and flooded our basement floor. Fortunately, the binders were “safe” in a plastic box. Unfortunately, the plastic box had a crack in it that allowed the water to enter and soak many of the binder’s pages! My wife and I spent many hours trying to save what we could by drying separate pages etc. We ended up with hundreds of wrinkled pages which were out of order. We were able to press the wrinkles out of most of the pages over a period of time but we weren’t able to save some of the pictures or reassemble the binders.

Beverly Pettine came to our rescue. She spent many hours of her own time, this summer, repairing damaged pages and restoring the binders close to their original condition. These binders are a wealth of information about the Hornbine School Museum and all the other Rehoboth one room schools. We invite you to visit the school this coming 2024 season and view them for yourselves. And we thank Beverly Pettine for her dedication to the Hornbine School Museum!