Museums Musings 4-2002

Faithful Observer readers will recall our thanking those who have donated historic items and papers pertaining to Lake Helen and Cassadaga history. Recently the museum has received more donated artifacts as follows:

Joshua Talbot of Lake Helen donated items once used by Oscar Roberts, a local independent saw mill operator. The gifts included a cross cut saw, a froe, two cant hooks and other lumbering paraphernalia. Thank you Mr. Talbot!

Also from Vincent and Janie Owens of DeLand we received a pie safe that was made by the late Ray Sherman of Cassadaga and was used by him and his wife, Hazel, while they lived at the very end of Lake Street in Cassadaga. The venerable old pie safe was actually being left for garbage when retrieved by the Owens recently. According to Lake Helen City Commissioner Lewis Long, Ray Sherman originally lived in Willoughby, Ohio and came to Cassadaga early in the 1900�s due to the influence of fellow Spiritualist E. W. Bond (Lewis Long�s great, great grandfather). E. W. Bond had, himself lived in Willoughby and was Mayor there before arriving at Cassadaga Camp about 1880.

Ray Sherman, a builder, constructed the two-story frame house in the very southwest corner of Cassadaga Camp (near Lake and Chauncey Streets). He built other homes in Cassadaga and Lake Helen as well, including the circa 1924 four-unit apartment building on Garden Street (which Tony Troy recently renovated to good effect).

Ray Sherman married Hazel (maiden name unknown to me) Sherman in 1922. She was quite active in Cassadaga, Lake Helen and DeLand civic affairs and founded the Lake Helen-Cassadaga Women�s Club. She died at age 96 at Fish Memorial where she had been a volunteer, giving thousands of hours at the reception desk. Mr. Sherman passed away in the 1940�s. Both are buried in the Cassadaga Cemetery.

The pie safe, though not a classic example of pine cabinetry with perforated sheet tin, is a good example of simple slat and screen construction. The pine slats were recycled from a pack crate that bears the words �R. B. Sherman, Lake Helen, Fla.� The pie safe, thus, represents an older way of doing things when people re-use available materials that were at hand. We thank the owns for this historically significant piece.

The museum still needs items of local interest that serve to interpret our cultural heritage. If you have old papers, documents or objects that were used in Lake Helen or Cassadaga industry, banking, law, civic functions, churches or family life and are willing to share them with posterity, please contact Lake Helen City Hall at 228-2121 or Oscar Brock at 228-3910.