Sultana artifcats headed to Little Rock

Sultana artifcats headed to Little Rock

Items will be displayed at Clinton Library as part of river exhibit

news@theeveningtimes.com

Artifacts from the Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion will be featured in an exhibit on the Mississippi River at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock.

The exhibit, entitled “Mighty Mississippi: A Mosaic of America’s Growth,” will open on Feb. 9 and run through March 8. Sultana Disaster Museum Project Manager Louis Intres said the Clinton Library called the Arkansas Humanities Council to get ideas about what the exhibit should include and were told the story of the Sultana.

The Clinton Foundation reached out to Intres who met with officials from the Clinton Library and made several items from the Marion museum available for display in the exhibit.

“They needed some significant events that occurred along the river and they contacted Arkansas Humanities and they told them about the Sultana story,” Intres said.

Intres said curators at the Clinton Museum had never head about the Sultana and were thrilled to be able to include the story in the exhibit. “They didn’t know anything about the story,” Intres said. “They came here and they visited the museum and found the story to be remarkable.”

The Sultana was a Mississippi River paddlewheel steamboat that exploded north of Memphis in the early morning hours of April 27, 1865.

The boat was carrying over 2,000 Union soldiers who were returning home from the war. Over 1,100 perished when a faulty boiler on the grossly over-loaded boat exploded. Several early residents of Marion helped rescue survivors despite being former Confederates.

Marion opened a small museum commemorating America’s greatest maritime disaster in 2015 and is planning on raising $3 million to build a bigger state-of-the art museum to tell the story.

The Sultana Museum has loaned the Clinton Library a 39 inch replica of the boat; a large canvas water color painting depicting the disaster which was commissioned by Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance Company; an original copy of Sultana survivor Chester Berry’s 1892 book “Loss of the Sultana and Reminisces of Survivors;” Private William Lugenbeal’s alligator curio box containing his personal Civil War artifacts; and pictures of Lugenbeal, Sultana Captain J.

Cass Mason, and Frederic Speed, who loaded the boat and was court martialed following the disaster.

Intres said he is excited that the Sultana will be a part of the exhibit.

“It’s incredibly prestigious and we are very honored and grateful to be included,” Intres said. “You can’t get much better than a presidential library. And to be asked to tell the story of the Sultana with the endorsement of the Clinton Library tells you that our story is important enough and that it is a national story.”

Intres said the exposure that the Sultana and Marion will get as a result of the exhibit will be a big boost to the city’s efforts to build a bigger museum in Marion.

The Clinton Library expects 10,000 to 20,000 will view the exhibit.

“Being a part of the Clinton Library will get the Sultana so much more exposure than we have been able to give it in our little museum,” Intres said. “Even though we have had over 4,000 people from all 50 states and eight foreign countries visit our museum in the three years we have been open, four to five times more people will see it in one month and be exposed to the story than have seen it in Marion.”

The exhibit at the Clinton Library is the latest development in their ongoing efforts to build a new museum. The museum recently received a donation of five volumes containing original issues of every Harper’s Weekly Magazine from 1861-1865, and is working on what will be its biggest and most important annual Sultana Festival that will bring in nationally recognized speakers who will speak not only about the Sultana, but other topics on the Civil War. The museum is also getting closer to making some major announcements about the new museum.

Intres said the Clinton Foundation has also agreed to open doors to potential donors to aid in the museum’s fundraising efforts.

“There’s a lot going on,” Intres said.

By Mark Randall