May 19 Program: Meg Wastie, Curator of Education, Museum of Early Trades & Crafts in Madison presents “What’s In a Name?”

Meg Wastie, Curator of Education, Museum of Early Trades & Crafts was introduced by Monty Montague at the May 29 breakfast meeting. She spoke about “What’s in a Name?” Meg has been at the museum for nine years after teaching for 32 years at the Columbia High School in Maplewood.

Meg gave a brief history of the museum and said that the building, built in 1899-1900, is the greatest artifact of the museum. It looks like a church, but was the James Library until it became a museum in 1969. Items in the museum cover the period from Colonial times to pre-industrial revolution. Meg gave a description of the Victorian building.

Her talk was about names of tools and how they relate to people’s names, which can be classified as geographic, patronymic or occupational. She gave a very interesting PowerPoint presentation showing tools and the occupation-related names associated with the tools. For example, barbers are associated with razor blades and bleeding cups. The original barber pole was red and white striped because the original barber wrapped bloody gauze bandages around the pole so that they would dry.

Another occupation is that of a brewer. We remember the name Teresa Brewer. Talking about printing presses and type setting, she noted that in the case holding the lead type, capital letters are found in the “upper case” and small letters in the “lower case.” Meg told many entertaining stories about the origins of names of tools and people.

Earlier, Monty provided a list of names to Meg for all the Kiwanis Club members and she researched the origin of the names. Meg shared the origins of those members who were in attendance. The audience was delighted with the stories and reacted loudly as the origins were read. Several members responded by providing their own understandings about their names.

At the end of the presentation, members enthusiastically applauded this interesting and entertaining event. To learn more about the Museum of Early Trades and Crafts, visit their website.