Fremont Local History Museum

This story about the Fremont Local History Museum was first broadcast during the live Ohlone Tri-City News program on May 3, 2023.

Cavyn McDonald, Reporter
Gustavo Sotelo, Photographer

REPORTER (V/O): Located by the hills of mission peak, The Washington Township local history museum shares the history of the cities of Fremont, union city, and Newark.
BARBRA BAXTER: It’s a combined collection. There were two local historical societies, the Washington township historical society, and the mission peak heritage foundation, and they came together to pool their resources to build, collect, and hold the stuff in this museum. MARJORY BEGLEY: They needed someplace to put all this. And at one time in 1909, it was known as Washington Township, and it was union city, newark, and the five little towns.
REPORTER (V/O): The museum Hosts various exhibits centered on history in both the local area and California at large.
BARBRA BAXTER: We have the (?) collection of photographs that local doctors managed to get in the 1960s and 70s. before there were scanners he would take pictures of some of the early family’s photographs
MARJORY BEGLEY: I think one of my favorites is the gold rush. Also, the ariel of the of Niles and it shows all the different.. because when we started out the was so agriculture, we grew a lot of things here and it became more citified and things changed
REPORTER (V/O): Workers and volunteers share knowledge on the exhibits in the museum, and the stories behind pieces in them.
BARBRA BAXTER: I kind of like the ostrich egg over in the display cabinet because it’s a really cute story about boys in the 1890s who were fascinated with, they collected things. And so they collected bird eggs, and most of the bird eggs in that exhibit are local birds that you find out in the fields, but there’s an ostrich egg in there. The story is that there was an ostrich farm near Fresno and they were trying to raise ostriches commercially so the little boy had the egg collection here and traded an egg for the ostrich egg in Fresno. he hoped he could hatch it but of course he didn’t.
REPORTER (V/O): The museum’s staff share their thoughts on why the museum and local history are so important.
BARBRA BAXTER: I think all history is important. We need to know where we’ve come from, and what made things happen the way they happened so we can know where we’re going. I think it’s a good idea to have a lot of info on the people who came before us. history in the past was written by the people who were the most important people and were trying to be a little more expansive in doing some of the histories of the people who didn’t get there stories told in the first place. MARJORY BEGLEY: I want people to know how we developed where we came from children need to know how the city started and it’s important to know those things. It gives you a basic background of how we started and where were heading to.
MARJORY BEGLEY: Were a fun organization, and were small and were not like a big museum but were a museum that, it kind of old fashioned museum.
REPORTER (V/O) For more information on the museum and how to volunteer, you can visit museumoflocalhistory.org