Mansfield Memorial Museum
When it was built in 1889, the building which now contains the Mansfield Memorial Museum was known as the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building. It housed the Richland County Library, as well as a theater, but was turned into a museum by Edward Wilkinson, tinsmith and acquisitions agent for the Chicago Field Museum. Between 1889 and 1897, 65,000 people visited the museum--at a time when Mansfield has only 14,000 residents. Wilkinson died in 1918 from arsenic poisoning. Some people said he had been poisoned, but he was probably killed after inhaling the arsenic used in tin work. The museum remained open until 1955, then reopened in 1999 at 34 Park Avenue West in Mansfield.
The Museum has a ghost, of course. It is sighted fleetingly as a shadow and heard sometimes--once an employee heard a mysterious sneeze. Is it the ghost of Edward Wilkinson? Possibly.
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