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Cedar Community: Life the way it should be. The way you want it.

The former homestead of Cedar Community’s original benefactor, William Koehl, was completed in 1865 after the family had lived in a log cabin for several years on the site. Today, Heritage House preserves both the furnishings of a bygone era and the daily experiences of an early settlement farm family.

Schoolmarms and special event guides help visitors re-live history by offering tours that often include demonstrations of a crank telephone, an early wax cylinder phonograph and pump organ. Young guests are amazed to learn about unheated bedrooms, tick mattresses filled with goose feathers and warming stones;  “thunder mugs” (more politely called chamber pots); the many uses of homemade lye soap; straight-edge razors and shaving strops; weekly family bathing and clothes washing in a round tub near the woodburning stove; and how a mustache cup is used! A collection of quilts and other items made from feed/flour sacks help visitors learn nothing was wasted on a farm – and the concepts of re-using and recycling are not so modern after all.

For details about upcoming Heritage House events open to the public (such as open houses, demonstrations and guest speakers). usually held three to four times per year, or to arrange a tour for adult groups when the school groups are not visiting, please call the Ye Olde School Office at 262.306.4575 or contact yos@cedarcommunity.org.