The Old Depot Museum in Selma, Alabama is open from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon Monday through Saturday. Visitors can take a trip through Selma's colorful past as one of the most historic cities in the South. A time when oxen where used to plow fiends and thread was still spun on spinning wheels is where visitors find themselves.
The museum offers a chance to look at early plantation records and even the contents of a traveling doctor's kit from the 19th century. The fact that a number of families were on different sides during the civil war can be seen with the cameos of the rabid confederate and Abraham Lincoln's sister-in-law Elodie Todd Dawson. There is even Confederate bills of which some where printed in Selma in the museum.
Nearly half of the munitions that the Confederacy used during the Civil War were produced in Selma. The most powerful of the muzzle loading cannons that were ever produced came out of Selma. The Brooke Cannon and the Confederate ship Tennessee both came out of this small southern town. Visitors to the Selma Museum can touch what remains of the largest industrial complex in the South, cannon balls and shells.
Exhibits in the Old Depot Museum include items as small as the black pins ladies wore in their mourning dresses during the 19th century and as large as boxcars from the railroad. The original land grant issued to the Selma Town and Land Company by President James Monroe, Alabama Governor Benjamin Meek Miller's desk and an 1840's one horse carriage used by a millionaire from Selma to take a trip to New York City.
The silver and china that William Rufus King used while he was the Ambassador to France is included in the museum's collection as well. The citizens that assisted in making the town the Black Belt's Queen City such as former Senators and early physicians can be traced through mementoes in the facility. There are even items from the founder of the Alabama Medical Association, Dr. Albert Gallatin Marby. There are even some items commemorating ex-slave Benjamin Sterling Turner who became the first Congressman of Selma during the Reconstruction.
A tour through the Old Depot Museum will take you from the Civil War all the way to the movement for Civil Rights. One of the founders of Selma during 1819 was Vice President William Rufus King, along with Noble Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King is in the museum In April of 1981 the Selma- Dallas county Museum of History and Archives Inc was incorporated .as a non-profit organization. The title of Old Depot Museum was adopted by the Board of Directors to identify the museums location in an old depot at the end of the historical Water Avenue.
Anyone in the Selma, Alabama area that has an interest in the area's rich history should make it a point to visit the Selma-Dallas county Museum of History and Archives Inc. otherwise known as the Old Depot Museum.
