Grant to preserve maritime history

SANDUSKY — The Maritime Museum of Sandusky is proud of its big collection of objects and documents showcasing Lake Erie history. Now it's about to share some of its treasures with the world. The Mylander Foundation recently awarded the museum with a grant of about $3,000 to support what's known as the Maritime Heritage Collections Access Project What that means: • The museum will replace its aging collection database • Digital images of the collection will be uploaded online, making documents, photos and other museum pieces available to researchers and history buffs. Molly Sampson, now in her fifth year as the museum director, said the museum has about 25,000 objects in its collection, including photos, documents and artifacts. "This project represents an important investment in preserving and sharing the maritime history of our community," Sampson said. "The Mylander Foundation's support allows us to modernize how we care for our collections while making them more accessible to historians, educators, students, genealogists, and anyone interested in the rich maritime heritage of the Sandusky area." The museum can use volunteers willing to help with the process of converting museum pieces into digital photos. Anyone interested should contact the museum later in the summer. Photos and documents will be an immediate priority with a goal of making some of them available online, perhaps within a year, Sampson said. "It will be an ongoing, never-ending process, like it is for all museums," Sampson said. George Mylander (1932-2016) was a former Sandusky city commissioner and mayor and also a local philanthropist and educator. In the late 1990s, he gave Sandusky $1 million to build the waterfront plaza downtown that has his name on it. A 2012 interview with the Register suggests that he was interested in history and would have been pleased with the foundation's grant. He recalled persuading his parents in December 1941 to take him to Cleveland to watch airplanes take off and land. When they returned home, Mylander's grandmother was at the house, and she had news. She said, "It's terrible. Pearl Harbor has been bombed. Thousands have been killed," Mylander recalled. Sampson said she is particularly looking forward to digitizing 1950s payroll documents from Sandusky's Lyman Boat Works, famed for its line of wooden boats. "It seems like it might be a really boring thing, but I love the people stories in our history," Sampson explained. "This gives us the names of the people who actually put (the boats) together."