Follett House Museum returns with regular hours

SANDUSKY — The Follett House Museum is back to regular hours for the first time since 2019. Many of the museum's usual hours of operation and special activities were sidelined by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, but regular hours for this year have just been announced. The museum, which offers free admission, will be open: • From noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays during April and May. • From noon to 4 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from June through August for the summer tourism season The museum, housed in a vintage 19th-century mansion at 404 Wayne St. near downtown Sandusky, was disrupted by the pandemic, said Jeremy Angstadt, museum services director for Sandusky Library, which owns and operates the museum. Angstadt said that during 2020 and 2021, admission to the museum only was offered as a tour by appointment. The exception was around Thanksgiving of last year when the museum went forward with its traditional holiday open house. "We're just happy we're going to be able to have hours again and be able to have consistent hours for people to come visit the Follett House," Angstadt said. The museum is typically featured in the Old House Guild's Christmas season candlelight tour of homes, but the tour was called off in 2020 and 2021. Angstadt said during regular hours from noon to 4 p.m. on April 9, the museum will bring back Fiber Arts Day. People working on knitting or sewing projects are invited to do their work at Follett House, which will bring out some of its fabric items for display. In the recent past, the museum has had other events, such as living history presentations from the Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial at Put-in-Bay. Angstadt said he's still working on setting up such events for this year and promised that they are in the works. "That will be in the newsletters," he said when referring to the library's newsletters. The Follett House originally was built in the 1830s and was the home of Oran Follett and his wife, Eliza Follett, who were both prominent members of the community. From the 1940s to the mid-1950s, Sandusky High School home economics classes took place at the home. It now serves as Sandusky Library's local history museum.