Houston Baptist University Museums Day Trip - January 20, 2011

by Lucy Salas



Everyone enjoyed our visit to the HBU Museums.

It has been several months since we had a Day Trip because of difficulty in obtaining a Harris County bus. So, in order to provide a Day Trip in the 1st Quarter of 2011, we thought outside the box and came up with a Drive-Yourself Day Trip.


Our tour guide, Erin Price, made all the exhibits come to life in the Southern History Museum.

We drove our own cars and met at 10:00 am on January 20th, at the Houston Baptist University to visit The Dunham Bible Museum, the Museum of American Architecture and Decorative Arts, and the Museum of Southern History. All three museums are housed in the Morris Cultural Arts Center at HBU. We were treated with docent conducted tours of the museums with details of the major exhibits explained.

Our first stop was The Museum of Southern History, which chronicles the history of the South during the mid-1800s. Visitors peruse room settings, cases, and dioramas to view clothing, fine furnishings, uniforms, tools, and weapons that help convey a sense of those who settled in the region and how they rebuilt their lives after the Civil War.



Docent, Suzie Snoddy, explains all the displays to us at the Museum of American Architecture and Decorative Arts.


Visitors to The Museum of American Architecture and Decorative Arts take a step back in time as they learn about the social history and material culture of people settling in Texas between 1830 and 1930. The Museum provides a warm, intimate and friendly setting for the household furnishings and decorative arts which help the visitor appreciate the changes that occurred as Houston grew from a frontier settlement to a town.

Sure to enchant the museum’s visitors, both young and old, are the Theo Redwood Blank Doll Collection and the Schissler Miniature Furniture Collection. The doll collection, one of the finest in the country, shows the evolution of play dolls, from a rare Georgian period carved wooden doll, to 19th century paper mache dolls with molded hair, china and bisque dolls with leather bodies, wax over composition, fabric and many examples of 20th century dolls. The collection also contains doll-like figures from Egyptian, pre-Columbian, African and Chinese cultures.


Our guide for the Dunham Bible Museum, Doug Sanders, was very knowledgeable of Bible history.

The Dunham Bible Museum, with its extensive collection of rare Bibles, is dedicated to telling the story of the most important book in the world. On public display are
    * ancient manuscripts
    * decoratively illuminated medieval Scriptures
    * examples of the earliest printed Bibles
    * the earliest Bibles in English
    * the earliest Bibles printed in America
    * Bible translations from across the centuries and around the world.

The Museum's creative exhibits awaken and enhance an appreciation of the history, preservation, and influence of the one Book most influential in individual lives and in the culture of civilizations.



The food in the campus cafeteria was delicious and there was lots of it.

Our visit to HBU included a all-you-can-eat lunch at the campus dining cafeteria in The Eula Mae Baugh Center. We had excellent choices on the food and it was delicious. Everyone had a great time.

Attendees were:
Ralph & Estella Garcia, Lawson & Kay Cook, Daryl & Brenda Moss, Jeannie Brandt, Lucy Salas, Mary Gomez, Virginia Vargas, Charlene Chaney & Dorothy Bigbee.

Join us soon on another exciting Day Trip.