08/27/2026
Celebrating Women: A Volunteer’s Journey to August 29
This coming Saturday afternoon, August 29, 2026, the Leavenworth County Historical Society will present their annual Celebrating Women event at the Riverfront Community Center in historic downtown Leavenworth. The event is more than an afternoon of remembering women in local and state history. For a twenty-dollar donation, guests will step into a space featuring a key-note address by Leavenworth resident, Kathryn Walker West, First Vice President General, National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a unique silent auction, a Leavenworth photo exhibit, door prizes, and refreshments—all in support of local and state preservation and the broader America 250 observance. At its heart, however, the afternoon is an act of gratitude: a public thank-you to the women who refused to let the past disappear and, by preserving it, claimed their turn in shaping history.
One of the museum’s volunteers who is working to bring the event to life never set out to organize such an event. Her path began simply, with her grandmother. When people asked how she became interested in history, they usually expected her to say genealogy. They were not entirely wrong, but the true beginning was following her grandmother through courthouses, libraries, cemeteries, and small historical societies across Leavenworth County. Those were not formal research trips—simply the places Grandma went, and she wanted to go too. They spent long hours reading headstones, pulling record books from shelves, and talking with volunteers who always seemed to know one more story. At the time she thought they were looking for names. Every marriage record discovered felt like a victory, every census page like solving a puzzle. What she did not yet understand was that her grandmother was looking for people—the challenges they faced, the values they held, and the world they left behind. She taught her to be curious, to ask questions, and to see that every record, photograph, and letter was a door to another story. Most of all, she taught her that the past is not simply something that happened. It is something that still matters.
Years later, museum work introduced her to a different kind of genealogy. She sat across tables from people carrying family Bibles, letters, and boxes of unnamed photographs—faces no one recognized. Again and again she heard the same quiet regret: “I wish I could ask Mom or Dad about this.” She knew that feeling well.
The impulse to protect what remains of history has led to the story of Mary Ellen Everhard. When people hear her name they often picture a photographer, and they are right—but that was only part of the truth. Mary’s passion was people: families, children, the ordinary moments that make up a life. Long before preservation was a popular word, she recognized that the earliest photographs of Leavenworth were something special. She collected the glass negatives from the original photographers who captured the town from its beginning. She cleaned them, labeled them, and stored them with care. And, it is all because of Miss Everhard, the community can still see the streets before they were paved, the storefronts with canvas awnings, the boats along the river and myriad studio portraits of local residents and visitors. She preserved evidence of the early days of Leavenworth. She was not looking for recognition. She was simply protecting the thousands of pieces of local history that might otherwise have been lost forever.
Another thread in the life of our volunteer had begun at seventeen, when her DAR certificate arrived in the mail. Inside was proof that the hard work she and her grandmother had done tracing their lineage had paid off. That certificate meant she belonged to something larger than herself—the women who came before her and the responsibility to honor that history. Nearly twenty years later, the same young woman who once waited for that certificate now serves on the executive board of the Friends of the Frontier Army Museum and as an exhibition curator for the Leavenworth County Historical Society. This Saturday she will meet Leavenworth resident, Kathryn Walker West, also of the local Capt. Jesse Leavenworth Chapter, NSDAR as part of the historical society’s America 250 observance.
All of these pieces—a grandmother’s quiet lessons, the questions left unasked, Mary Everhard’s careful stewardship of glass negatives, the DAR path that began with a certificate—came together for this year’s Celebrating Women event. The afternoon of August 29 is designed to make those connections visible. Guests will move among historical photographs that reveal the faces and streets of earlier Leavenworth. They will bid on items in a silent auction that supports the work of preservation. They will take home door prizes while sharing refreshments and conversation. Above all, they will be invited to see the event not as a single Saturday gathering, but as one more step in a longer story of care.
When the finished plans—the layout of the photo exhibit, the list of auction items, the welcome for a national DAR leader, and the simple act of gathering people in one room—she sees how every earlier chapter prepared her for this one. The genealogy work. The museum exhibits. Mary Everhard’s legacy. The America 250 celebration. They are not separate. They are all part of the same story: one that began with a curious granddaughter and a grandmother who refused to let the past be forgotten.
The Celebrating Women afternoon event invites the community to see itself in the past, to honor the women who preserved it, and to feel a renewed sense that these stories still matter and our local and state history belongs to everyone. The event begins at 1:00pm. Tickets can be secured at the Carroll Mansion Museum, 1128 Fifth Avenue, or on-line: https://leavenworthhistory.org/event-tickets/
