Hope Community Historical Museum - Hope, Kansas The Hope Community Historical Museum in Hope, Kansas is dedicated to preserving the history and culture of its community. The Historical Society has managed to include a lot in this two room former church! If you are lucky, museum director Joe Hirsch may be available to give you a tour. Joe is a high school history teacher who also operates Sunflower State Tours with Kansas travel and history tours. Joe gave us a fascinating tour of the small museum and we liked the ways he related the exhibits to the history of Hope. We also enjoyed hearing him play a wax cylinder on a Edison Cylinder Phonograph, and a Regina Disc Music Box. One of the more interesting parts of the community history is the many Eisenhower family connections to Hope. Margaret Rebecca Matter Eisenhower & Jacob Frederick Eisenhower, grandparents of President Dwight David Eisenhower, moved their family to a 160 acre ranch near Hope in 1878. David Jacob Eisenhower, father of the President lived there until enrolling in Lane University in 1883. He met and married Ida Elizabeth Stover at Lane and they returned to establish a general store in Hope in 1885. It operated until 1887. Edgar Eisenhower, brother of President Eisenhower, was born in Hope in 1889. The final resting place of Margaret and Jacob Eisenhower is Belle Spring Cemetery, about 10 miles west and north of town.
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