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The E. A. Arnim Archives & Museum takes pride in its archival collection documenting the history of the Flatonia area, its people and its culture.

 

Photographs:

Our Museum is the repository of the most extensive collection of photographs of the Flatonia area in existence. While many photographs are displayed throughout the exhibits, the museum collection holds more than a thousand additional photos of people, places, and events, illustrating the history of Flatonia and its surrounding communities from the 1880s to the present. We encourage families to bring their historical or cultural photos in so we can identify the scene, subjects, events, etc., and to allow us to make copies to place in our archives for the benefit of future historians. We are pleased to offer, for a fee, high quality prints of photographs and documents that are a permanent part of the E. A. Arnim Archives & Museum collection.

A “Technicolor Movie” of Flatonia in 1941:

Thanks to the ingenuity and talent of a local minister, this extraordinary film includes an amazing variety of scenes of Flatonia’s people, homes, businesses, schools and churches. It provides glimpses of farm life, road construction, firemen’s races, Boy Scouts collecting tin for the war effort and much, much more. It also features scenes from Engle, Muldoon, Praha and Cistern. The 90 minute production can be viewed in its entirety in the Museum, or a DVD may be purchased for home viewing. The film is a priceless window to the past, affording a fascinating look at small town life in the early 1940s.

Books:

The E. A. Arnim Archives & Museum owns several publications that are difficult to find elsewhere. One such is an Immigrants Guide to Western Texas published in 1876 by the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway to promote settlement of towns along the line’s new “Sunset Route” (its stop in Flatonia having opened in 1874).

Maps:

  • An original 1885 Bird’s Eye View map of Flatonia, exact in every detail
  • A “Correct Map of Texas” from the 1876 “Immigrants Guide to Western Texas which details the actual and projected construction of the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway. The map includes several small area settlements no longer in existence, such as Mount Pleasant, Black Jack and Oso.
  • An original hand-drawn map of Milton (present day Cistern) from 1866
  • Large scale Sanborn maps of Flatonia from 1885 through 1940, including one original from 1906

School History:

Our collection includes a complete set of Flatonia High School yearbooks from 1950 through 1985 and school newspapers from as early as 1917. The collection of school photographs includes classes, teachers, buildings, sports teams and other campus activities from Flatonia and many country schools in surrounding communities.

Other Records:

Available for further research: letters, diaries, family files, organization records, commercial ledgers, local advertising and special event ephemera. Families are encouraged to allow us to copy historical documents, letters and genealogical data to place in our archives for the benefit of future researchers and historians.