When the Ottawa County Museum opened its doors in 1932, Laura May Hesselbart greeted the public as its curator. The Port Clinton native was born to Herman and Mary Hollinshead Hesselbart on May 20, 1876. She graduated from Port Clinton High School in 1896, then studied music at Oberlin Conservatory. She taught piano for 20 years, was a member of Trinity Methodist Church, and became a charter member of Fortnightly Club in 1901. She was the first honorary member of the Port Clinton Business and Professional Women’s Club, and, interestingly, BPW was the last big group of visitors to the museum while she was curator.
According to Juel Reed Cover in The Daily News, 1962, “She made you think of a dainty little Dresden doll, with the elegant gentility of a lady of the 1890s but had a mind like a steel trap, a knowledge of the county, city and area history that was unequaled; and a passionate dedication to her position as official Museum Curator and unofficial historian of this community.”
The pay was minimal, but May loved the position. Port Clinton Village Council provided her salary and a small budget for supplies. She directed the many who volunteered to help. The DeLery Chapter of D.A.R. helped to organize the museum and continued to support it and Miss Hesselbart.
She was known for her dedication to the museum and for eagerly sharing her knowledge with museum visitors. This job was her life. May never took a vacation and when she broke her arm in 1958, she still took very few days off to heal. She particularly enjoyed having children learn at the museum, but shared her enthusiasm for historical accuracy with all who visited there. Among the numerous visitors from locations all over the world were Dr. and Madame Claude Prat of Tours, France. Their relative, Madame R. Dubreul-Chambardel (Madeleine Couche) of Marcon, France, had been born here to Alphonse and Madame Couche. May showed them through the museum, pointing out the bronze urn that Madeleine sent on the French Gratitude Train.
Her obituary stated that “only one thing ever aroused the gentle little lady to anger, and that was historical inaccuracy of any kind. She fought for ‘the truth’ with every weapon at her command, and she was not hesitant about reprimanding any source that deviated from the exact truth in presenting historical material.”
It was important to her that the community understand, for instance, that “because of widely published false stories of the founding of Port Clinton by the WPA and other writers, we, as citizens, have both the obligation and the privilege to acclaim the legal founder [of Port Clinton]—Ezekiel Smith Haines,” not DeWitt Clinton, “father of the Erie Canal.” Another of the many truths she discovered through research was that the small cannon in Waterworks Park was British, and not used by Commodore Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.
Joseph Gill, a U.S. Gypsum Company executive, had been one of May Hesselbart’s piano students, and visited often with his wife Virginia, a published poet. Virginia wrote a poem in May’s memory titled “Tribute.”
It begins:
“A great soul sheltered in tiny frame--
Noble, loyal, loving and always the same,--
Has slipped down the path of night from our midst
In obedience to One whom her life ever bidst.”
And it ends:
“God granted the wish she confided to me
That He call her home swiftly, silently,
As each eve from her treasures of time she’d turn home,
She has left a last evening her well ordered ‘room’.
May her great soul now rest with the God of time
Who tendered her life-long, useful sublime!”
On November 3, 1962, Miss Hesselbart’s neighbor, Mrs. Alex Thurocey, noticed a window shade at May’s house wasn’t raised. This was a prearranged signal, and although Mrs. Thurocey had seen May working at her table the previous evening, she checked and found her neighbor in the bedroom, deceased. May Hesselbart’s wish to be called “home swiftly, silently” had been granted, after spending her last day working at her beloved museum.