Earlier this week, a discovery was made in Altenburg which our director, Carla Jordan, has described as finding the Holy Grail.  The items discovered are a set of hand-drawn maps which show locations of some of the important historical sites in the Altenburg area. The photo below shows a small portion of one of the maps.

I am particularly interested in this portion of this map because it shows the land that I own where the Log Cabin College was first built.  Not only does this map point out the location of the Log Cabin College in the area that was then called Dresden, but also the locations of the well which is known as Buenger’s Well and Frau von Wurmb’s residence.  In addition to this, the fact that the site of the brickyard is noted gives credence to the fact that J.A.F.W. Mueller’s father, who was a tilemaker, had his business very close to the log cabin.  This would help explain why J.A.F.W. attended that school when it first opened in 1839 and became its first graduate.

Lynn Degenhardt, one of the members of our Research Crew, had been given an envelope with these maps inside.  However, he did not have time to look at them and placed them in a box to be looked at later. He does not remember who gave the envelope to him.  Until this previous week, Lynn had not looked inside.  When he finally did so, he brought them to the museum to show the rest of us.  We all looked at the maps with great excitement. The maps indicate that two men may have been involved in making and keeping of the maps over the years…..Vernon Meyr and Dr. E.M. Lottes (the town dentist).  Doc Lottes drew the maps.

I have purposely only given a small glimpse of this map here on our website.  We at the museum would like people to actually come to the museum to see the rest of the maps.  We have free admission and are open daily from 10 am to 4 pm.