It is with high hopes that 2024 brings all the friends of the Garfield Farm Museum, the best it has to offer. At Garfield, true milestones of progress have been made in 2023 thanks to our incredible faithful supporters. Many of these donors have been supporters since the 1980s. One donor made more than 160 donations between 2004 and 2020. More than 530 donors have given 10 or more gifts through the years.
Apart from Miss Garfield’s gift of 163 acres, the house and the five barns, one supporter with gifts and a bequest gave more than $1.6 million. More than $12 million has been put into the project over the last 46 years and our 2027 Bucket List for the Museum’s 50th anniversary in 2027 is seeking $2 million to complete various projects while growing the endowment by $6 million to $10 million.
The help from donors and volunteers made the brick repair and tuckpointing of the 1846 tavern possible in 2023. Thank you, thank you.
This help is greatly augmented by the thousands of volunteers through the years who have stretched those gifts much farther through their hard work and dedication. There has been dedicated staff members who, with noncompetitive pay, have given so much that has made all of this progress possible.
We thank our friends who have told their friends about the Museum and the now-challenged professionals, reporters from traditional print, radio and television, who have done so much to put the Farm on the map.
Our gratitude goes to the many school teachers who brought their classes through the years which now, with curriculum changes and less emphasis on the foundations and heritage of this country, we could not have valued their help highly enough, annually bringing their young charges.
Garfield Farm & Tavern Museum is a group effort by the many who care. Each generation will be needed to sustain this help through all unpredictable times ahead but for now it is up to us in our time, when future generations either will look back admiring our vision, or faulting our lack of effort. It is the hard work, the persistence and perseverance that is the true measure. Thank you for 2023 and happy 2024 from all of us down on the farm – Jerry Johnson
Please send E-mail to info@garfieldfarm.org, or call 630 584-8485 for questions. Donations can be mailed to the museum at P.O. Box 403 LaFox, IL 60147 (post mark determines year of gift for tax consideration) or go online to our website www.garfieldfarm.org and click on the donate button.
—Garfield Farm Museum