(Seguin) — The Texas Agricultural Education & Heritage Center, located on Cordova Road in Seguin, is a destination for many elementary-age students who excitedly travel from the surrounding area to learn about agriculture. Most locals, however, know the educational destination as something a bit more simple –– the Big Red Barn.
On Wednesday, May 12, the Big Red Barn hosted the ribbon-cutting of its newest exhibit, the Koehler Mill and Cabinet Company Antique Tool Exhibit. It was also an opportunity to honor the man behind the collection, Charlie Koehler, on his 91st birthday. Ron Heinemeyer is the treasurer for the agriculture center. He is also a lifelong friend of Charlie’s and has watched his friend’s collection grow over the years.
“I’ve known the Koehlers all my life,” said Ron. “Charlie would always show me his tools he has quite a collection. One day when I was out there, he made a comment and said, ‘I just wonder what I’m gonna do with the tools someday’ and I asked if he’d thought about giving them to the Red Barn and we kind of left it at that.”
A Seguin native, Koehler spent much of his life amassing a collection of tools, which he now hopes will educate future generations.
“I was going to send these to New York,” said Charlie. “I had a buyer and I said ‘no, my kids girls will some day have kids and they can show them this 20 years from now. So I decided to give them to Seguin and that’s all I did.”
Charlie remains humble despite the sheer magnitude of the collection laid out on the shelves and walls inside the exhibit, now on display.
“I don’t want to boast, but I put a lot of money in it. Every trip we went on, my wife and I would stop at thrift shops. She’d get dishes, and she’s still got them. Someday we may do them like this, said Charlie.
When Ron received the call, he was delighted by the donation of antique items rich with agricultural history. In collaboration with the Koehler family and Charlie, Ron and the rest of the agriculture center’s board planned the exhibit, which now sits alongside other displays at the Big Red Barn.
“In our mission statement, we pinpoint two things,” said Ron. “One is education and second is heritage. Those are the two things I think we try to emphasize in everything we do. We gear it in that direction to either use it for educational purposes or just to have for heritage sake.”
The Big Red Barn provides tours for schools in Guadalupe County and districts in nine surrounding counties. According to Ron, fourth-graders visit most often.
“I don’t have the figures, but we have tours for schools all the time. We especially concentrate on the fourth graders where they bus them in here to spend a day at the barn,” said Ron.
Visitors on educational trips to the barn are greeted by docents who accompany them during their stay, acting as teachers and guides. In doing so, they further their mission and help keep the local community connected with its roots. The center relies upon the generosity of collectors like Charlie to continue growing the exhibits and already have big plans for its next project.
“We still have a lot of room to do additions,” said Ron. “In fact, we’re about to undertake building the ranger station that used to be in Seguin at the corner of Guadalupe and Court Street. A lot of people saved things from the station when they tore it down. We have all the bricks from the chimney. We have a lot of wood from the interior, and we’re going to use all of that in trying to rebuild it the way it was.”
When the ranger station is complete, it will join the Koehler Mill and Cabinet Company Antique Tool Exhibit in not only telling stories but also help in the building of the area’s foreseeable future.