Fort Worth’s famed Civil War Museum will turn out the lights on Oct. 31 after almost 20 years of showcasing artifacts from the Union and Confederacy.
The building has already been sold and the numerous artifacts will be sent to a consignor, The Horse Soldier, in Pennsylvania, the museum announced in a Facebook video last week. Anyone interested in purchasing part of its collection can contact the consignor.
However, not everything is for sale. Some of the artifacts come from the former Texas Confederate Museum in Austin which closed in 1988. This museum opened in a room on the ground floor of the Texas State Capitol in 1903 and was later moved to the Old Land Office Building where it stayed until its closure. These pieces are owned by United Daughters of the Confederacy and will not be sold.
In a Facebook video announcing the closure, Dennis Partrich, director of sales and marketing, thanked the public for its support. “All of us here at the Texas Civil War Museum want to encourage you not to mourn, but to celebrate this collection, its presentation of American history and the willingness of the Richey family to share with the public their collection,” he said.
The store which sells Civil War memorabilia will stay open until the entire museum closes. Patrich encouraged all interested parties to make any delayed purchases now because, “Inventory is limited to the stock on hand and once it’s sold, it’s gone.”
There had been previous closure scares with the museum. In April 2023, the museum announced it would close when its owner retired on Dec. 30. However, the museum reversed course when the announcement was met with a groundswell of public support.
The museum shuttering comes as there is a resurgence in interest in Confederate historical symbols that were removed during the riots in the Summer of 2020 and in previous periods of racial unrest. One such example came in the form of the Shenandoah County School Board in Virginia wherein each member was either retired or replaced after voting to remove the names of Stonewall Jackson High and Ashby-Lee Elementary and replace them with Mountain View High and Honey Run Elementary.
Subsequently, the previous names were restored in the summer of 2024 and Trustee Gloria Carlineo told The Dallas Express how federal agencies, leftwing activists, and The Washington Post attempted to impose a fabricated story about race onto the district.
Other figures such as Dallas’s famed statue of Robert E Lee have been purchased and preserved on golf courses in West, Texas. This statue and others saved on The Lajitas, near Terlingua, have given the statues new life and prevented them from suffering the fate of the historic Robert E Lee statue in Richmond that was melted in secret and led some viewers to describe it as feeling “like an execution.”