Museum Hours

Friday & Saturday 10am - 4pm

or by Appointment - Call 859-234-7179  

124 South Walnut Street   Cynthiana, Kentucky  

4000 Sq. Ft. of Display Space Showcasing Over 3500 Artifacts!

This is a Mortician's "Cooling Table" and was used by undertakers for preparing bodies for burial. It was also used by field doctors during the Civil War for emergency amputations. The 'bed of the table is perforated with holes for the drainage of body fluids.

Our Museum's tool section is filled with hand hewn tools and implements used by local farmers, machinists, carpenters, and those of other professions. Come see how the tools from the past were made and used.

One of the Museum's prized artifacts are the more than 100 letters sent by Harrison county resident William Jones to his wife Mary while he was fighting for the Union during the Civil War. The hand written letters dated from 1864 have been transcribed into a binder and are available for reading. The letters discuss everything from his episodes on the battlefield to the loss of friends, and the love for his wife. A real treasure.

Apothecary Saddle Bags (Circa 1820-1900)

made by the J.M McGeod Trunks & Co. 

Philadelphia PA 

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"Continental Currency"

Shillings & Dollars with signatures 

Leather Satchels with internal drawers for keeping medications

Exhibit Relocations Improve Museum Experience

In an effort to improve the overall experience of viewing related artifacts in the Cynthiana Harrison County Museum a good deal of reorganization has been taking place in the last months. We have relocated all of the housewares to it's own area and moved our physicians and medical artifacts to a single area of the museum in order to better reference associated physicians and artifacts in the collection more completely. 

Artifacts from County Physicians, Pharmacists and Harrison Memorial Hospital have all been relocated to one area of the museum.

Housewares are all on display in a new area in the museum. From cooking and baking to washing and ironing the museum's housewares display features many artifacts from 'days gone by'. 

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After the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, the Continental Congress began issuing paper money known as Continental currency, or Continentals. Continental currency was denominated in dollars from $1⁄6 to $80, including many odd denominations in between. During the Revolution, Congress issued $241,552,780 in Continental currency.

The Continental Currency dollar was valued relative to the states' currencies at the following rates:

• 5 shillings – Georgia

• 6 shillings – Connecticut , Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Virginia

• 71⁄2 shillings – Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania

• 8 shillings – New York, North Carolina

• 321⁄2 shillings – South Carolina

Continental currency depreciated badly during the war, giving rise to the famous phrase "not worth a continental". A primary problem was that monetary policy was not coordinated between Congress and the states, which continued to issue bills of credit. Congress and the states lacked the will or the means to retire the bills from circulation through taxation or the sale of bonds. Another problem was that the British successfully waged economic warfare by counterfeiting Continentals on a large scale. Benjamin Franklin later wrote:

The artists they employed performed so well that immense quantities of these counterfeits which issued from the British government in New York, were circulated among the inhabitants of all the states, before the fraud was detected. This operated significantly in depreciating the whole mass.

By 1780, the bills were worth 1⁄40 of their face value. Congress attempted to reform the currency by removing the old bills from circulation and issuing new ones, without success. By May 1781, Continentals had become so worthless that they ceased to circulate as money.