We’re late--after 4pm, closing time. No matter, the door is unlocked, and Olivia Sue phones home without prompting to say she’ll be ready to leave at 5:15pm. I get the feeling she can’t pass up any opportunity to show the collection.

We make short shrift of the mummies--recent mummies! National Geographic, Fox News, and other media have covered the Philippi Mummies, and visitors can view the National Geographic video. I take photos, but Olivia informs me that I must get permission from the owner to publish them. This museum has so much Civil War memorabilia that one can be fascinated for an hour without viewing mummies. (After Olivia’s commentary on each display, every visitor becomes an authority on the Battle of Philippi.) About the mummies, I’ll just say that a letter on display from the female makes me wonder if she really belonged in Weston State Hospital for the Insane. (Read it!)

Colonel Kelley’s sword, with which he led the charge down Broaddus Hill and across the covered bridge into Philippi, is on display along with many cannonballs, other swords, muskets, homemade bullets, General McClellan’s saddle, and more.

The first amputation of the war occurred here, and (now) Hanger Orthopedic Group’s prosthesis is displayed. Photos of Yankees and Confederates, including Colonel Porterfield, commander of the southern detachment that occupied Philippi, and others decorate walls. Guns, medicines, flags, tools, and more are accompanied with familiar narration, as though Olivia had been there.

Her description of the fierce storm in which the charge was made; the exact location of each officer and his path across town; the building, roof, or lawn where each artifact was recovered; content of telegraph messages that were intercepted; mistakes that were made by Confederate officers and lookouts--all is revealed. It may have been not the most exciting battle, but it must be the most-intimately covered one!

Olivia demonstrates, too, as she does with this antique lawnmower.

Every item is explained with an appropriate twist of irony or sarcasm, and I’m so entertained that I find myself confused by a myriad of details. No problem! With the patience of Job, she begins at the beginning and retells that part of the story until I can repeat it back to her: "Okay, so Porterfield was occupying the train depot in Grafton when he intercepted McClellan’s message and passed it on to Robert E. Lee. When Lee didn’t act upon it, Porterfield took it upon himself to burn railroad bridges."

She nods her affirmative the whole while, so I know I’m getting it right. She’s a born educator! I must run down to the courthouse now to see the "new" one, since I know everything that happened there and in the old one, too, when Rebels used it as their barracks.

One can buy beautiful books for children and adults about the battle and the bridge.