On the way between Dodge City and Baileyville, Kansas, is the small town of Abilene. Abilene has a population of about 6,500 people and it is best known for being the boyhood home of Dwight D. Eisenhower, our 34th President.
The Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum is located in Abilene where he grew up with his parents and five brothers. The house is in the same location as it was with his family lived there. His parents moved into the home in 1898 and it was occupied by the Eisenhowers until his mother died in 1946.
We were able to take a guided tour of the home. It was interesting to see the small space they lived in with so many boys in the house! I have some pictures, but thought this YouTube from their official website might be better to show.
We also learned that his birth name was David Dwight Eisenhower but at some point on a record for the military, he wrote his name Dwight D. Eisenhower and it couldn't be changed. (And you wonder why genealogy can be complicated!)
Here are a few other pictures from inside the house.
We started our site visit with a documentary film about the life of President Eisenhower, especially his time growing up in Abilene. I didn't know much about him other than he was a General (and I didn't realize what an important role he had in World War II). So watching the film before going through the museum and seeing his boyhood home was a good way to get started.
The museum was laid out in chronological and narrative form which suits me best! We could follow his life from a youngster to a young man to a military hero to President of the United States. We got to "meet" his family, his wife, his children. I especially liked that the museum included exhibits dedicated to Mamie Eisenhower as his partner and First Lady.
We only had time to run into the Presidential Library so I could say I had been, but that's because we spent so much time in the museum and we had a scheduled tour time to see the boyhood home. This was the first day of our trip that I felt like I had not allocated enough time for our activities. Part of that was because we had spent a little more time at Fort Larned earlier in the day, but mostly because I had not anticipated how vast and interesting the Eisenhower museum would be. We were also trying to get to Marysville, Kansas, by 4 PM so we could see the Pony Express museum on Saturday rather than Sunday. (Which as it turns out, the brochure I had that said it was open until 5 PM was WRONG - it closed at 4 PM - so lesson learned - I should have double-checked the time the day before or even called from the car earlier the same day - if I had done that, I would have known we wouldn't be able to get there in time to see it and we wouldn't have had to rush our time in Abilene.)
If you're ever in Abilene and choose to go, we would recommend allowing a minimum of 3 hours to see what's there. The last thing we went to see was the Memorial where President Eisenhower and his wife and son are buried. The memorial building was constructed according to Eisenhower's plans.
We realized when I was writing this blog entry that Eisenhower isn't the first Presidential childhood hometown we visited; President Clinton grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas. We saw the high school he attended.
~ Cindy D.
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