Museum

The Tidy Island museum offers a history of the inhabitants tracing as far back as 500 B.C. The museum is on the original site of the island's first white settler, Cornelius Thigpen. The museum buildings are replicas of the kitchen and the adjacent home (Stockbridge-Pratt, 2001). See Archeological museum.

In addition to showcasing the first white settler, the museum also houses the historical and pre-historic artifacts found during development. Randy Chastain hired archeologist Bill Burger to study the area, in particular, the three Indian burial mounds and the shell midden. The midden is a shell pile, where the Indians tossed their garbage — the discarded items accumulated over the centuries. Carbon dating shows that the communities date from 500 to 50 B.C. (Stockbridge-Pratt, 2001). See Indian burial mounds.

The grounds of the museum also showcase the original cisterns for collecting rainwater.

This water cistern is the only remaining evidence of the first white settlers.

original cistern

Inside the buildings, you can browse the displays depicting a day in the life of the early island inhabitants hunting, fishing, cooking, and playing. There is also a full human burial display of the early Indian inhabitants. Chastain kept the mounds and a portion of the shell midden and the original homestead site (Stockbridge-Pratt, 2001).

Bill Burger posing with a 1200-year-old skeleton found on the island.

Bill Burger posing with a 1200-year-old skeleton

Bill Burger displays a conch shell hammer found in diggings.

Bill Burger posing with a conch shell hammer