Apr. 24—In addition to the other events on hand during Saturday’s SpringFest, visitors and residents have a prime opportunity to experience and learn Johnson County history at the Johnson County Courthouse Museum.

The museum, usually open weekdays only, will be open from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Johnson County Courthouse, 2 N. Main St. in Cleburne.

The museum, through exhibitions, documents and other displays and materials, chronicles the history of Johnson County and its cities within in addition to information on county businesses, organizations, families and prominent events.

This marks the second consecutive year that the Johnson County Commissioners Court has allowed the courthouse museum to remain open on Saturday for SpringFest.

“It worked out really well last year,” Johnson County Historical Commission Chairwoman Sandra Neeley said. “We had more than 100 people come through that day. This year we’re hoping for even more. We hope some of the people from last year come back and bring their kids and friends.”

The benefit of opening the museum during SpringFest is that a ready made audience is on hand for the annual Cleburne festival and that many who have never visited the museum or maybe not even heard of it get an opportunity to learn what it’s all about, Johnson County Judge Chris Boedeker said.

“We’ll be on hand to tell people about the museum and all we have to offer,” Neeley said. “We’ll be in the museum all day. We’ll also have someone manning the computer all day. If people want to look up research information about their family or historic topics about Johnson County we’ll be able to look stuff up through our searchable index and make notes for them to come back and view the files and documents during our regular museum hours.”

The museum is regularly open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The hope, Neeley said is that a life-sized copy of the document recording the creation of Johnson County will be on display by Saturday.

“At the Johnson and Somervell Retired School Employee’s monthly meeting last month the speaker was a representative from the Texas State Archives in Austin,” Neeley said. “I met with her after to ask how or if we could go about finding the document establishing the county. Turns out they have that in Austin so we’ve made arrangements to get a copy.

“Bennett’s Printing in Cleburne is helping with that so we have our fingers crossed that we’ll have it ready in time to display on Saturday because that’s something we and a lot of people will be excited to see.”