The Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum Collection
The museum's collection focuses on artifacts, photographs, and documents that tell the life story of Liberty Hyde Bailey - America's Father of Modern Horticulture. The museum, birthplace of Bailey, also houses artifacts from the Bailey Homestead, a 19th-century award-winning fruit farm listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Collection Highlights Include
Visit a portion of the collection via our Online Collections Database.
Research Requests
Museum staff are available to assist researchers with our collections. To request information or submit an inquiry, please email info@libertyhydebailey.org
[L.H. Bailey self-portrait.] "Going strong at 64. L.H.B. Guayaguayare, Trinidad. B.W.I. Mch. 15, 1922" Entry/Object ID: 2012.27.03
Object Donations
The museum is always looking for items related to Liberty Hyde Bailey and the Bailey homestead. If you would like to donate an item to the museum or find out if an item falls within the collection's mission please contact info@libertyhydebailey.org. We ask that potential donors make an appointment before visiting the museum with their items.
Stories from the Collections
Permanent Exhibits
Current Exhibit
In early October 1871, seven uncontrolled fires ravaged cities along the shores of the Great Lakes, burning an estimated 2,500,000 acres in Michigan alone. The fires included Chicago, a prime port destination for South Haven. A fourteen-year old Bailey, determined to gratify the growing local curiosity about the devastation, the "still hot ruins" of the destruction. A year later, an inspired Bailey gathered two local South Haven companions to make the crossing again.
Follow in the footsteps of fourteen-year-old Bailey and his companions as they face what Bailey described as the "journey of journies" among the sites of a bygone 19th-century Chicago.
