Sultana Disaster Museum: Arkansas city closes in on $10M fund-raising goal as it continues work at larger location in old high school

The overcrowded Sultana just hours before the explosion  (Library of Congress)

Backers of a new museum that will tell the compelling story of the steamboat Sultana disaster are racing to raise enough money so that FedEx, headquartered not far away in Memphis, Tenn., will donate the final $1 million to complete the fund-raising.

John Fogleman, head of the Sultana Historical Preservation Society, told the Picket in an email this week that the project has donations and pledges totaling $8.316 million. If the society garners another $684,000 by May 31, FedEx’s contribution would bring the total to $10 million for the museum in Marion, Ark. [May 15 update: The tally currently is $8.67 million]

The city, close to where the vessel exploded and caught fire at the Civil War’s end, in November broke ground for a museum that will honor soldiers who died in the disaster and residents who helped save others plunged into the Mississippi River.

About 1,200 passengers and crew perished. Hundreds of Federal soldiers, many recently freed from Confederate prisons, including Andersonville and Cahaba, were on their way home.

The 1865 disaster is remembered at a small museum a few blocks from where working is going on now in the gymnasium-auditorium at Marion’s old high school. 

Haizlip Studio's museum rendering depicting moment of explosion (SHPS)

Abatement of lead paint and asbestos at the gym was recently completed, Fogleman said. Request for bids for construction will go out around June 20. The society is currently looking for an executive director.

Organizers have launched a new GoFundMe page in recent weeks to augment large donations and funding from governments, foundations and other groups. “We all have our fingers crossed,” said Gene Salecker, a Sultana author and collector who serves as historical consultant for the museum.

The museum is sponsoring a fund-raiser on April 27, "Bluegrass on the Levee," on the anniversary of the Sultana’s sinking.

Abatement work at the old gym in mid-March (SHPS)

“John and I will be attending the annual reunion of the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends (Sultana Association) being held this year at Lexington, Kentucky, on April 28 and 29, with a visit to the Perryville, Kentucky battlefield, where at least 100 soldiers that eventually ended up on the Sultana saw their first big battle,” Salecker said.

Officials in Marion -- a bedroom community just a 15-minute drive from Memphis -- say it’s important that the Sultana’s story of greed, fraud, valor and sacrifice be told in a bigger way than what’s covered in the tiny museum that opened in 2015.

No one was formally held accountable for putting too many men on the Sultana, despite documented concerns about the safety of one of the boat's boilers. Accounts of the largest maritime tragedy in U.S. history were overshadowed by headlines about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Banners for survivor reunions in the late 19th century (Sultana Disaster Museum)

The Sultana Historical Preservation Society, which has spearheaded the project in collaboration with the city, believes a compelling museum and effective marketing can bring in up to 50,000 visitors a year who collectively will spend millions of dollars to support the economy in Marion and nearby communities.

The larger venue will include scores of artifacts or memorabilia related to the disaster and exhibits on steamboats on the Mississippi River, the Sultana’s service, Civil War prisons, corruption involved in its overloading, the explosion, the struggle for survival, rescue efforts and the disaster’s aftermath.

Many of the artifacts have been donated by Salecker. He is attending an annual Civil War show in Mansfield, Ohio, in May and hopes to pick up items related to the Sultana, as he has in the past.

Previous Sultana coverage:

• Documentary, events mark 150th anniversary

• Descendants drop flowers in memory of the lost

• Model captures every detail of Sultana
• Disaster took lives of those who had endured so much

• Siblings recall learning of disaster