The Hyde Park Museum may be small, but it's packed with more than 2,500 local artifacts

Take a big trip down memory lane through three small rooms that comprise the Hyde Park Museum.

Originally called the Hyde Park Museum Historical Room, volunteers Kathleen Baker and Maria Vokish have helped to expand the exhibits, adding rooms since opening in 2001.

The museum is nestled inside the former Hope Lutheran Church located at 339 First St., along the Kiski River in Westmoreland County.

Kathleen was baptized there as a child.

“This museum means a lot to me,” Baker said. “It’s an asset to our little town.”

The rooms house more than 2,500 artifacts.

Celebrating their 20th anniversary during a pandemic wasn’t exactly what they wished for, but the volunteer duo are offering free tours by appointment only because of covid-19 restrictions.

Vokich and Baker are the volunteer duo handling everything at the museum.

“We’ve had some deaths and most of the volunteers are gone,” said Baker, the museum secretary.

Hyde Park’s industry once included a bottling plant, a glove factory and a foundry.

Hyde Park Brewery operated from 1905-1920 but was forced to shut down during Prohibition. It never reopened. But a small wooden keg donated by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Smith is on display in the museum’s main room.

“The people of Hyde Park have been very kind in donations of items they find while cleaning out grandparents’, parents’ or their own attics,”Baker said. “When people come back home to visit, they like coming to the museum.”

Baker said visitors enjoy looking at the old photos from the now closed Hyde Park Elementary School.

“The flood pictures, old class pictures are popular,” Baker said, “and men are interested in the military memorabilia.”

Infamous resident

Folks still talk about Martha Grinder, Hyde Park’s most scandalous and notorious resident.

Dubbed the “Pittsburgh Poisoner” during the late 1800s, Grinder was found guilty of poisoning numerous relatives and neighbors. She was hanged in Pittsburgh in 1866.

Martha was married to George Grinder, whose family’s land later became Hyde Park, in 1898.

She confessed to poisoning people in a handwritten letter on the eve of her execution.

She was 50 years old.

Before her trip to the gallows she didn’t express remorse. In her confession letter, she said she killed simply for the love of taking life and seeing suffering.

Arsenic was her go-to method for poisoning unsuspecting folks who thought they were the recipients of Martha’s homemade cooking, which included soup.

Suspicious deaths in the Grinder family included Martha’s brothers-in-law Samuel and Jeremiah Grinder and Mrs. Grinder’s infant child.

Three neighbors and Martha’s servant are all believed to have been poisoned by Martha; records are unclear as to how many victims there actually were.

Samuel even tried to warn family members of Martha’s penchant for killing.

Martha’s killing spree garnered international attention. A German newspaper reported in 1865 that after Samuel died, his body was exhumed from the Grinder cemetery in Hyde Park; a medical analysis showed he died from arsenic poisoning.

Photos of Grinder family members, including Martha, are on display at the museum.

“Martha Grinder is certainly a favorite of mine as she has all the earmarks of a serial killer,” said Larry Boehm, a Leechburg-based local historian. “Being 166 years removed, it makes the story feel like urban legend than historical fact. The accounts paint her as a loving wife — and a stone-cold killer. She was certainly the latter.”

Boehm said the museum is a little-known historical treasure for the Alle-Kiski Valley.

“It boasts a collection of Hyde Park memorabilia and artifacts far greater than expected from such a small town,” Boehm said. “I found it to be exceptionally well organized despite having such a small staff.”