Chatting with me over coffee recently, Melissa Karman, director of Warren’s Sutliff Museum, relayed a story about how often her museum is stumbled upon by unsuspecting visitors who simply had no idea this local treasure is tucked away on the second floor above the Warren-Trumbull County Library.

If you’re among those folks, let me take a moment to tell you about it. When you step into the museum, it feels as though you’ve stepped into the Victorian era. It is decorated with furnishings, carpeting, wallpaper, books and traditions one would find in a turn-of-the century home. The museum includes many items directly from the home of the Sutliffs, a well-to-do Trumbull County family from the 1800s.

Levi and Phebe Marvin Sutliff were station masters on the Underground Railroad. They were a pioneer family who came from Massachusetts in 1804 and settled in Vernon.

Levi, a lawyer and abolitionist, was a founding member of the National Anti-Slavery Society in Trumbull County.

Among her challenges, Karman said, is the constant struggle to make history accessible to everyone.

That, apparently, was an equally important goal for Phebe Temperance Sutliff, a daughter of Levi and Phebe Sutliff. In fact, it was that desire that led Phebe Temperance Sutliff to found the Sutliff Museum by creating an endowment for the Warren Library Association in honor of her parents. The museum still operates with free admission 2 to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday each week. Phebe, a scholar and the first woman president of Rockford College in Illinois, hoped the museum would honor her parents while educating the public on Victorian living and the underground railroad.

Of course it still does that. Many of the artifacts in the museum came from the Sutliff home. Other items are of the Victorian period, but were donated by other people. Among the most interesting artifacts is an iron hobble that had been removed from a fugitive slave by Levi Sutliff himself.

Now through December, visitors to the museum can take in the results of work by Youngstown State University graduate students Bailey Yoder and Denis Crawford. The two, who are enrolled in the Applied History program at YSU, spent their summer internship at the Sutliff Museum researching, collecting and designing a temporary exhibit entitled, “The Marvins: Pioneer Family of Bazetta.”

In working to achieve the museum’s goal of remaining relevant, particularly keeping up with developments in technology and maintaining the interest of young people today, the Sutliff and a handful of other Warren museums and historical groups devised a survey they are hoping will help them gauge interest.

Represented in the group calling itself the Warren Historic District are the Sutliff, the Upton House, Trumbull County Historical Society and the Warren Heritage Center.

Everyone with an interest in local history is urged to complete the survey, which can be found at the top of the Sutliff Museum’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/TheSutliffMuseum.

* * *

It was not so long ago that I sheepishly offered regular readers of the Tribune Chronicle an explanation for ongoing problems we had been experiencing with our daily puzzles, while seeking your understanding and forgiveness. If you are a regular puzzle fan, then you already know those problems have resurfaced in recent days, largely with the Janric International Wordfind puzzle.

Because we understand this particular puzzle is wildly popular among our readers, we have been working diligently to resolve the ongoing problems. Unfortunately, it appears those efforts have not been successful.

As a result, we have made a decision to replace the puzzle, at least temporarily, with another wordfind that we hope you will find just as enjoyable.

In the interim, I encourage you to try out the new wordfind in order to help us weigh its entertainment value, and drop me an email with your feedback.

blinert@tribtoday.com