WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas — The Texas Civil War Museum in White Settlement west of Fort Worth announced it will permanently close its doors Oct. 31.
The museum opened in 2006 and is reportedly the largest collection of Civil War artifacts west of the Mississippi. The museum is owned by North Texas Oilman Ray Richey, the president and curator. Much of the collection was donated by Richey and his wife, Judy, who curates a collection of Victorian-era dresses.
The rest of the collection is from the now-closed Texas Confederate Museum in Austin, owned by the Texas United Daughters of the Confederacy.
The closure is a done deal, museum staff said in an announcement on Facebook. The building is sold and the artifacts will be handed over to a consigner, The Horse Soldier Antiques in Gettysburg, Pa. Items belonging to the Daughters of the Confederacy will not be sold.
"All of us here at the Texas Civil War Museum invite you not to mourn, but to celebrate this collection, its presentation of American history and the willingness of the Richey family to share with the public their collection," a museum staff member said in a Facebook post.
The museum has been criticized in the past for promoting an unbalanced view of the Civil War. When Dallas took down its Robert E. Lee statue in 2018, it considered donating it to the museum but decided against it amid concerns that the statue would not be presented with proper context.
Richey responded to the concerns raised in a Dallas Morning News editorial criticizing the Texas Civil War Museum saying the museum “does not swing one way or the other, and that’s the way I’ve wanted it since day one,” in a statement to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
