St. Joseph’s Patee House Museum is a place filled with interesting stories. This year the museum staff and volunteers completed renovation of the original second-floor ballroom of the 150-year-old building. Outside the entrance to the ballroom, staff put up two brass electric torches.

The donor, Linda Farber, said she thought they were connected with the old Hotel Robidoux and once hung on the outside walls, but she couldn’t prove it, said Carolyn Chilcote, museum librarian.

Postcards with a special connection to the Chilcote family provided the serendipitous proof that the legend was fact.

Merrill Chilcote sent a series of St. Joseph postcards depicting local buildings to his bride Thelma Wolverton Chilcote. The Chilcote family saved the postcards.

Gary Chilcote happened to be looking at the series and noticed that the one showing an early view of the Hotel Robidoux featured the torches, Miss Chilcote, Gary Chilcote’s daughter, said. So the postcard became the proof, she said.

Property of the Past is written by Marshall White, who can be reached at marshall@npgco.com. Each week, Mr. White features an item from one of St. Joseph’s many museums, a public building or another property and explains its history.