Holmes County Historical Society Museum

ABOUT THIS PLACE

It opens the second Saturday of each month, from ten in the morning until two. The society behind it maintains historic sites around the county, helps people trace their families, and works on preservation, so the museum is the visible part of a larger job rather than the whole of it. The genealogy help is what brings most people through the door from outside the county. What the society has to work with is a history that ran hard for a small place: the county seat moved twice before it settled at Bonifay in 1905, having been at Cerro Gordo and then at Westville, and the ground carries old cemeteries, the wrecks of steamboats, the sites of towns that no longer exist, Civil War raids and gunfights from the Prohibition years. The Bonifay Cemetery alone records the town's founders and the epidemics that went through here. Checking the opening Saturday before driving is the practical advice