Location:
Veteran's Park
Riverside Drive & Route 52
Welch, WV 24801
Contact:
Mr. Russell Burge
15 Broad Street
Welch, WV 24801 - (304) 436-3803 or (540) 297-4946
Artifacts:
A collection of perhaps two dozen items from the West Virginia Merci car is located in "Mansion House", a hewn log structure built as a tavern in 1796, but now maintained as a museum by the Colonel Charles Lewis Chapter, N.S. Daughters of the American Revolution. The museum itself is in a small state park called Tu-Endie-Wei within the city of Point Pleasant, WV. The name is Wyandotte Indian for "Point Between Two Waters". Also in the park are four French Oak trees, which came in the Merci boxcar as saplings from France. Russell Burge started some saplings with acorns gathered from the trees in the park and has planted two saplings near the present site of the boxcar in Welch.
Another French Oak tree grown from acorns that came in the Merci Train is growing in the front yard of the late Andy Dolak's home in Lamar, S.C. I believe I have been told that there are more of the trees at the War Memorial Museum in Newport News, Virginia.