Young people looking for something interesting and educational this summer may want to stop in and see Elizabeth te Groen at the Newburg Children’s Museum.

te Groen, 83, is the caretaker of the museum in the old Houston House, located in the back at 120B Water St. in historic Newburg.

“Oh, we’ve got a little bit of everything,” said te Groen in her thick South African accent.
“We’ve got all the rocks of Missouri — shale, chert, dolomite, quartz; we’ve got a variety of quartz,” said te Groen, a retired medical doctor who researched esophageal cancer in her younger days.

The museum branches out in mostly two rooms of the  Houston House, a remnant of the old 19th century boarding house days when the railroad and the Little Piney made Newburg the largest city in Phelps County.

The museum is te Groen’s dreamchild, her goal to educate and spur interest in children of science, specifically the earth sciences.

There are charts and posters explaining volcanoes, tectonic plates and deep-ocean trenches.

In the “Rock Room,” te Groen has various fossils, lava rock, shale and Tiger’s Eye, a collection of her travels abroad.

“The Tiger’s Eye is from a trip I made back to South Africa, some of the other things are from South America and Europe,” she said.

In the other ground-level room, te Groen has assembled thousands of souvenirs of the sea — shells, starfish, sea fans, pearls, brain coral, conches, seaweed,  and horseshoe crabs.

The walls are brightly colored, all to pique the interest of young visitors.

“The horseshoe crabs... ” te Groen said, “the kids really like that. I didn’t even know they still existed. I thought they were extinct. We get a lot of things donated.”

Upstairs, in the small boarding rooms, te Groen is working on renovations.

“We’ve got some big plans for upstairs,” te Groen said. “We need donations and help.”
The museum is open Tuesday and Saturday by appointment.

To visit the Newburg Children’s Museum, contact te Groen at 573 762-3077.

“We can use donations and help. It’s all for the children.”