Williamsfield, Ohio: One and Only Presidential Museum (Gone)

All U.S. Presidents had space here, especially those not recognized by other presidential museums. Nick Pahys Jr. revealed the shocking truth: George Washington was not the first President of the United States.

Before you blink your eyes I can put a bullet between your eyes.

From the RoadsideAmerica.com Archives: At his museum, Nick Pahys explains the 1st President mess in terms that even we should be able to understand (2004).

Curator passed away October 2017. Wife closed the museum.

We visited on March 25, 2017, and found Nick Pahys now perambulating in what amounts to a wheeled scooter. Nick was quick to snap up the $20 bill I naively aired, charging my husband and I $5 each for admission to the museum and $5 each for the lecture, which was his take on everything from John Hanson (our real first President) to his 2015 prediction that Donald Trump would be elected.

When we told him that we had found him on Roadside America, he squinted and asked if RA had done a good job describing him. "I'm pretty good-looking," he asserted. "Hope they said that."

His museum is not much more than a thrift store. You have to dig to find any information about John Hanson and the first real eight Presidents. Nick displays well-shellacked plaques that are tributes to those he claims are the real Presidents of the U.S., but sometimes the numbers have fallen off, and he doesn't always update the plaques so that they frequently have erroneous info. That said, we found him to be a garrulous, affable, individual.

Given his support for Donald Trump (Nick reckons Trump is President 53, not 45.), his assertion that God (and not democratic elections throughout U.S. history) had put the Presidents in power, and his agreeable attitude regarding our questioning of his facts, we were happy to spend time with him. "You may have a point there," he told us with the aplomb of a psychologist humoring a poorly-thinking patient who had, after all, paid him $20.

Worth a Detour? We dispute that statement unless you don't mind driving down a dirt road that kicks up stones and mud for about four miles before reaching the museum, and then feeling as if you have to dig the information about the Presidents from beneath a pile of coloring books.