Gainesville — Morton Museum of Cooke County was the first beneficiary of the Butterfield Stage Players “Benefit Performance Series,” which began Thursday.

A special performance of “Driving Miss Daisy” was preceded by a gourmet soiree  courtesy of My Daisy Catering.

“I love being a part of it,” said caterer HJ Temple, who provided the refreshments for free. “Charity is part of it: to give as much as you can. “

The event garnered more than 50 guests. Profit from Thursday’s food and show was several hundred dollars, all of which will pay for the framing of a piece of folkloric art currently on display at Morton Museum of Cooke County.

“We’re about preservation,” said Robin Rose, museum board vice-president. “This piece of art was deteriorating if we did not have it preserved for our generations to come.”

Rose and Morton Museum Director Jayleane Smith explained that their facility costs roughly $100,000 per year to maintain.

Proceeds from special and annual events are funneled into separate funds to support the museum’s needs, which span from ambitious to minor.

This includes the museum’s stained-glass dome ceiling — a long-range project still underfunded — and the update of historic displays to make the presentation of vintage material interactive and more appealing to visitors.

“They are always fascinated by the objects that we have and the displays that we have,” Smith said. “And we try really hard to rotate the displays to where we do different things, and to where, when somebody comes in, they’re able to find something new and something they haven’t seen, objects of interest. And preservation does that.”

Morton Museum of Cooke County receives an average of 5,000 visitors each year, and in a wide age range. Both Rose and Smith explained this head count isn’t comprised simply of locals; recent guests have included tourists from Tennessee and New York.

Out-of-state visitors aren’t uncommon, Smith added, since Gainesville history is rich and varied and elements of it have been publicized, such as cattle trails and the World War II-era establishment of Camp Howze.

“When people do come from other states, they come looking for something that they’ve possibly seen in a book or in a magazine,” she said.

The museum’s history education lineup includes a trio of fall lectures:

• “The Indigenous Tribes of Cooke County” — planned for 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Nov. 6 — will explore area Native American tribes and reveal details about their traditions, how they coped with the influx of Caucasian settlers and what eventually happened to their tribal lands.

• “Gainesville Then and Now: Stores, Saloons, Barbed Wire and Churches” — set for 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Nov. 13 — will be a look at Cooke County’s history from the gritty settlers who made their lives here to events which shaped Cooke County.

• “Camp Howze: The Role it Played in WWII and Cooke County.” The Camp Howze lecture session — scheduled for 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Nov. 20 — will include information on the early days of the military base built on a lonely Cooke County prairie.

The lecture will also focus on the contributions made by Camp Howze soldiers and what impact the camp and its inhabitants had on Gainesville’s economy.

For more information about the museum, call (940) 668-8900.