AUBURN - Seven-year-old Katie Long is just the kind of visitor the Seward House would like to attract.

Katie and her grandmother, Priscilla Murphy, visited the museum on Friday to make Christmas ornaments at a special craft event at the mansion. About 15 children and some adults attended, making ornaments to decorate a 12-foot Christmas tree in the museum's foyer.

While the event was intended as fun, it also served the purpose of introducing youngsters to the mansion and to William H. Seward, the Auburn resident who served as Secretary of State to President Lincoln.

“It's a fun way to get kids interested in history,” said Jennifer Haines, the museum's curator of education and outreach. “We wanted to take advantage of the fact that a lot of local schoolchildren are off from school.”

The youngsters made '50s-style ornaments #- a flamingo and a poodle among them #- to celebrate the museum's 50th anniversary. “Crafts were a big thing you'd be doing around the holidays,” Haines said. “It's something the kids in the 1950s may have been doing.”

Murphy, a volunteer at the museum, took Katie on a mini-tour of the house before crafting began.

“At least she can get an idea,” Murphy said. The crafts, she said, “makes it more real for the children.”

Nancy Tokarz, a member of the museum, brought her grandnieces to the event to give them a taste of history.

“I thought it sounded like a valuable way to get them acquainted with the museum,” she said. “They won't forget this.

“Now that they've done this, we can walk around and talk more about who he (Seward) was and how he played into our history.”