{"id":330916,"date":"2026-07-06T17:38:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/330916\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T17:38:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:38:29","slug":"from-einstein-to-star-trek-manuscript-museum-opens-in-st-augustine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/330916\/","title":{"rendered":"From Einstein to Star Trek: Manuscript museum opens in St. Augustine"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new museum has opened in St. Augustine \u2014 the Karpeles Manuscript Museum.<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s new St. George Street location will become the main home for a collection containing more than 1 million historical documents dating from the turn of the millennium to the Revolutionary War to now.<\/p>\n

Since opening last week, the musem has welcomed more than 3,500 visitors, museum Director Wayne Jackson says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The museum has several locations in the Northeast U.S., but the goal is to phase those out, as the organization did with its former Jacksonville location<\/a>, and turn St. Augustine into its new base of operations.<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s wide variety of documents can be attributed to David Karpeles, who began collecting them in the 1970s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Karpeles wandered into a museum in Southern California, saw some manuscripts there and inquired as to how they acquired them,\u201d Jackson explained Monday on First Coast Connect<\/a> on WJCT. \u201cHe learned that he could go to an auction. \u2026 He purchased his first manuscript, and the rest is history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karpeles went on to open 17 museums across the U.S. to showcase the documents he collected, and the collection spans numerous topics \u2014 from letters signed by the U.S.\u2019 founding fathers to the contract Star Trek actor William Shatner signed in the 1960s to appear on the groundbreaking science fiction series.<\/p>\n

Not just an \u2018autograph museum\u2019<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s chief operating officer, Cheryl Karpeles, one of David Karpeles\u2019 children, says it would take a lifetime of visits to see everything the collection has to offer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have some items that will be on semi-permanent exhibit at the museum and some that will rotate through,\u201d Cheryl Karpeles says. \u201cEverything you see here has had an impact on our society. We are not an autograph museum.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"OneOne of the documents on display at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum is handwritten sheet music for the well-known tune \u201cRock-a-bye Baby.\u201d The museum\u2019s chief operator officer, Cheryl Karpeles says the young woman who composed the tune, Effie Canning, initially discarded the paper. | Karpeles Manuscript Museum<\/p>\n

Cheryl Karpeles has worked with the collection since she was a teenager and says a few of her favorite items include an original copy \u2014 on crumpled, discarded paper \u2014 of the tune for Rock-a-bye Baby and a document from physicist Albert Einstein that includes a typo in his famous Theory of Relativity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s really impressive \u2014 that one of the most brilliant minds can make mistakes,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The Karpeles Manuscript Museum<\/a> at 105 St. George St. is open every day of the week. Admission is free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new museum has opened in St. Augustine \u2014 the Karpeles Manuscript Museum. The museum\u2019s new St. George…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3087,2813,115846,43323,116,118,117,52066,115,2663,5902],"class_list":["post-330916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-culture-events","tag-distribute","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jaxtdy3","tag-news","tag-st-augustine","tag-st-johns-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}