The Texas Civil War Museum will close its doors on Oct. 31 after 18 years of showcasing artifacts from the Union and Confederacy.

The 15,500-square-foot building has been sold and artifacts on display will be sent to a cosigner, The Horse Soldier, in Pennsylvania, the museum announced in a Facebook video last week. Those interested in acquiring any of the objects can contact the cosigner.

Founded in 2006 by Judy and Ray Richey, the museum housed artifacts from the couple’s collection and the former Texas Confederate Museum at the Texas Capitol. The items from the Austin museum, which closed in 1988, are owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and will not be sold.

In the Facebook video, Dennis Partrich, director of sales and marketing at the museum, thanked the public for its support.

“All of us here at the Texas Civil War Museum want to encourage you not to mourn, but to celebrate this collection, its presentation of American history and the willingness of the Richey family to share with the public their collection,” Partrich said.

The museum store, which sells Civil War and Victorian period memorabilia, will remain open until the last day.

“If you’ve put off a purchase, don’t delay,” Partrich said. “Inventory is limited to the stock on hand and once it’s sold, it’s gone.”

In April 2023, the museum announced it would close to coincide with the owner’s retirement on Dec. 30. The decision was reversed later that year, with the museum’s board citing an outpour of support.

To continue operating, the museum planned to sell some of its high-value artifacts and increased admission fees from $7 to $12 for adults and $4 to $6 for children ages 6-12.

The museum’s artifacts were estimated to be worth around $20 million to $25 million last year, The Fort Worth Star Telegram reported.

Some of the notable artifacts have included a cigar partially smoked by U.S. Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, a Victorian-era dress that belonged to Winston Churchill’s mother and a pocket knife carried by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Marcus Richey, the director of the museum, could not be immediately reached Friday afternoon for comment on the decision to close.

In the comment section of the Facebook announcement, supporters lamented the loss of the museum. “The public can no longer learn [about] and enjoy these wonderful artifacts,” one person wrote. Another person called the museum “a true treasure.”

The museum’s mission, according to its website, has been to preserve Civil War-era artifacts that relate to the “role Texas played in the conflict.”

David Bedford, the museum’s education director, told The Dallas Morning News last year that the artifacts are meant to be educational. “This is about the people, the men and women who served,” he said. “This goes more toward them than what side is right or wrong.”

The museum has drawn criticism, though, from some community members who have taken offense with the Confederate relics and accused the museum of downplaying the history of slavery.

Bud Kennedy, a columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, wrote last year that the museum was a “whitewashed attraction that overlooked Black history.”

In 2018, the museum was considered as a landing spot for a statue of Robert E. Lee that was removed from a park in Dallas. The controversial monument was ultimately sent to auction in 2019 and sold to a golf resort in West Texas.

Another company offering homeowner insurance in Texas will stop offering new policies in the state, per reports, in a move that’s likely to exacerbate the sector’s unfolding crisis.

Progressive Insurance confirmed to WFAA-TV earlier this week that it was “temporarily restricting new homeowners (HO3) business for certain agents in several states,” including Texas. Last month, home insurance comparison website Insurify reported that Progressive would stop offering new home insurance policies in Texas and some Midwestern states, including Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconsin.

No other state besides Texas has been confirmed as being included in the “temporary” restrictions by Progressive. Newsweek contacted Progressive Insurance for comment by email on Friday morning, outside of standard working hours.

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According to Insurify, which quoted a report from P&C Specialist, Progressive stopped offering new home insurance policies in Texas as of August 13. While Progressive didn’t cite concerns over more frequent natural disasters as the reason for cutting coverage in the state, the issue is mentioned in a letter to shareholders in the company’s quarterly 10-Q filing obtained by Insurify.

“Reducing the impact from weather-related volatility is strategically important and shifting our geographic mix continues to be a top priority,” Progressive’s CEO Tricia Griffith said in the letter. “We continue to focus on growing in states where weather risk is relatively lower, while maintaining or reducing our market share in higher volatile states that are more susceptible to catastrophic weather events and have higher exposure to hail.”

At the end of 2023, Progressive dropped 115,000 policyholders in Florida, a state prone to hurricanes and disastrous tropical storms, sending them non-renewal notices. Several private insurers have cut coverage or withdrawn entirely from the Sunshine State in the past few years as Florida faces a homeowner insurance crisis exacerbated by widespread fraud and excessive litigation.

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According to the Texas Department of Insurance, the Progressive Group is among the ten largest home insurance companies in the state. In 2023, the agency reported that Progressive wrote $390,170,992 in premiums for homeowners’ multiple-peril insurance that year.

The reported pullback from the company is likely to exacerbate the situation in Texas, where another insurer—Foremost Insurance, a subsidiary of Farmers Insurance—stopped renewing some policies earlier this year. The company cited “our exposure and risks relating to natural and catastrophic losses” as the reason it was not renewing a Houston homeowner’s policy, as reported by the Houston Chronicle.

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Like other states vulnerable to extreme weather events, Texas has seen home insurance premiums climb across the state in the past year. According to Bankrate, Texas homeowners pay an average of $3,898 for $300,000 in dwelling coverage—72 percent more than the national annual average cost of home insurance, $2,270 for $300,000 in dwelling coverage.

In July, NBC 5 reported that some homeowners in the state were hit with double-digit insurance rate hikes, with one resident’s premiums rising from $2,600 last year to $8,800 this year.

Are you a Texas homeowner whose home insurance policy isn’t going to be renewed by Progressive? Have you faced significant rate hikes? Contact g.carbonaro@newsweek.com.