Such modifications in materials and methods applied to all four of the museums under production. A crew from the laboratory installed the Guilford Courthouse exhibits in time for the museum opening on July 4, 1949, then went on to Kings Mountain to add the remaining exhibits there before returning to Washington.7 Installation of the Chickamauga museum had to wait until January 1951, partly because of other commitments.

Even with its minimal staffing the museum laboratory needed additional funds to meet its payroll while the initial projects were in planning and production. Help came through a number of smaller reimbursable jobs performed at the request of individual parks and other federal agencies. Fort McHenry obtained a panel outlining the history of the United States flag. Two parks needed topographic maps repaired. Others called on the staff's technical skills to reproduce the original flake of gold discovered at Sutlers Mill in 1848 and to make casts of aboriginal stone pipes excavated at Mound City Group National Monument. Gettysburg and Colonial requested trailside exhibits. Southwestern National Monuments obtained labels printed by the laboratory clerk. The staff produced some map panels for the Utah Centennial and copies of them for the Library of Congress. The laboratory also executed two twenty-foot panel displays for the Atomic Energy Commission and helped the U.S. Travel Division prepare a portable unit for exhibiting posters. Over about 15 months in 1947 and 1948 staff artists interrupted exhibit work several times to trace and letter archeological survey maps for Smithsonian river basin projects.

These odd jobs were not the only cause of delay in completing the four battlefield museums. In January 1948 the Museum Branch moved its laboratory operation from the Ford's Theatre building to Fort Hunt, Virginia.9 There it occupied the one-story structure that had housed the ECW relief map shop from 1934 to 1938. The Fort Hunt building provided adequate if not wholly convenient space for the existing staff, but the move seriously disrupted production, and the twelve-mile distance from Washington remained a continual disadvantage. Meeting with colleagues in the director's office and searching for data in libraries or museums took much more time, and employees coming to Washington on business could no longer pay the laboratory a quick visit to settle a question or become acquainted with its services.

As experience underlined these drawbacks, the search for a better location intensified. Attention focused on vacant space in a three-story ramp garage at 21st and L streets northwest rented by the Public Buildings Administration and partially occupied by a Signal Corps detachment assigned to the White House. It was practically the same distance from the director's office in the Interior Building as the Ford's Theatre building had been. In September 1948, only eight months after the laborious move to Fort Hunt, the laboratory moved to the second floor of the L Street wing, a large, high-ceilinged area undivided except for three office rooms at the south end.10 The staff welcomed the practical advantages of this location and space as long as the government continued to lease the building.

In the short interval preceding the second move the laboratory gained one staff member and lost another. James Quinn entered on duty in April as a handyman-janitor and remained as a willing helper for years before transferring to the National Capital Parks maintenance force. In August Harold Peterson moved to the History Division, barely a year after his appointment as curator. Chief Historian Ronald F. Lee had recognized his exceptional talents and arranged to borrow his services for a few months. He remained with the historical research program for 16 years, not rejoining the Museum Branch until 1964.

Peterson's years with the History Division were by no means a total loss to the branch, even though it could not fill the curatorial position at the laboratory for some time. While there he fostered the cooperation Ronald Lee had established with the branch and represented the museum point of view in historical matters. The laboratory regularly consulted him on curatorial and conservation questions and obtained his help in specimen acquisition. An early example of his collaboration involved the old problem of training field personnel to meet their curatorial responsibilities.