Westville A Living Museum

By Marge Snow

Living museums are wonderful places to visit. If you want to step back in time and actually experience life as it was then, a living museum or an open air museum is the place to be. When people think of this type of museum, the first place that comes to mind is Historic Williamsburg, but there are living museums all over the country and all over the world. One of these is in a little town called Westville, near Lumpkin Ga.

A living museum is a place that completely immerses you in another culture or another time. And that's what Westville does. It creates a living 1850's Georgia village. The village has over 30 antebellum buildings including homes, stores, schools, and churches. But these structures are only part of what makes a living museum special. The people of Westville are what really make the town come alive.

In the Westville workshops, you'll find candle makers, basket weavers, potters, quilters, and woodworkers. All practice their craft as if it were still 1850. You can not only see how things were made before electricity, but you can talk to the crafts people and learn some of their tricks and techniques. Sometimes you can even join in and help. Some of the tricks you might learn include how people added color and scent to their candles before you could go out to the store and buy candle fragrance or color beads. The potter also works the way potters did in the 1850s. From finding pure clay in the environment to using a kiln dug into the side of a hill. The basket weaver finds and cuts his own white oaks and prepares the wood himself. There isn't any other type of place where you can see so many different craftspeople in their own shops, and watch them practicing their arts as our ancestors did.

Westville is a living town, so there's much more to see than the craftspeople. There weren’t any supermarkets in 1850, so you won't find one in Westville. They grow their own food. If you visit in the spring, you can see townspeople planting their own crops. They use a mule drawn plow and plant by hand. If you visit during the harvest, you'll see farmers picking their crops. Different times of year bring different demonstrations. For example, Fall is when you can see cane syrup making. All the food is the cooked over an open fire. No microwaves here. And no cake mix either. Everything is done from scratch.

You'll find so much to do and see at Westville, its impossible to put it all on this page. If you're a crafter, you'll probably want to spend most of your time around the workshops. If you're a history buff, the homes and buildings will probably catch your attention. If you're a gardener, you'll enjoy the farming demonstrations and the "dooryard gardens". It a wonderful way to spend the day. But if you aren’t in south western Georgia, don't worry. Living museums are everywhere these days. I'll be there's one not too far from where you live.