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Across the State Line-Lumpkin, Georgia
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Jules Verne may
have had his time machine, but in Westville they have a time "gate." It’s really a pretty simple approach to time travel -- one minute you’re in the 20th-century town of Lumpkin, GA, and the next minute, you stroll through the Singer Gate and you’re looking at rural Georgia lifestyles of the 1850s. Zip -- 140 years into the past in the blink of an eye. Located about 1/4 of a mile south of Lumpkin’s town square, Westville provides a most fascinating window to the past. It’s a place where time appears to have stood still. What you see and experience is as authentic as possible, right down to the recipe for the gingerbread that’s baked in the oven of the old woodstove. |
When you arrive at Westville, your first stop will be the Randle-Morton Store. In addition to serving as a gift shop for the items made by the Westville artisans, you get a copy of "The Westville Guide" when you purchase an admission ticket. Since modern money isn’t used in the village, you’ll also want to trade some of your "American greenbacks" for "scrip" before leaving the store.
Trust me, when you smell the aroma of the gingerbread or the fresh-baked sausage biscuits, you’ll be very happy you have a good supply of scrip. The village may be a smidgen on the old, historic side, but the biscuits come hot and fresh from the hearth. "Good" doesn’t begin to adequately describe their taste.
The Westville Guide is a newspaper-style publication which provides not only a village map, but gives a brief history of each of the buildings on your tour. This will help you better understand what life must have been like back in the 19th century, kind of like a "You Are There" approach. Many of the buildings, while not actually constructed in Westville, were built somewhere in rural Georgia during the mid-1800s, then moved to their current location.
Just to whet your historical appetite -- a few of the more than 25 stops on your tour include the Stewart County Academy schoolhouse built in 1832, a shoemaker’s shop from the late 1830s and an original blacksmith shop from the same era.
In addition to the historic buildings, themselves, there is something else you’ll find at various sites in the village -- people dressed in period outfits, working as they would have back in 1850. Not only do they dress from the past, but the tools and equipment used in doing their chores are from the same period as the buildings. Feel free to ask them questions about what they are doing, take lots of pictures and generally just visit with them awhile.
This is what you might call "history -- up close and personal."
At the blacksmith shop, the bellows blow and the heat can become intense. The blacksmith makes his own tools and forges the iron on an anvil -- all the while with a 3,400-degree fire burning beside him.
Two of my favorite tour stops are at the working kitchen in the McDonald House, just after the gingerbread comes out of the woodstove oven, and the Marrett Farmhouse, just after the biscuits are removed from the open-hearth fire. In this modern day of packaged mixes and microwave everything, it really is fascinating to see how things were done almost 150 years ago. The bakers at the farmhouse are happy to explain the whys and hows of baking biscuits in the fireplace, and to serve just as many as you care to eat. Modern technology is great, but when you taste the biscuits, you may start to wonder if all this progress is really such a good thing after all.
In addition to an entire village to explore, Westville also offers a lot of special activities. On the first Sunday of each month between April and September, it’s baseball, 1860s-style at Westville. All visitors are eligible to join in the fun as you play with vintage-style baseball equipment made in the village. That’s right – the baseballs, bats, uniforms and rules are straight out of the mid-19th century. Some professional teams occasionally wear old uniforms, but they haven’t seen anything compared to this, that’s for sure.
On July 25th, the Westville Fiddler’s Contest kicks off at 11 a.m., offering hours of toe-tapping fun. Back in the 1850s, there was no television or radio, so music often provided the evening’s entertainment. Cash prizes will be awarded to the winners. In reality, though, the spectators are the real winners -- they get to enjoy the music.
Westville’s biggest event of the year will be held from Oct. 15th to Nov. 15th. It’s called the Fair of 1850 and it is something you don’t want to miss. For one month each fall, the village celebrates harvest time in rural Georgia, 1850s-style. There is much going on, but of special note is the operation of Westville’s animal powered cotton gin -- believed to be the only one of it’s kind in operation in the world.
In the fast-paced world of the late 20th century, time seems to zip by at warp speed. But no matter when you walk through the Singer Gate, you’ll enter Westville, a place "Where it’s always 1850!"
Want To Go? What: Westville, An 1850s Village |
Published October 1998, Alabama
Prime Times
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