For as much as Holly and I talk about loving living history museums, we’ve hardly been to any together! We tried to bring the kids to Colonial Williamsburg a year or two ago, but it was a 100 degree disaster. Holly and I finally made it back there recently and I’ll write about that later I’m sure. Surprisingly, it took Holly’s sister moving to Charlottesville for us to discover a wonderfully magnificent living history museum around an hour from Charlottesville.
Through a combination of it being the annual Oktoberfest celebration and also my brother-in-law getting free passes through a work relationship, our family and my wife’s sister’s family met up in Staunton to visit the museum last weekend on Saturday.
Staunton’s Frontier Culture Museum is a tribute to the first colonial Virginia settlers and is organized on a circular trail with tiny houses / villages representing different colonial era settlers. In the words of the museum’s website, “To tell the story of these early immigrants and their American descendents, the Museum has moved or reproduced examples of traditional rural buildings from England, Germany, Ireland, West Africa, and America.”
An English cottage woman doing the dishes
Not only does the museum recreate the buildings, but they have full time staff in period costume doing daily tasks and answering questions for the visitors. I often tell people that even though I was a history major, I don’t have tons of historical facts roaming through my brain at any given time, but I do know enough to tell if somebody is completely wrong. I tested the staff at times to hear their responses and was very impressed with their knowledge. And as a bonus, I left feeling comfortable that I had learned a great deal about the 16th and 17th century life in the Americas.
If you go, take some time to research the website and Facebook site; the museum has plenty of special events and you may want to plan your visit accordingly!
On the web: http://www.frontiermuseum.org
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Frontier-Culture-Museum-of-Virginia/55813996379
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