NORTH AUGUSTA — Visitors to North Augusta can do a bit of time travel this weekend at the Living History Park.
The annual “Colonial Times: Under the Crown and Colonial Trades Fair” opened Saturday and will run through Sunday. Visitors can talk with reenactors who act as blacksmiths, weavers, cooks, school children, a fire starter and a Colonial-era magician. The park is located at West Spring Grove Avenue and Lake Avenue. Admission is free, though the volunteers at the park do accept donations.
Items available for sale in one tent include handmade goods of replicas of dresses and toys colonists would have worn and played with in the mid-1700s.
Jean Hutchinson, 70, of Abbeville, S.C., spins wool into yarn using a traditional spinning wheel. She is able to push the pedal that spins the wheel, tend to the forming thread and tell onlookers how the process works all at the same time.
“It’s sort of like rubbing your head and patting your stomach. You’ve got to have everything going in the appropriate direction,” Hutchinson said.
Lisa Walker, 39, of Augusta, shared a tent with Hutchinson. Walker is a nurse and enjoys doing reenactments of nurses during wartime, including the Civil War, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. At the Living History Park, she used ink and stamps to paint colorful patterns on cloth.
“I love history,” Walker said. “Right now, I think it’s important we learn about history.”
At the outdoor kitchen, the reenactors had just finished a late breakfast, and one woman spent hours churning butter.
Suzanne Field, 62, of Murrayville, Ga., acknowledged some of her belongings were anachronistic but necessary for comfort. She uses a modern wheelchair, bifocal glasses and a wristwatch, which she covered with a piece of white linen tied around her left wrist.
“I can’t see without these glasses,” she said.
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But she pointed out how someone who was not able to walk back in the colonial days could still be useful.
“I’m obviously the arms of the group, and I could use this for barter,” Field said as she churned cream into butter. “I can’t catch the chicken. But you don’t have a cow to make butter. So I would trade the butter for a chicken. This morning I traded a pound of butter with Jenny for breakfast.”
Her friend, Jenny Stanley, 42, of Cleveland, Ga., made ham, eggs and cakes over an open fire using a cast iron skillet. Instead of baking soda, she used ground up deer stag horn, which she says actually makes cakes, breads and other baked goods more fluffy and light than using baking soda.
The only drawback is it releases ammonia gas, which doesn’t hurt the taste of the baked goods, but makes her kitchen smell like cat urine. She opens the windows when baking and that solves the problem of the smell, she said.
“We’re not nearly dirty and stinky and dangerous as it was then,” said Mary White, 72, who greeted guests with her husband Stephen, 72, at the entrance to the park.
At the one-room schoolhouse, Sarah Eckley, 35, made the short trip across the Savannah River from her home in the Olde Town neighborhood of Augusta with her four young children.
“We live close by, and my kids have never seen or learned what things were like before they lived,” Eckley said.
Julie Kursch, 37, has 11 children who she homeschools. She brings them to the Living History Park because history is more tangible. One son is learning how to be a blacksmith. Her daughter Maribelle, 13, tended a duckling in front of the school house and showed off the baby to other children.
“This is where history comes to life,” Kursch said.
Joshua B. Good is a staff reporter covering Columbia County and military/veterans’ issues for The Augusta Press. Reach him at joshua@theaugustapress.com
