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What was life like for average Georgians before the Civil War?
One portrayal is provided by
Westville, near Lumpkin, Georgia,
three hours due south of Haralson County. This is not the glamorous world
of giant plantation mansions portrayed in Gone With The Wind, but a
pedestrian town of 34 furnished pre-Civil War buildings with
period-dressed interpreters and craftsmen at work in their shops.
Nearly all of the many structures in Westville are period-built, constructed
in the Old South over the time interval 1836-1859. The buildings represent a wide
range of types, from mean log cabins built before the Indian removal in
1836 to a prosperous merchant-planter's graceful home with formal gardens.
The entire village covers 25 acres and includes the following
structures: two churches, a schoolhouse, a courthouse, a lawyer-office,
a doctor-office, three log cabins, a log farmhouse, a converted log
house, seven middle-class houses, a merchant-planter's house, five
formal antebellum gardens, a country store, a shoemaker shop, a
cabinet shop, a pottery shop, a blacksmith shop, a mule driven cotton
gin and a wooden screw press, a cane mill and syrup kettle, and a
populated carriage house.
Life before the Civil War depended on animal power and the genius of
the human hand. Westville exhibits the pre-industrial skills of
blacksmithing, salt-glazed pottery-making, basket-making, spinning and
weaving, quilting, farmhouse cooking, leather working, planting and harvesting...
Experience the smells, sounds and sights of a world now gone by making a visit.
Take a virtual tour of Westville
here.
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