Having a Staycation Day!- Part 2
The place that I stop at was the Smith Family Cabin and the Atlanta History Center. The Smith Family Cabin was visited in an 1860's farm and meet living history characters who share the challenges of life during the Civil War. I had an excellent delightful conversation with the character actor Jasper Smith as he tells tales of the civil war and examines his modest crops and farm animals. Here is some information below about the Smith Family Cabin from the Atlanta History Center:
"The Smith Family Farm includes the Tullie Smith House, a plantation-plain house built in the 1840s by the Robert Smith family. Originally located east of Atlanta, outside the city limits, the house survived the destruction in and around Atlanta during the Civil War. The house and detached kitchen were moved to the Atlanta History Center in the early 1970s and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The house and separate open-hearth kitchen are now surrounded by a dairy, blacksmith shop, smokehouse, double corncrib, slave cabin and barn, as well as traditional vegetable, herb, field, flower and slave gardens. There is a fenced vegetable garden provides heirloom produce for the mid-nineteenth century kitchen, while corn and cotton fill a quarter acre devoted to moneymaking field crops. Old fashioned ornamental flowers such as love-lies-bleeding (Amaranthus sp.) and rose campion (Lychnis coronaria) grace the enclosed front yard of swept dirt. A slave’s personal vegetable garden, common in 1860s Georgia, lies beside a small cabin behind the main farmhouse. "
The Atlanta History Center exhibits about the state of Georgia were incredible and interesting. One of the exhibit that interest me was the SHAPING TRADITIONS: FOLK ARTS IN A CHANGING SOUTH . The Atlanta History Center explains about their exhibit below:
“The changing role of folk arts, once central to the lives of ordinary southerners, offers fresh insights into the region’s social history,” says exhibition curator John Burrison.
Throughout the exhibition, videos present folk art processes and are complemented by touchable examples of highlighted works. Two enclosed rooms create listening environments for visitors to hear folk storytelling, singing and instrumental music.
Highlighted artists include the Meaders and Hewell family pottery makers, chair-maker Walter Shelnut, Cherokee basket-maker Lucille Lossiah, the Reeves family of basket makers, story quilter Harriet Powers and blacksmith Philip Simmons."
Make sure you visit that Atlanta History Center if you are ever in Atlanta. I am so proud of Atlanta and their rich history and you will be also once you come here!
Click here for further pictures of the Smith Family Cabin and the Atlanta History Center!
