The Old World: Frontier museum offers slices of life in the 1700s

By Jane Dunlap Norris
Media General News Service
Published: July 17, 2008

It’s been said that it takes a village to raise a child. At the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia, children — and grownups, too — soon will get an opportunity to help raise a village.

Visitors to the Staunton museum have been able to see up-close what life was like long ago on farms in England, Ireland and Germany, and to see how Old World influences and practices helped shape a new nation. But these farmers weren’t the only folks who left what they knew and loved behind, and toiled to create a new country.

Many Virginia slaves came from West Africa, and the next new exhibit to join the Frontier Culture Museum’s collection is a village that will show what life was like on an Igbo family’s farm in the mid-1700s.

The museum originally invited three Nigerian bushmen with experience in building genuine mud huts to create the Igbo compound, but earlier this month the men were denied visas to enter the United States. Another team from Nigeria, including a museum curator and an architecture professor, has arrived instead to help put together the village patterned on the compounds in which the West African yam farmers lived and to teach the museum’s staff the techniques necessary to complete the task.

Within weeks, museum visitors will get the chance to lend a hand.

“People will be able to jump in and help if they’d like,” said Michael L. Sutton, director of marketing for the museum. “All they have to do is ask.”

Sutton recommended keeping an eye on the museum’s Web site at http://www.frontiermuseum.org to stay updated on the construction schedule. Plans include a Webcam that will offer visitors construction updates on demand.

To make room for the village, the museum’s 1850s-era American farm was relocated and reopened June 13, Sutton said.

Detailed descriptions of how the farm buildings themselves were meticulously pieced back together after crossing the ocean — centuries after the countrymen of their original residents made the journey — is offered in an informational video visitors can watch before taking a tour.

Sutton said a crew from the History Channel’s “Mega Movers” series filmed footage of the 1850s farm’s painstaking move, with a possible air date in the fall. The farm’s tobacco barn will be taken apart and reassembled at the new site.

Construction isn’t the only activity at the museum that may tempt visitors to roll up their sleeves. Guests can help to bake bread or hew logs, among other things.

Of course, if you’re looking for a recreational break instead of a working holiday, it’s fine to stroll the grounds without lifting a finger. Interpreters patiently field all kinds of questions within each of the farms, particularly in the ringing, sizzling blacksmith’s shop at the Ulster Forge in the Irish exhibit.

Sutton said that almost 2,000 people turned out for the museum’s Fourth of July celebration to see how the holiday was observed in the 1800s, with a reading of the Declaration of Independence, festive music and plenty of games.

Holiday tours also are in demand, as Christmas-season visitors get to observe how the different cultural groups recognized the day, with approaches ranging from elaborate and austere.

The African village won’t be the only new offering this fall. An authentic one-room schoolhouse from Rockingham County will open to visitors. On Sept. 23, naturalization ceremonies will take place at the museum, welcoming yet another group of new Americans. Oktoberfest, set for Oct. 4, will highlight the lighter side of life on the German farm.

Norris, who writes for The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, can be reached at .