Me at the OHC

Year-End-Review

2011-01-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

Holy cow. I haven't updated this since July. I hope that shows everyone how busy we have been around the OHC in the last 6 months.

Let's see - how about a year-end-review?

WHAT A YEAR! 2010 might have been the fastest year of my life. Its nice to know I've done everything we normally do in a year here at least once now. Since July we had our annual Gala at the end of October. The first ever Moonshiner's Ball was a big success and a fun time to boot. We had a great turn out, wonderful live music, and raised almost $7,000 for the OHC via sponsorships, silent and live auctions, tickets to the event, and even some of those moonshine samples :) I look forward to doing something similar again next year.

The highlight of the Gala had to be the unveiling of the mostly complete Heritage Park. Those memorial bricks that had been sitting in the museum for 5 years are now the beginning of what will hopefully be an ongoing walkway through the heirloom vegetable garden and native plant garden that surrounds our 2 outdoor artifacts - the Manly Mobile Jail (aka "The Cage") and the Hardy Tines steam engine. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to our wonderful volunteer and friend Jon Fritz (Zone 7) for making the park happen. I can't wait until spring when it really starts to show its true colors and brightens up our little corner of Brown's Square.

Unfortunately, due to the proximity of Gala to Halloween we were unable to throw the OHC Heritage Haunt again in 2010. It was a huge success in 2009 and we hope to have it again in 2011.

Also - on Labor Day weekend the OHC's "classroom"/meeting space received a wonderful facelift thanks to Christopher Johnson and crew for his Eagle Scout project. He added new paint, chair railing, and crown moulding to a room that really needed some finishing touches. We are thrille with the results and thanks to his own fundraising the cost was very affordable! JOB WELL DONE CHRISTOPHER!

(photo - Christopher Johnson and crew make improvements to the OHC classroom/meeting space)

November was full of project work days - 3 saturdays in a row, in fact, at our General Store Museum in Westminster and Center Church in Oakway. We got a lot cleaned up and prepped for continued renovations. The store shelving for the General Store Museum is nearing completion and should be installed very soon. The period light fixtures have all been sponsored and purchased and are ready to hang. Before we know it the General Store Museum will be open for business. Likewise, today brought good news about Center Church. Pioneer Water District has generously agreed to install a water tap at the site free of charge! That is a HUGE savings that we can credit the people of Oakway with. We look forward to continue progress at that site and hopefully maybe an Easter event out there.

(photo - Jerry and Ernie prep General Store Museum walls for paint)

We started a new tradition this Christmas season by raising money for a Christmas party for the boys of the Tamassee DAR Missouri Cottage. We raised nearly $800 for 9 boys between the ages of 8 and 16 and had a blast of a pizza party at the OHC. We played some hilarious Minute to Win It Christmas games and managed to give them some great Christmas gifts - both needs and wants. I was very thrilled by the generosity of our supporters to pull together for a good cause like this.

(Christmas boys play Minute to Win It game - trying to get a cookie from forehead to mouth without using their hands)
For 2011 we have some wonderful movies planned for Movie Night at the Museum. Please check our web site/facebook for those.

We are also still very optimistic about a decision from the US Forest Service regarding the Southern Appalachian Farmstead.

We also plan to make some headway on a new project to get some of Oconee's historic cemeteries signed - a project that we could use lots of help on as many of these cemeteries are difficult to find and a priority list will have to be made to decide which need signs first.

Progress is coming along on the Reading and Research Room slowly but surely. We are also very optimistic about some plans arou

Publish Post

nd Walhalla regarding a possible reconstruction of the old Biemann's Hotel....*crossing our fingers*.

I want to say what a pleasure it has been working here for over a year now. I have met so many wonderful people here who make my job even more enriching. I think we have a lot to look forward to in 2011.

Airdrying the dugout

2010-07-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

On July 6 the OHC staff, interns, and volunteers began the second phase of preservation for the Chattooga Canoe. The canoe tank was drained and it has begun to air dry. This was the best method of preservation after many consultations with Dr. Jon Leader, the State Archaeologist. The canoe may take upwards of 9 months to completely dry since it has to dry very slowly so as to not stress the wood. This process requires the OHC to apply a chemical preservative to the canoe several times per day. We are looking forward to having a completely dry canoe in the near future - in a beautiful display case. For now we are modifying the canoe tank to allow access for staff to apply chemical treatments but to also allow the canoe to be seen by, yet protected from, the public. This will be possible thanks to the generous donations we have received to purchase supplies like plexiglass. I encourage everyone to come see the canoe again - it looks amazing now that you can really see it unobstructed.

Newry Folk Festival

2010-07-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Well, yes, it has been over a month since the Newry Folk Festival, but that doesn't mean I forgot about it.

June 12 was a great day - a hot day, but great nonetheless. We got together in Newry Village and celebrated Oconee County's rich textile history with great music, food, tours, and crafts. Many thanks to the wonderful bands that played: Philip Cheney, Mountain Hoodoo, Doshena, Conservation Theory, Shades of Blue, and the Heritage String Band. Also thank you to our numerous sponsors who made the whole thing possible. We don't raise a lot of money, but we raise a lot of awareness, and that's the goal.

Also, the big news at the festival was the new plans for the restoration and renovation of the mill. Approximately 10-12 million dollars are projected to be spent on a plan that involves a complete historic renovation of the outside of the structure and a complete renovation of the inside into apartments. We are glad to see that the building is being saved and hope that this will be good for the community of Newry. Work is projected to start this September. More information will be posted as I receive it.

we're what you call an "umbrella organization" now

2010-04-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

In honor of former director Nick Gambrell, I want to start this blog post with a quote by Winston Churchill:

"We shape our buildings; thereafter, our buildings shape us."

I thought that quote was a good segue into discussing our newest acquisition at the OHC - the Keowee Courier building.

From my talks with many people from the county and abroad I noticed that a lot of people don't know about the Keowee Courier. The Keowee Courier is Oconee County's oldest newspaper - it predominantly serves Walhalla now, but it began in 1849 (predating the founding of ALL major cities in the county). It has operated in the same building since 1899 - the longest running newspaper in the same building in the whole state! Since then at least a dozen newspapers have served Oconee County, but the Keowee Courier has remained unfailing (we will excuse them for not printing during the Civil War).

As a former freelance journalist and journalism student I have a soft spot for newspapers. I'm only 25, but I'm a little old-fashioned. I like technology, but I just can't get used to reading things online. I dont' read the news online and I won't be buying an "e-reader" for my books. I like paper. I like to fold it up, take it with me, and swat things with it when I'm done. I like that the ink rubs off on my fingers. Newspapers are going the way of the dinosaur, its true, but we owe a lot to newspapers. Truly, newspaper are history's front line. It is the job of the reporter to report and what he reports becomes history. Therefore, we will be preserving this building and the tradition of community news that it represents. Keep an eye on the news in the coming weeks as we start to plan our fundraising initiatives for this project. We hope that the people that the Keowee Courier served so well for so long will come together to help us in this endeavor.

2010 is underway

2010-02-24T12:01:00.000-08:00

Hello OHC fans! 2010 got underway in a rush - here I am with my first blog post of the new year and its almost March already. We've been busy around here. Let me catch you up.

January saw the return of Heritage Highlights - our quarterly OHC newsletter for members. The newsletter features briefs on what's happening around the OHC - progress on special projects, a wish list, listing of new members, and notices about what's new in the museum and gift shop. Response to the newsletter was fantastic - I was glad to see that many of you appreciate regular updates about what's going on here and how you can be a part of that. The next issue will be out at the end of March.

Also, the OHC is proud to be one of the first buildings in Oconee County to be a part of the new Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail. If you aren't familiar with this project yet I encourage you to check out the group's web site www.oconeeheritagequilttrail.com. The purpose of the project is to celebrate an area's heritage through the display of local quilt patterns on a large scale on the sides of barns and other buildings.

The Oconee Heritage Center's quilt pattern is that of a quilt that is on display in our museum. The pattern is called Rocky Mountain Road and the original quilt was done by Lena Mae Talley of Mtn. Rest when she was a teenager in 1930. The difficult pattern took her several years to complete. The quilt was handed down to her niece who then graciously donated it to us for display in the museum. We are proud to celebrate this piece of history by participating in the quilt trail. The pattern was painted on wooden panels and installed on the side of our facility in Walhalla - see the photo below. The Ladies of Wynward Pointe were kind enough to sponsor the cost of creating this quilt trail piece for the OHC - thank you to those ladies!

Other quilt patterns currently appear on the Fine Arts Conservatory in Walhalla, as well as Keowee Elementary School. Blue Ridge Electric Co-op was kind enough to donate the manpower to install the pieces on the buildings and they did a wonderful job! Anyone can purchase and/or sponsor a quilt trail piece. Ultimately, it will be something that they will map and people can drive all around Oconee County following the heritage quilt trail.

I also want to say a special thank you to my mom and to Square D - thanks to my mom's volunteer hours here at the OHC she qualified to apply for a grant through her employer Square D for $500 that we put toward the purchase of a new, more ink and paper efficient printer/copier/scanner/fax machine!!!

Also, come check out our newest donated artifcat - a 1958 Bally Carnival Queen bingo pin ball machine! Nick liked to save historic pianos, but I have a penchant for pin ball machines. This one is really great and is still operational.

WE HAVE BROKEN GROUND ON THE JAKE SLUDER HERITAGE PARK!!!
Within the past week or so now we have officially broken ground on the Heritage Park, which is located adjacent to the OHC in Walhalla in the L-shaped space surrounding the jail wagon and the steam engine. This will be the final destination for the memorial bricks we have been selling for several years and will also be a very nice native plant park and heirloom garden. We will hold an unveiling of the bricks later in the spring once we get everything looking good out there. The park will also be featuring 2 historic posts that were originally part of the historic home called Innisfallen of Mr. Courtenay who started Newry Mill in Seneca (this home later became known as the Abney House when Abney Mills took over operations) - the home is no longer there, but these posts (one of which bears the letter "C" for Courtenay) were saved. They have been installed in the park and will flank the side entrance points of the memorial brick walkway. Thank you very much to Mr. Jon Fritz who has generously donated his time and landscaping expertise and has gotten this project off the ground!

On the Westminster front - the Barrett-Jones building will be getting a new roof in March. We are looking forward to that. Once the roof is leak free we will be installing sprinklers and shelving and then the construction of the exhibit can begin. If all goes as planned we will have the satellite museum open by the end of this year! Thank you so much to the Westminster Area Historic Preservation Society who have worked so hard to help us make progress on this important project - you all do a wonderful job! I wish every town in Oconee County had a historic preservation group that works as hard as WAHPS.

Also, thank you to the folks of Oakway for coming out and supporting the OHC in its newest proejct - Center Methodist Church. In November, the OHC acquired title to this historic church and cemetery in the Oakway area. We hope to preserve and restore the church and property and use it for various programs and possibly as a wedding venue. Also, thank you to the Mason twins for taking care of this important property for so many years! The church has had no congregation since the 1950s and was built in the 1870s. However, it is in excellent condition and is a priceless part of Oconee County history. Several Confederate veterans and 1 WW1 veteran are buried there. If you are interested in this project please contact me. Also, thank you to Peggy Moore for bringing the church's need for a new owner to the OHC's attention and to Jim Leathrum for helping facilitate the property transfer between the OHC and the Methodist Convention in Columbia. We are really proud to help save this part of Oconee's religious history. I am also proud to be working with the people of Oakway who have eagerly volunteered their efforts on this project.

Well, I think that about covers it for now. Thank you to the many groups we have had tour the museum recently - Seneca Presbyterian Church, College Street Baptist Church, and West-Oak High School 9th Graders.

end of the year already?!?!?

2009-12-23T11:31:00.001-08:00

Holy cow! Its been a while. I've got some catching up to do. Well, since last we spoke a lot has gone on.

The Spirit of Oconee monument was dedicated in front of the courthouse. It looks very nice, everyone should drive by and see the results of the Bear Clan's labor. Speaking of which, if you haven't heard, the Bear Clan recently leased a building from the OHC just down the street for the purposes of a Museum of the Cherokee in South Carolina. Hopefully, that will be up and running within the next few years. We will have quite the little row of museums in Walhalla.

Also, VetFest was a big hit! Way to go Patriot's Hall! The plane flying over was the highlight of my day.

The OHC also made an appearance on SC ETV recently - a show called Your Day On The Road - Oconee County. It was a very nice show that featured some really great Oconee County faces and places.

December ushered in the Christmas season - around here that means Christmas Parades! The OHC successfully got the 1962 firetruck running and made it to Seneca, Salem, and Walhalla. We made it to West Union but unfortunately the truck died and we didn't actually get to be in the parade. Inclement weather rained us out of Westminster and Fair Play - we'll be there next year though! Our own Christmas programs went very well too. The baked goods tasting/recipe auction was a lot of fun and raised some money as well. Thanks to all who participated! Also, thank you to the Harper Sisters for entertaining us with their Christmas tales at the OHC Christmas Traditions program. Likewise, a week prior to that we hosted a group of Christian Harmony Shaped-Note Singers, who were amazing. Thank you to all the members of that group!

Things are finally starting to calm down a little bit around here. Hopefully the rain will hold off long enough to get a few more things done with our ongoing special projects.

In the new year look for the return of our quarterly newsletter!

Thanks for a wonderful year of support and progress from all of us at the OHC!

Its getting a little chilly

2009-11-04T09:46:00.000-08:00

The Heritage Haunt went fantastically well - we had at least 200 participants! Thank you to everyone who came out to support us, thank you to my wonderful volunteers - Anna Miller, Kevin Robinson, Brooke and Les McCall, my dad, my mom, my aunt Billie, Ryan King, and Betsey, and thank you to the sponsors who made this event possible!!! I'm posting some photos below (and on Facebook too, I hope).

Also, the annual Members Meeting went fairly well - those who came gave me lots of good ideas!

The first ever Carolina Foothills Heritage Fair was AWESOME. This has to become an annual event. It was everything a fair should be - good vendors, cute farm animals, rides, food, and music. If you didn't go, you really missed out.

catching up

2009-10-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

Wow. I got very busy here lately and have not been as dutiful a blogger as I should be. Let's see. Since the Gala I spoke at the Westminster Rotary Club, which is a fantastic group of people and the food at Eva's in Westminster was really good. Also, congratulations to the town of Westminster for the grand opening of the newly redone Depot, which looks AMAZING both inside and out. In other news, thank-you to the Little River Band for joining us on our past Old-Time Music Gathering, and, as always, thank you to Bill and Connie Lowe for joining us as well. I was also glad to see that Oktoberfest wasn't a complete washout. Despite the rain I saw lots of people downtown and lots of people in the OHC, which is always nice, and it was great that a dozen or so folks joined us for Movie Night at the Museum that Saturday as well. Thank-you to the Oktoberfest Dancers for performing here at the OHC - your hard work paid off and it was wonderful to see. The Walhalla Middle School 7th graders also joined us the day before Oktoberfest started and they were all great kids. Also in the education world, thank-you to those teachers who joined me for Business-Education Day. Your input is very valuable to me.

BIG NEWS - the Oconee Heritage Center is going to be on TV. A SC-ETV program called "Your Day: On The Road" will be featuring many areas around Oconee County and the OHC will be one of them. Look for a interview with me, as well as a performance of a song about "the cage" by the Little River Band, and also an interview with our own Eddie Martin about Stumphouse Tunnel. The program is set to air on November 20 at 5:00 pm on local ETV/PBS.

Everyone, also be sure to go out and have fun at the first ever Carolina Foothills Heritage Fair in West-Oak October 22-25!!! It's what an old-fashioned fair should be.

A few other things. The OHC is having the first ever Heritage Haunt on Oct. 31 starting at 3:00 p.m. There will be a fun (not scary) trick-or-treat through the museum from 3-4:30, a costume constest at 4:30, a showing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown at 5:00 and then a Frankenstein Film Fest with pizza at 6:00. I hope everyone can come out and join us for some good clean halloween fun.

And finally, please come out to our annual members' meeting on Tuesday Oct. 27 at 6 pm. We will review last year's accomplishments, elect board members, and go over our projects for next year. Light refreshments will be provided - including some tasty praline bacon from Betsey, which I'm very excited about.

Gala la la la

2009-10-02T07:56:00.000-07:00

Due to some technical difficulties my original post about the Gala has been lost. To reiterate:

The Gala went very well despite having a slightly smaller crowd than normal. The Walhalla Woman's Club did a FANTASTIC job with the food - people raved about it. The band's were phenomenal - Thanks to Bill and Connie Lowe and Cripple Creek, The Little River Band, and our steel drum band Pantasia! Thanks to the Walhalla Oktoberfest Dancers for preserving our German dance heritage, also to storyteller Sarah Duvall and King Kudzu and Mother Vine. Thank you to our sponsors and silent auction donors. The silent auction went very well, and some of the bidding got pretty interesting I hear. Also, thank you to everyone who attended - you make all the things we do possible, and we're doing a lot, so good job! A VERY VERY BIG THANK YOU TO DEANNA DEFOOR for making the entire Gala happen and for making it pretty to boot. The Gala truly would not have happened if it weren't for her. Also, thanks to all the staff and volunteers who helped out that night. Below is a slide show of photos from that night. Enjoy

breakfast club

2009-09-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

Thank you to the Seneca Rotary Club for letting me join them for breakfast this morning and for listening to my presentation about our ongoing projects, and thank you to the Seneca Family Restaurant for the fantastic food!

Also, the Gala approaches, as always signaled by the advent of a large motorized vehicle in our lobby. This Friday will be our 5th Annual Harvest Moon Gala here at the OHC. Ms. Deanna Defoor is working very hard to get this together and its going to be great. We have a steel drum band called Pantasia coming to play as well as a Gullah storyteller, kudzu basket demos, live music from Bill Lowe & Cripple Creek as well as the Little River Band and cellist Heidi McKee. The Oktoberfest dancers will be dancing too. Food will be provided as well as beer and wine. I'm excited!

Keep an eye out too, I'm hoping to have something fun for Halloween coming up (one of my favorite "holidays").

Sweet Beginnings

2009-09-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

I decided that the OHC needs a blog because, 1) its a great way for you, John Q. Public, to keep yourself up to date on the happenings here, and 2) you can get to know me, Leslie White, the new Director/Curator. So here goes.

Basically, to answer some of the questions posed by the many new people I have met since I started here a few weeks ago, I am a real live native of this great county. I was born in Oconee Memorial Hospital on a Tuesday evening - December 18, 1984. No questions about the authenticity of my birth certificate please...haha. I grew up in the Bear Swamp (the West side, not the East) community in Walhalla. My mother is Linda White (maiden name Linda Pierce) of the Flat Rock community in Walhalla. Her parents are Jewel and Bill Pierce. My father is Richard White. You may know him from White's Culvert Company on Highway 11. He grew up in Tamassee, well, the Camp Oak/Flat Shoals area to be specific. His parents were Howard and Edna White.

I graduated from Walhalla High School in 2003. Then I went to college at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC, where I studied mass communication and print journalism. I received my BA there in 2007. I then went straight on for my master's degree in Public History at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. For those of you just read that and said "what's public history? Is there private history?" I will tell you. Public History teaches you how to make all that boring history you learn in school fun, interesting, and accessible to the general public. This practice generally occurs through outlets like museums, heritage centers, historic homes, monuments, historic sites, national parks, etc... I encourage you to Google it sometime. While working on my MA I worked/interned/or did projects with the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Blowing Rock Historical Society, the Adirondack Museum (in upstate NY), the original Mast General Store, the Upcountry History Museum, the Levine Museum of the New South, and probably something else I'm forgetting. At any rate, I am very lucky and proud to have been selected to take on this position at the Oconee Heritage Center. This county and its people are very near and dear to my heart and I hope I can serve it well.

So, that's the boring stuff about me. The fun stuff? Let's see - no, I don't fiddle, sorry. I played the violin (unfortunately, its not the same thing) for 8 years. I hope to learn though. I like art, photography, almost any and all music, movies, and books. I go home every night and water my flowers and tomato plants. I like to cook (and eat). Also, I should mention that I have a guinea pig - her name is LoLo.

A lot of people have come to refer to me as "the new Nick." Someone told me last night though, "Don't be Nick, just be you." and that is really all I can do. Nick laid a wonderful foundation for me and we can only keep going up from there. I hope you will all stop by and introduce yourselves. I don't have any intentions of coming in and changing everything. Of course I have some ideas of my own and such, but what I really want is for the entire community (county-wide) to feel that the OHC belongs to them and that everyone has had a hand in shaping it.

So, that being said, I hope you will all rally with me because we have several projects that are all very literally underway - the Westminster satellite location, the reading room in the basement, the Heritage Park, and the farmstead. Its going to be a lot of hard work, but I'm looking forward to it.