Homeschool Day - "The Measure of Place" - Shaping and Making the Town - Life skills of early Salem

Saturday, June 8, 2019 9:30 AM - 4:30 PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This day has been especially designed for the home schooled student and family.

Join us for a visit to Salem by members of the “Department of the Geographer to the Army 1777-1783” who portray military surveyors during the American Revolution.  Geographer, as they refer to themselves, will be on the Tavern meadow offering demonstrations and some activities surrounding the work of surveyors during the war.  The town of Salem had several surveyors that lived and worked in Wachovia and were instrumental in the organization of the early landscape of Salem and the surrounding areas.

• Throughout Salem there will be a special focus on the life skills and planning that was necessary to build a town in early North Carolina.
• The Tavern museum will prepare an 18^th century meal over the hearth for the surveyors using early receipts (we call them recipes these days).
•  A quilting Frolic will be happening in the silversmith’s house so stop by and add your stitches to the quilt for future generations to see!
• The Miksch house will have historic maps on hand to study and learn how the work of early surveyors allowed us to re-create the historic gardens and landscape that we see today.
• The Boys School was and is a place of learning, but the boys had some fun too!  Come by and join us in the back yard for some games of skill such as hoops and sticks and grace rings.
• How would you house more than 60 people? The Single Brothers house will have tools to help design a building for single men or women so try your hand as an architect.
• Discover how surveyors helped the doctors of Salem treat their patients at the Doctors House and explore the Apothecary.
• St Phillips church will host a gourd demonstration showing how they grow, how gourds are cured, cleaned and painted and why gourds are useful to early settlers.
• Joiners were responsible for making items out of wood to help seal a house from the outside weather. Stop by and practice putting some of these commonplace things together and see them with a new understanding.
• The gunsmith shop has an early map of Wachovia that shows a very early rifle that was used in this area.  Come see the real life copy of that firearm and learn how it was made.
• How do you start a pottery with nothing but the right spot of ground? Come to the pottery and learn about the very beginning of the pottery and kilns for our Salem potters.