Traditional Crafts, Music, Apple Crisp and More Featured at Fall Heritage Festival Oct. 14, 2007
Mark
your calendar for Sunday, October 14th! The
annual Great Road Fall Heritage Festival is the ideal way to herald in
the autumn season and a perfect opportunity to spend an afternoon learning
something new about something old with the entire family. Just
like in years past when families went out for a Sunday drive in the country,
here’s an opportunity to go explore history along Great
Road,
one of America’s
earliest and most scenic roadways, and visit some pretty amazing landmark
historic sites. History will come alive with
guides and re-enactors in colorful period costume along with demonstrations
of all kinds of nearly forgotten traditional crafts at several of them. The
event is like walking through the pages of history….300 years
worth to be exact.
From 12
noon to
4:oo p.m., Hearthside will be filled with a variety of artisans demonstrating
their particular crafts. Among one of the more nostalgic crafts is silhouettes,
or paper portraits. In the days before photography,
silhouettes were an easy way to capture a person’s likeness, but
today this art form is quite rare. Marena
Ekelova, a professional artist, will demonstrate her extraordinary skill
of mastering scissors and black paper while cutting profiles. In
just two minutes, she will produce a fine likeness of her subject. Other
crafts being demonstrated include the textile crafts of spinning, hand
weaving, quilting, and crocheting, in addition to basketweaving and quill
writing. Decorative crafts such as stained
glass, stenciling and traditional chair making are also featured. Adding
to the historic atmosphere will be the melodic music of the dulcimer
(hand harp) provided by members of the Little Rhody Dulcimer Players.
While
there will be lots of activity inside of Hearthside, there will be even
more taking place outside. On the front lawn,
there will be demonstrations of colonial soap making and cooking over
the open fire. The oldest military command
unit in RI that was first commissioned in 1776, the Bristol Train of
Artillery, will be setting a Revolutionary War camp and demonstrating
musket and cannon firings. Civil War sutlery
tents will be selling 19th century goods, and the Circle of
Wisdom intertribal group will provide visitors with drumming demonstrations
and an education as to the Native American heritage.
Of
course, the day would not be complete without some harvest treats to
enjoy on a crisp, fall day, so the Hearthside Bake Shop offers up some
homemade apple crisp, cookies and apple cider to enjoy while listening
to live country music provided by Wayne Carlow, songwriter of The
Hearthside Story.
Next door
to Hearthside, hand forging demonstrations will take place at the original
Hannaway Blacksmith Shop, located on the grounds of Chase Farm Park. A
blacksmith will use hammer and anvil to form hot steel into various shapes,
making useful tools for the farmer, or decorative hardware for the homeowner.
Just
a short drive down the street at 487
Great Road,
sits the oldest home in town, the Eleazer Arnold House, built in 1693. The
distinctive feature of this two-story clapboard house is the great stone-end
chimney, which makes up the western wall of the house. Now
owned by Historic New England, the Arnold House will be open for tours
along with a variety of 17th century craftsman demonstrating
their skills, such as a candlemaker, cooper, horn maker, an Armorer,
tinsmith and furniture maker. There will also be wool carding and drop
spinning as activities that children may take part in.
To
complete your visit along Great
Road,
stop in at the Saylesville Friends Meetinghouse, just around the corner
from the Arnold House. Built in 1704, the
Meetinghouse became the center of the Quaker community for northern Rhode
Island and
has been in continuous use as a place of worship for over 300 years,
longer than any other in the United
States. Today,
it still holds weekly services, and welcomes both visitors and new members.
The building, like the others featured on the Great
Road tour,
has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places for its antiquity
and architectural significance. The burial
ground behind the meetinghouse is well worth a visit, too. Some of the
tombstones date to the mid-1700’s and include several of the members
of the Meetinghouse, such as the Arnold Family and Stephen Hopkins Smith,
builder of Hearthside.
Nearby in the village of Quinnville is
the Captain Wilbur Kelly House along the Blackstone River Bikeway, where
visitors are offered an opportunity to see an 1835 mill owner’s
house. The Kelly House is now a small museum that includes a transportation
exhibit about the operation of the Blackstone Canal and
provides visitors with a glimpse of mill life in this area during the
19th century. It is open every day from 9:00
a.m.– 4:30 p.m. till
the end of October, so it might be a good place to start your outing
in Lincoln before
visiting the other sites that are open from noon till 4:00
p.m. during
the Fall Heritage Festival.
Friends
of Hearthside started the Fall Festival six years ago as a way of not
only creating more awareness and appreciation for the unique historic
structures along Great Road, but also to help preserve many of our heritage
crafts by showcasing them in the setting of these historic treasures. Today,
the event is part of the Footsteps in History Celebration developed by
the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council in recognition of the Blackstone Valley’s
designation by Preserve America for the region’s efforts to preserve
its historic significance. While in the past
three years, the Footsteps in History celebration took place on Columbus
Day Weekend, this year it is being spread out over 24 weekends, highlighting
each of the 24 communities of the Blackstone Valley celebrating their
history with 24 different events, allowing everyone to get out and enjoy
all that the Valley has to offer
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