Visting yesteryear
Fall Fest illustrates life in the 1800s
How many children have milked a cow or even know where milk comes from, other than a jug or carton? At the Pioneer Village Fall Fest on Saturday and Sunday in Searcy, there will be a “cow” for kids to milk — and much more.
The huge plastic cow, furnished by the White County Farm Bureau, is equipped with all the necessities for milking and will not kick or balk. Women from the agency will demonstrate how to “milk the cow,” said Elizabeth Heard, publicity chairwoman for Friends of Pioneer Village.
Well-known dairyman Buddy Phillips will be on hand with his dairy display that depicts milk in all its stages, Heard said in a recent interview at the 19th-century Pioneer Village on Higginson Street, Searcy.
All buildings will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and from 1-4 p.m. Sunday. There will be live music, food, pioneer demonstrations, toy trains, chuckwagon cooking, clogging, kettle corn and vendors.
Among new amenities at the festival will be the restrooms that were recently completed by the city of Searcy, which owns the land where the Village is located. City employees do the mowing and other maintenance at the Village as needed.
“This is a red-letter day,” Heard said, referring to the handicapped-accessible restrooms with their facade that matches the 19th-century appearance of the Village. “When the wood gets weathered,” it more closely resembles the older buildings, she said.
The Sons of the Confederate Veterans, Dandridge McRae Camp No. 397, will portray a living history during Fall Fest. Members of the group will demonstrate how soldiers lived while on the move.
The Village’s newly refurbished Railway Express Agency baggage cart will be another new draw for the festival. Manufactured in the early 1900s, the baggage cart was originally at the depot in Beebe, where the cart sat for years. All the wood was gone, but the metal parts were still there. The Martin Gehring family of Beebe, as well as Village volunteers, worked hard to research and restore the wagon to its original condition, Heard said.
“It was a precursor to UPS and FedEx, a private company that went out of business in 1971,” Heard pointed out as she showed the original sign on the cart. “They were used around a train station,” where goods were loaded, then shipped, or deliveries made around town, she said.
A visit to the Village is like taking a trip back in time. The trapper cabin greets visitors as they enter the structure, overseen by a huge windmill whirling its blades. Other features of the Village are The Little Red Store and Post Office, the Pangburn Calaboose, a salt kettle, the cypress-log Gordon Home, the Garner Depot and the Little Red Schoolhouse, where church services were also held. Visitors can also see farm animals, along with outbuildings where a blacksmith and a wood craftsman will demonstrate their skills.
Another of the main attractions is
the Gordon Home, which was moved from the Providence community. The home was built in 1865 and houses many treasures from a gentler day: old quilts, a chicken basket, the first Rose Bud Post Office circa 1858 and a sugar chest from the Walker Plantation, safeguarding the staple that garnered $700 a pound, Heard said. “It is a jewel,” she said of the building, which was donated by the Jim Yingling family.
The Village was a vision of the late Oran Vaughan, along with the White County Historical Society, the Fair Board and other interested individuals. The Village opened in 1967 to 3,000 visitors at the White County Fairgrounds, where the village was located until recent years.
Among frequent visitors to the Village are schoolchildren on field trips, for whom tours are conducted, led by Heard or others dressed in clothes of that time period.
“I wish the walls could talk,” Heard said, “because I would love to know what [the people’s] lives were like.”
“Everyone had a job, and they had to do it [at home],” Heard told a group from Liberty Christian School. “They depended on you pulling your share of the workload.” It was life when family came first, then school, she said.
Telling schoolchildren of the days of old is a favorite of Heard’s. Displaying a blackgum “toothbrush,” she explained how it was used and how she tried it herself, then spent days spitting out wood fragments, she said.
Heard said she shows children the old recitation bench inside the Little Red Schoolhouse where youngsters came to sit and be quizzed by the lone teacher charged with all students in first through eighth grades. The school was in use from 1895 to 1945 and still has its original windows.
The Pangburn Jail is another attraction for schoolchildren who visit. Heard said she sometimes invites them to go inside the small dark, dank structure and closes the door for them to get the “feel” of the place. It is like a tin can, she said.
Fol l owing the school group, other visitors that day included two women and their home-schooled children from McCrory: Andi Boblett and her daughter Kaylan, who was celebrating her birthday, and Niki Morris and her son Matthew. They said this was their first visit to the Village, and they were “in awe” of the exhibits and hope to return soon.
Anot her educat ional feature at Pioneer Village is the plantings cotton and strawberries, once two major crops for White County. Heard told of how the cotton had to be “carded” and the seeds removed, a tedious task.
A gazebo at Pioneer
Village, built last year by Bobby Skinner for his Eagle Scout project, is the site for musicians at the festival and open houses put on by the Village, Heard said. Skinner built the gazebo to honor veterans, she said.
At Fall Fest, there will be demonstrations of pioneer skills, including spinning by Nancy Miller, who takes cotton that has been spun to thread and knits Christmas stockings that are hung at the fireplace; and Wendy Durks, who makes rag rugs. Tommy Dunn will be busy with his woodworking. “He is awesome,” Heard said.
Dunn and Robert Shaver built the trapper cabin — which Heard called the “ultimate man cave” — that was already “notched” from boards discovered at an East Moore Avenue home being dismantled.
“Getting it put together to fit was quite a project; it took one year,” she said. Pelts hang inside, denoting the prevalence of trapping in the area. The cabin is copied from a plan of a German traveler who came through Pangburn in 1837, Heard said. The sparseness of life is shown in the cabin by the presence of only a bed and a few items for eating and cooking.
“He came from Germany because he had heard of the whitetail deer [in the U.S.],” traveling f rom Virginia through Arkansas and moving west, Heard said.
The White County Master Gardeners provide the Village’s landscaping, installing flowers and plants from yesteryear to beautify and set the stage. The group will hold a bake sale at Fall Fest.
Parking and admission are free at Fall Fest. Donations are accepted for operation and improvement, Heard said. For more information, call Heard at (501) 580-6633 or the White County Historical Society office at (501) 278-5010.