Guess what?
I’m behind on getting the next chapter put together. That, in and of itself, is actually not all that surprising. I tend to be a bit slow in getting them put together (especially when compared to most of the folks ‘round here). But I’d like to at least attempt to keep y’all somewhat entertained (or abused as the case may be), so I’m going to borrow a couple of TR conventions that I’ve seen employed before (and successfully so, might I add).
Those being the “real life update” and the “picture heavy” post.
But I’m going to do them in my own idiom
(as Lancelot would say).
Oh yeah…
If you haven’t realized it yet, this is also one of my Bonus Features, so you might want to consider skipping this post and maybe the next one as well. That should be considered the promised fair warning for those times when I intend to go even farther off topic then normal.
So for those that are still here…
(SUCKERS!)
Ahem…
Let’s get on with it then, shall we?
Recently my family decided to get into something that is a bit of a summer tradition for us.
We got tickets to go see a Corps Show.
“A what?”, I hear some of you sayin’.
Basically it’s a concert. A bit of live music and mostly “classical’ music at that.
With a little bit of dance added in and even a smidgen of theatrics and pageantry.
OK, maybe a rather good amount of theatrics and pageantry, but mostly…
it’s live music.
Oh, and geeky… very geeky…
But I’ll come back to this in a while
(and offer an escape clause too, so don’t worry too much).
But the “show” wasn’t starting off until a lot closer to sundown. As such we decided to get into something else during the first part of the day since we were going to be out and about anyway.
Getting to our ultimate destination required that we first travel from our little house on the Carolina boarder on up to the thriving metropolis of
Winston-Salem. So after stopping at a fine little breakfast restaurant near home called
“Toast” - Or at least, it used to be called just “toast” (and either way I highly recommend it to those that happen to be traveling through this area on their way to WDW or other points south) - we headed up I-77 and then east on I-40 until we arrived at…
Old Salem
If you’ve ever seen or read about how the folks in Williamsburg, VA maintain the center of their old historic district as a living history museum dedicated to its colonial period and way of life…
Then you’ve got a good idea of what’s going on in Old Salem.
Just on a smaller scale
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Step in Time
We arrived at the visitor’s center a little before it opened up for the day (which being a Sunday was right about noon). Shortly after that we picked up some passes and headed for the bridge…
While this may be acting as somewhat of a time machine, you can see form the date posted that it isn’t quite as old as everything else that we’re going to be seeing today…
…but it’s done in a classic style and makes crossing the main road here over into the old town a lot easier. Once across you’ll find yourself at the southern end of the original village of Salem…
The modern building on the left there is the
Horton Museum.
This is home to several things but mostly it’s the
Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts.
It’s part of the tour and your admission fee will give you access to it, but being as we were there on a Sunday and had only had half a day to see everything, we skipped it this time around. Hopefully you will have more time when you get down this way and then I can see your pictures and thoughts on the place.
We, however, continued on toward Main Street, crossed over to the shady side and headed north.
First stop was the
Vogler Gunsmith shop…
The buildings that are part of the historic tour are marked by having an early era US flag posted out front; which is similar to the way that it works in Williamsburg. At least that’s how I remember it in my sadly unfinished TR that I really, really need to get back over to and complete at some point.
Ahem…
This whole area is still part of Winston-Salem’s public street system though and anyone can walk around here anytime they like for no bucks at all. But if you want to get inside any of the open historic buildings, you’ll need to get a ticket first. Having done so (and paid less since it was Sunday, and even more less with the
AAA discount), we did have possession of said passes and headed on in…
That’s the still operable forge in the back of the shop. In the front of the two room shop is where a couple of fellows were actually working on building flintlock rifles and explaining the procedures involved to anyone that happened in (even us for some strange reason).
Notice I didn’t take a picture of the front? I don’t know why that was so, but I just didn’t.
There are times when I can be right dense (many to be sure).
That was one of the more blatant.
I’ll try to do a little better as we move on through town
(but I can’t be makin’ any promises on that point)
Anyway, the one other interesting detail about the forge is that the bellows that stokes its flames is up in the building’s attic. Actually is takes up the entire attic and is rather huge as eighteenth century structures go. Would have been even more interesting to see, but we were told about it so that counts for something.
From here we headed on up the road a piece. On the way we encountered something interesting…
The sign in the lower right window there is actually a For Sale sign.
Remember that I said this was still a public street. There is a mix of historic building from various eras. Obviously this one isn’t quit as old as some, but dating back to 1863 it does have some age on it. And
it can be all yours if you wish to plunk down the bucks needed to acquire the property.
The next place we did take time to stop at was the
Blume House, a structure dating from 1815.
Seems that I didn’t take a picture of the exterior of that one but I got one from the inside…
That’s a joiner’s bench for the late 1700s. There are other period artifacts in the room that originally housed the town’s print shop, but right after snapping that not overly interesting image, I saw the sign proclaiming this to be a photography free zone. Why that would be I don’t know (especially as I didn’t encounter any such restriction anywhere else that day), but there it was, so back in the bag the camera went.
There is also an exhibit in another room of historic prints and images and a room displaying examples of detailed period needle point. They use this space for rotating shorter term exhibits in and out. It was all interesting enough for a few minutes but like I said, there’ll be no pictures so it must be time to move along.
The next building along was the cobbler’s shop, but that was closed for renovations, so we ended up instead on the corner of Main and West streets in the
former residence of one John Vogler…
This fellow was related to the gunsmith, but his stock in trade was silversmithing and clock making…
Yeah… that’s not John…
but he was quite knowledgeable when it came to explaining what all else went on in the shop part of the house. Nearly all of the buildings open on the tour were both a business and a residence. Rather than deal with the expense of building and maintaining two separate structures, nearly all trades folk of the time would use the front part of their home for their business activities and live in the remainder of the house. This house was almost completely furnished and open to be explored…
That’s basically the kitchen. Of course being fairly well off, the Mrs. wouldn’t have done much in the way of cooking. She’d have hired one of the young ladies from the Single Girl’s House (and I’ll explain that in a bit) to do the bulk of the hard labor.
Here’s a sitting room in another part of the main floor…
The interesting thing in that picture (to us at least) is the ceramic tile stove. I saw a number of those in the various buildings we toured. They’re interesting in that while they radiate plenty of heat for warming the living spaces, there didn’t become so hot to the touch that they could grievously injure the poor sole that backed into one.
Upstairs were several bedrooms done in period style.
And you can see by the accoutrements in the master, these folks were doing pretty well for themselves…
Another of the bedrooms…
Something else that Max made note of here was that as steep as the stairs were and creaky as the floors were, no one would be sneaking out of this house in the middle of the night without mom and dad knowing about.
Wonder what made him think about that?
I’ll have to puzzle on that one later on.
For now though, we continued on out the back door to see the next part of the site…
Oh, that’s not John either…
but he was showing us around the rest of the house and answering our questions.
He was a right nice fellow as well.
Built onto the back of the residence was another hearth room…
Being the residence of a silversmith, there was obviously need to be able to melt down metals for castings from time to time. But this was really a multipurpose space as it was also used for baking, stewing and as the laundry room…
(well how else were you going to get enough hot water to do the laundry?)
Across the street form there was the entrance to the town square and park…
…and also the location of the public water pump.
The thing still works too.
They even encourage folks to give it a try. If you’ve got young kids, this can easily chew up a little time and distract them from all the rest of the boring history stuff that you’ve been abusing them with up to now.
(Such neglect… I’m half surprised the DSS hasn’t already steped in, declared you a failure as a parent
and carted the kids off… Sheese!)
A bit over from where the pump is located you’ll find the
Single Girls House…
Salem was a
Moravian Church community when first established and they took their churching and ways of living quite seriously. Single women didn’t live on their own (nope… wasn’t happening). At the time there was a “choir system” that separated members of the community by age group, gender and status. Single women were boarded here along with the younger girls in their middle teens who were basically apprenticed to learn the skills needed to run a future household.
Another rule imposed on the women folk was that they had to keep their hair covered at all times (in public of course), so they all wore a white (usually linen) bonnet. Additionally they would tie those caps with ribbons of specific colors denoting their status. For the young girls it was red ribbons, single women of age wore pink, the married women wore blue and white was reserved for widows.
It was a kind of color coding system for instant recognition.
Now getting back to the building, it’s not on the tour actually but it is still a dormitory. It’s just now part of
Salem College which is also located in the middle of this historic district as well. Originally founded in 1772, as a primary school, it later became an academy and then a liberal arts college. In fact it’s the oldest educational establishment that is still a women's college.
But since we can’t get into that building (you know the house mother surely wouldn’t be letting Max though the door) we might as well move on.
In the middle of the town square along Main Street is where the town’s firehouse can be found…
Or at least it would become the town’s firehouse.
As built in 1803, it was first used as the meat market.
Live and slaughtered animals were handled on the right side of the building and storage was handled on the left side that would later become the spot for keeping the firefighting equipment.
On the next block along the way you’ll encounter the
Winkler Bakery…
Well…
That’s the back shed and hearth built onto the side of the bakery at least. I didn’t take a picture of the front, but I did take one of the sign inside that explained the place…
This is the oldest continually operating bakery in the US.
And as the sign points out,
they still do all of the production by hand using the
original proofing room and oven…
They’ll happily sell you any of the wears that they happen to have on hand at the time as well. Being an operating business, this spot is open to everyone and doesn’t require an admission ticket to peruse.
That’s true of the hat shop next door and several other gift and notions shops along Main Street in Old Salem. They are basically the same things as one of Disney’s Dump Shops, but you do have the option of just not going inside. If you were to venture into one, you’ll find plenty of brick-a-brack that evokes the colonial period, no shortage of Moravian Star themed do-lollies and craft food stuffs in a period theme
(along with plenty of modern snacks, drinks and the like).
The bakery was as far north in Old Salem as we ventured this day. Time to turn around and head back the way we came. The next place we stopped into though was this one…
The
Miksch House is the oldest structure in Salem and the first building constructed here back in 1771…
Apart from the addition to the back of the structure, this was only a two room house at first and one of these rooms was used as a store selling general goods to area settlers. Keep in mind that this part of the Carolina’s was very much the back country in the early days of the Republic and folks who needed provisions would come a good ways to acquire them here.
Actually it was that remoteness which drew the Moravian folk here in the first place. They wanted to establish an entire area devoted to their way of life and started several small villages around here for that purpose. Being good business folk though, they weren’t opposed to strangers encroaching on them and Salem even sold off some of its land holding to allow the establishment of another town just to the north. That became the village of Winston; a village that grew into a town and eventually grew to completely surround Salem. A fact that ultimately lead to the two towns merging and becoming the single entity of Winston-Salem (similar to the merging of Buda and Pest but hyphenated instead and without the Danube providing the obvious boarder)
Heading back down the way from when’st we came, the next building on the tour in the
Single Brother’s House…
And both of those structures are part of the same whole.
This is the largest open building on the tour and the main exhibit of the living history part of the museum.
Boys as young as twelve would come here to live and be apprenticed to one of the master craftsman to learn a trade. Dormitories were up on the top floor and attic space. The newer section of the main floor held the meeting room and includes one of the two still working period organs in town.
Both of them were built by David Tannenberg, this one for use in Salem’s Gemeinhaus (congregation house). It was
constructed in 1798 and became the second organ acquired by the congregation. Now it’s stored here in the Single Brothers House and we were lucky enough to have someone on hand that could play it for us.
It now has an electric air supply for the wind chest but originally it would have been pumped using the large handle in the lower left of the picture.
After listening for a spell, we explored the various trade rooms on the main floor and in the basement…
Part of the cobbler and leather worker’s room…
The dyer’s and spinning room
And the potter’s work space.
Had a nice conversation with this fellow on pottery work and the types of decoration used by the Moravians. If it was purely decorative (and that was rare), then it was also very simple and minimal in design. Anything elaborate had to have very specific religious context.
The next space was the kitchen…
Obviously this was both an apprentice shop and a necessary utility for running the house.
Being as everyone took their meals together here…
From there we were led out the basement door and into the back yard…
That’s the work shop where some of the other apprenticing and general works need to keep the Brother’s complex running got done. You saw the front side of it from the street view a couple pictures ago.
Perfect!
) reader. Following the Dis Forums has meant I only have two books in progress at a time instead of three. 
What do they think it is? A Fast Pass entrance???
“Not bloody likely, mate”
