Season’s Greetings & Merry Christmas from Bennett Place!
Winter has finally arrived and now we are approaching the chill in the air and hopes for perhaps some snow in the upcoming months. In September we enjoyed the success of our first time Tar Heel Harvest Fair and Farmer’s Market with a surprising visitation of more than 800 visitors. Children and adults enjoyed the activities especially the sack races, egg and spoon races, and above all, the pumpkin carving contest. Our newsletter contains more of the details in pictures.
Sadly, earlier this Fall we lost one of our dear friends and contributors, Mr. Charles Thissen. Charles will be forever known as the generous man who gave us more than 1,000 Civil War books and reference materials, which enabled us to build a research library, which now bears his name. You can read more about our friend Charles in the latest Bennett Place Courier.
Our Museum Fundraising campaign is moving along quite successfully with us getting closer to our goal of $50,000. These funds will be invaluable to the enhanced interpretation of one of the most significant events of the American Civil War. We encourage you to be a part of this important endeavor by making a financial contribution. If you would like to make a contribution you can click on the link at the bottom of this post, mail in a gift, or stop by Bennett Place and dropping money into the museum donation box. We also have two magnificently handcrafted items made in North Carolina, one a pistol box and the other a scrimshawed powder horn, which will be raffled over the next two years, and the proceeds will go toward the museum renovations as well.
With the pleasing increase of visitation we are preparing ourselves for the 150th Anniversary of the Surrender activities in April 2015. We will have a week-long commemoration from April 17-26, 2015 with a variety of special presentations and lectures, book signings, special tours, dignitaries, as well as the surrender reenactment. However, there are plenty of wonderful events yet to be enjoyed before it is our time in the spotlight. This year the Battles of Chancellorsville, Virginia, Fort Wagner, South Carolina, and of course Gettysburg, Pennsylvania generated much additional interest in the East, but the Western theater took center stage this Fall with a large scale reenactment of the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia.
In 2014, much of the focus will be in the state of Georgia with the battles before and around Atlanta, Georgia where Sherman and Johnston squared off until Johnston’s temporary removal as commander of The Army of Tennessee. Commemorative events will continue with Sherman’s March to the Sea, while in Virginia, we will witness the historical events of a new general, Ulysses S. Grant, who will take command of the Army of the Potomac giving Robert E. Lee all he can handle. The year of 2015 will mark the final year of the war with Virginia and now North Carolina sharing the historical events of the last hard fought battles and the two more prominent places of its conclusion, Appomattox Court House and Bennett Place.
In closing, I want to thank everyone for your continued to support of our cause in preserving not just North Carolina’s heritage, but our nation’s heritage. With continued government and community cutbacks, we all need to band together to support our historic landmarks across this great nation. They are an important cornerstone of who we are as a nation and as individuals.
Come walk this Hallowed Ground.
John Guss, Site Manager
