Abraham Lincoln admitted that in his early 20s, he was an “aimless piece of driftwood.” That began to change during the six years he spent in the rural Illinois community of New Salem, where he settled down to be a merchant, a surveyor, a postmaster, a soldier and a budding politician, and began to read the law by the flicker of candlelight.
Nearly two dozen buildings from that period, among them log houses, stores, mills, a school and the Rutledge Tavern, have been reconstructed on the site of New Salem, where costumed interpreters and craftspeople bring the 19th-century town to life with the smell of fresh-baked bread and the clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer.
“The whole point of the re-creation was to bring it back to life based on that period of time when Lincoln lived there, from 1831 to 1837,” said Sharon Johnson, public information officer for the nearby Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Numerous preserved, restored or re-created villages like New Salem provide visitors with a realistic look at everyday life in times gone by.
Lincoln’s New Salem State Historic Site
Petersburg, Ill.
“Everything they do is based on what was historically accurate at that time: the crops, the way they cooked food,” said Johnson. “They try to present prairie work life in the mid-1800s.”
That includes one of the few functioning carding mills in the country and the general store that Lincoln ran with partner William Berry.
Except for one house, the buildings are reconstructions that have been located on their original sites as much as possible.
The visitors center has an auditorium; a museum; exhibits with Lincoln artifacts, including his surveying instruments; and an 18-minute orientation film.
www.lincolnsnewsalem.com
(217) 632-4000
Mystic Seaport
Mystic, Conn.
Mystic Seaport, with historic buildings from towns in the area, accurately represents a prosperous New England seaport.
“It shows what a coastal community might have looked like,” said Mike O’Farrell, publicist for the maritime history complex, which also includes a working shipyard and an area of exhibit galleries.
Around 30 buildings in the village cover the mid- to late-19th-century.
In addition to typical village businesses such as a general store, a drugstore and a tavern, Mystic Seaport shops represent many specialized trades associated with the maritime industry.
There is a nautical-instruments shop filled with compasses, barometers, quadrants, sextants and telescopes; a ship chandlery stocked with supplies for a long voyage; the sail loft, where tools with strange names like palms, fids, commanders and marlinspikes were used to make sails; and the ship carver, who produced ornate figureheads and name boards.
Several historic vessels are docked at the village. Aboard the Joseph Conrad is one of the few places where visitors can help set a sail on a tall ship.
www.mysticseaport.org
Plimoth Plantation
Plymouth, Mass.
If you stop to talk to homeowners in Pilgrim Village at Plimoth Plantation, you may hear about the issues of the day or even the town gossip. But don’t worry if they are hard to understand. They will be talking in 17th-century dialects.
At Plimoth Plantation, located not far from Plymouth Rock, a painstakingly reproduced 1627 village shows what life was like for the early Pilgrims. Interpreters in authentic period costumes and speaking authentic dialect go about their daily chores in first-person presentations.
Each day corresponds to a day in the year 1627.
Depending on when you visit, you may see cows or goats being milked, wattle and daub being applied to a new building, a garden being planted, or the harvest being brought in and stored.
Plimoth Plantation also includes a re-created 17th-century Wampanoag Indian village and a full-scale reproduction of the Mayflower, the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620.
www.plimoth.org
An unusual Southern experience
African Americans living in two Southern villages during the first half of the 19th century found unusual equality and freedom based on two different religious views.
The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, believed that all humans were equally children of God, regardless of gender or race.
“African American Shakers ate, slept and lived in equality with their white brethren and sisters,” said Susan Lyons Hughes, interpretation and education manager for Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in Kentucky. “Some even were appointed to supervisory positions.”
At North Carolina’s Moravian community of Salem, African Americans were still slaves, but under different circumstances than in the rest of the South.
“Essentially, blacks who lived here were slaves of the church, very different from African Americans in other places in the South,” said Renee Boyd Shipko, director of marketing for Old Salem. “Being slaves to the church, they were allowed to pretty much go around freely, learning trades.”
Many of the original structures at both Shaker Village and Old Salem have been restored to represent the villages at their peak 19th-century operation.
With 34 restored buildings, most dating from the early 1800s, on 3,000 acres of preserved farmland in the heart of Kentucky’s Bluegrass Country, Shaker Village is the largest restored Shaker community in the nation.
The stone, wood and brick buildings include overnight accommodations, a restaurant and museums with original Shaker furniture and artifacts, and exhibits about the communal society.
Costumed interpreters at the National Historic Landmark give tours of the 40-room Centre Family Dwelling and present performances of Shaker music in the 1820 Meeting House; other craftspeople demonstrate broom making, woodworking, spinning and weaving.
Many of the original Salem structures have been preserved in an unusual mixture of museum buildings, private residences and buildings of Salem College that are part of Old Salem.
“Nearly all the buildings here are original; only a handful are reconstructed,” said Shipko.
“What we show every day in our buildings is the way different Moravians lived and worked,” she said. “There is a gunsmith, pottery, shoemakers, woodworker. All different kinds of craftsmen are practicing every day for visitors to see.”
Shipko said groups take self-guided tours through the village, but interpreters in period costume show them through some 15 historic buildings.
“We start about 1766 and go up to about 1840,” she said.
Included in the tours is the St. Philips complex, which consists of the reconstructed 1823 log church and the original 1861 brick church for the town’s African American congregation, and the graveyard, where many were buried.
www.shakervillageky.org
www.oldsalem.org
