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In the northwest
section of North Carolina lies Caldwell County. Its
picturesque beauty is defined by four distinct
geographical features: two mountains (Grandfather and
Hibriten) and two rivers (Yadkin and Catawba). The area
had long been home to Native American tribes, including
the Cherokee and Catawba, when the first Europeans arrived in the 1700's and created a settlement
and then established a mustering place at William Tucker's
Barn. From these beginnings grew present-day
Caldwell County.
In
the Spring of 2010, the Caldwell Heritage Museum's Board
approved the creation of a series of DVD's of
Caldwell
County history, to be produced in conjunction with Main
Event Studios in Granite Falls. This project
fits
directly within the Museum's mission to preserve
Caldwell County history.
The first of the DVD's was filmed over
the summer 2010, and the release of the finished product
was celebrated at the Museum's Fifth Sunday Open House
on Oct. 31, 2010. It is now available for
$14.95 plus tax from the Museum's
gift shop.
This
thirty-minute Ken-Burns-style documentary, “A History
of Caldwell County: From a Wilderness to a Barn,”
covers the area's early history.
Included are early Native American stories, observations from
Bishop Spangenberg’s 1752 journal, and descriptions of daily life
until 1841 when Caldwell County and the county seat,
Lenoir, were incorporated.
Much of this history is drawn from
Annals of Caldwell County
(1930) by W.W. Scott (who was able to interview some of
the early European settlers) and Nancy Alexander's
Here Will I Dwell (1956) which draws in part
on Scott's work.
Materials from the Museum's collections are featured in
the video, such as those in the first two of the
Museum's
permanent exhibits.
Mike Gibbons and John Hawkins are the principal
on-camera narrators, and re-enactors from Fort Defiance
illustrate some of the events.
A
second DVD is in the preparation
stage, covering from the county’s incorporation through
the beginnings of the Civil War. It is expected to be
ready in October 2011. |
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The Board's DVD
subcommittee at work on January 27, 2011.
Left to right: Bob Booth,
Tom Shuford, Betty Buss, Mike Gibbons, and John Hawkins.
(Click on any image to see
a larger version)
An interview
about the making of the Caldwell County history DVD was broadcast on
Caldwell County Today
(Charter
Cable Channel 10)
between February 11 and February 18, 2011, repeated at 4 a.m.,10 a.m., 4
p.m., or 10 p.m. daily.
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