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  Fall Festival September 25th This is the Big Event at Scull Shoals this fall! This Festival brings a new group of craft demonstrators to the old mill village. As a special added attraction, there will be fun and games for the kids of all ages! Gates open at 9:00 am, with short and long tours of the downtown. For the more adventurous, Ed Goff will lead guided tours of the new South Loop Trail, visiting house ruins, wells, roadways, and examples of forest fire and insect management. Come and bring the whole family. Tickets are $5 per car, and meal tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for children. Your entry ticket is your raffle ticket for craft items that day. Guest crafters include a blacksmith, spinners, weaver, timber framers, musician, basket weaver, quilters, doll and toy makers, chair caner, and wood carver, and papermakers. You get to watch and sometimes get your own hands wet as they do their vanishing crafts. Games for Kids of All Ages! Fall Festival includes games popular with kids of the 19th century, such as barrel hoop races, sack races, marbles, horseshoe pitching, candle making, doll and other toy making, and more! This should bring the 19th Century alive for children of the 21st Century. Grandmas and Grandpas Wanted! Many of the games at Fall Festival require teaching and supervision. Can you remember the rules for shooting marbles? What about the way to make a yarn or corn-shuck doll? Can you spend the day—or part of it—teaching those skills to the newest generation? If so, please call Maxine Singleton at 706-769-1777, or Jack Wynn at 770-546-2564. Tell us you can help on Sept 25th at the Fall Festival. Volunteers needed for Festival Sept 25th It takes lots of hands set up and staff the booths at Fall Festival. Can you sell tickets to visitors as they arrive? Or sell T-shirts, Old Oconee Pins, and other items? Or help prepare lunch, or bring a covered dish? Can you assist the craft demonstrators, or help organize kids making candles or running a sack race? Can you come on Friday afternoon and help set up tents and tables for the booths? Or, can you stay late on Saturday (after 4 pm) to take down the booths, tarps, tents, tables and clean up the area? If you can help with any of these items (and there are sure to be others!!) please contact Maxine ASAP, so we’ll know who to count on! New Crafters This Fall Festival New crafters this fall include Paris Miller, a second-generation white-oak basket maker. His father’s baskets have been in high demand for years in Greene County, and now Paris follows that tradition. Julia Hillman and Eva Jernigan have hand-quilted for their families and friends for many years. They will show their work, while quilting new items as we watch. These are life-long Greene Countians who demonstrate for family and church groups in the area. Mitchell Crump has many craft talents, including artistic blacksmithing, but for the festival he will building timber frame joints for houses. He has built several timber frame houses, including his own. Here he will make mortises and tenons for a very strong pegged wooden joint. This technique built the 1810 Smith Academy, to be moved and renovated for the Scull Shoals Educational Center. Yvonne Martin started outdoor cooking as a Girl Scout. Now she demonstrates open fire cooking and food preservation at the Atlanta History Center weekly, and is called on yearly to demonstrate her arts at Fort Niagara Mill, NY. Athens weaver Samira Hazen will bring her portable loom to demonstrate her crafts. Representatives of the Peachtree Hand-spinners' Guild will also be demonstrating carding and spinning on old and new wheels. A representative of the Atlanta History Center will demonstrate candle dipping in a big iron pot, and let you make your own candle! Crafters Return to Fall Festival Familiar crafters like Blacksmith Louis Salmon of Eatonton, Chair Caner Mitzi Campbell, Wood Duck Decoy Carver John Mayer, Papermakers Cindy Bowden and Rebecca Born and Fiddler Mamie Fite-Simmons will return to delight us with their arts and crafts. Phil Bainbridge will be back in the smoke and good smells as he chefs up more of “Phil's Phamous” hamburgers and hot dogs again! Friends members will also be bringing in covered dishes to add to the toothsome delights at lunch time! Please put Saturday, September 25th on YOUR refrigerator calendar: be there for the fun! Friends and Museum Receive Grant The Friends of Scull Shoals and the American Museum of Papermaking received a shared $5,000 matching grant from the Georgia Humanities Council for educational programs, 2004-2005. Ed Center Loan Paid Off In an effort to maintain our good credit with the bank, Friends of Scull Shoals have paid off the loan granted us by the Citizens Union Bank, now known as BankSouth, of Greensboro. A decision by the executive committee to pay off the entire loan was made just prior to the anniversary of the loan, May 21, 2004. The title to the 14.2-ace tract Friends purchased from Plum Creek Timberlands in Watkinsville will be entirely in our hands and the mortgage closed within a few weeks. Our special thanks go to Treasurer Gale Farlow and “our” banker, Richard Maddux, of BankSouth. The Historic Scull Shoals Educational Center land is located at the intersection of Macedonia Road with Forest Road 1234 in northern Greene County. A topographic map is being made for the land by volunteer land surveyors of Friends Board member Jimmy Alexander’s Land Tech surveying company of Hiawassee. Plans for the landscape layout and use of the center are in progress. As a first step, Jeanne Mark and Elizabeth James, two students of the University of Georgia’s School of Environmental Design, under the direction of Dr. Allen Stovall, have prepared a land use plan for us. This was their project in a course last spring. That plan should be available soon. In addition, Soil Scientist Gail Meads has volunteered to perform the soil tests needed before placing the septic system and moving the Smith Academy schoolhouse onto the Ed Center lands for renovation as a teaching facility and visitor center for Scull Shoals. There will be a major exhibit opening and educational programs at the American Museum of papermaking in Atlanta on November 13, 2004. A February 19, 2005 Event celebrates African-American contributions and continuity at Scull Shoals. Local crafters and oral history will present the African-Americans in Greene County. The March 19th Festival will focus on Georgia’s first paper mill, with exhibits on paper making at Scull Shoals. Grant funding supports the festivals, and our part-time Curator, Rebecca Born, who helps plan for funding and programs. Rebecca Born is Part-time Curator A recent graduate of the University of Georgia with an MA in Non-Profit Management and a Certificate in Historic Preservation, Rebecca Born worked for the American Museum of Paper making, and is now at the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. She is an enthusiastic hard worker, who is making a difference for the Friends in our organization and planning. Membership Dues, Donations Needed Have you paid your dues to support the Friends of Scull Shoals this year? If you have not, or don’t know, check your mailing label. It will show the latest year you are paid up on dues. Friends organization operates on member-ships and donations, so please don’t let us down. We are developing programs for the local schools, and planning for the new Educational Center on the new land on Macedonia Road. If you wish to make a larger donation to help move the old Smith Academy school house and renovate it for our Educational Center, please tell the one who calls you, and we will be happy to get back to you to discuss details. This month committee members will call on you to help put on the Fall Festival. We hope you will respond enthusiastically, be there and help us raise two important things for our community. One is awareness of Scull Shoals to our history and future, and the other is money to keep the educational programs going. Nellie Barnett Jones to Visit at Festival Mrs. Nellie Barnett Jones, 81, now of Belleville, Michigan, grew up in Scull Shoals, then called “Parson,” during the 1920’s to 1940’s. She is the daughter of Frank Barnett, the last family to live in the “Two Chimney House.” Mrs. Jones has provided us with oral history of the area and genealogical information about her family as they lived in the area. We are looking forward to having her visit with us as a special guest during the Fall Festival. We look forward to sharing what we have learned with her, and learning about the way the village looked when she was a child. Author Mamie Hillman at Fall Festival Greensboro native and author of a recent book on Greene County’s African-American heritage: Greene County, Georgia, Mrs. Mamie Hillman will be a guest at the Fall Festival. She will talk informally about her research on the African-American history of this area. Mamie will also be assisting her aunt, Julia Hillman in her demonstration of hand quilting. She helped line up both of the quilters and the basketmaker, Paris Miller for the Fall Festival, and hopefully for the February Festival as well. Mamie is a very “spiffy lady” who works at the Greene County Voter registrar’s office. She knows almost everyone in the County, so watch what you say about anyone: she will probably know whom you're talking about -- and most of their cousins!! Planning Teams Meet A small planning team met at Redlands Check Station last weekend to lay out the Fall Festival. Maxine Singleton, Jack Wynn, Ed Goff and Rebecca Born worked out the Fall Festival schedule and proposed a further strategic planning team session for October or November. The strategic planners will be invited to represent stakeholders around Scull Shoals, and will produce a preliminary plan for educational uses of the area. This document will be a base for both the Friends and the Forest Service as we begin long-range planning together for public use and enjoyment of this important historic resource on the Oconee National Forest. Photographers Wanted for Festival The Friends are looking for a roving photographer (or two) who is(are) willing to take pictures of all the Fall Festival activities. These would preferably be in digital format images for later use in promotional materials. ("Uncle Photo Jack wants YOU!") The idea is to capture the visitors old and young, having a great time, and observing or participating in the various activities. They might be stirring boiled peanuts, rolling hoops shooting marbles, hoping in sacks, watching the wood duck carver, the weaver, cook, and blacksmith. If you can help, please let us know! We will be using your work for advance publicity as well as keeping a record of the on-going activities of the Friends of Scull Shoals! Thanks! COFIA Plans Programs The Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests Interpretive Association (COFIA) plans for scheduled Interpretive and Environmental Education programs at three popular recreation areas on the Chattahoochee National Forest this summer and fall. They are Brasstown Bald, Anna Ruby Falls, and Lake Winfield Scott. Regularly scheduled interpretive programs will be presented by specialists on weekends, usually on Saturdays at the visitor center at Anna Ruby Falls, the parking lot at Brasstown, and near the lake and camp- ground at Winfield Scott. Planners expect to have announcements of the upcoming presentations (nature hikes, talks, conservation programs, etc) at the Chambers of Commerce, Visitor Centers, Ranger District Offices, and hotels in the north Georgia mountain area. They will also be announced on the web sites operated by the COFIA and the Forest Service. Once these programs are in place, it is possible that they can be extended to other parts of the National Forests. We should be able to adopt them -- or something similar -- for use at Scull Shoals, as well. Reporters Needed for Newsletter Uncle Jack is look for a few good reporters to provide news, writing, photos, and other assistance in producing you newsletter in a timely (i.e. quarterly) fashion. If you have talents in these categories of opportunity, please contact the Editor at once! Your assistance is sorely needed. If you have any doubts about this statement, just scan this and previous issues. That will set your mind anywhere but at ease! Call now at 770-536-2564, or e-mail to mfjtwynn@bellsouth.net, and offer both the Editor and our long-suffering readers some relief! How do you spell relief? V,O,L,U,N,T,E,E,R! This
newsletter is published by and for the non-profit Friends of Scull
Shoals, Inc., P.O. Box 295, Greensboro, GA 30642.
Questions? mfjtwynn@bellsouth.net |
