MAY 27, 2010 ISSUE
Avery County Heritage Fest in Montezuma June 5
About 30 genealogy tents representing Avery County families will be present at the Avery County Heritage Festival taking place Saturday, June 5, at Aaron Baptist Church in Montezuma.
Local historian Michael Hardy will give a lecture on the Civil War at the Avery County Heritage Festival. Photo courtesy MichaelCHardy.comThe 11th annual Avery County Heritage Festival will take place Saturday, June 5, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Aaron Baptist Church on old Highway 181 in Montezuma, just outside of Newland.
The event will feature family genealogy tents, local authors, lectures, cemetery tours, live music, food and children’s activities. Presented by the Avery County Historical Society and the Avery County Historical Museum, the festival highlights a different community in the county each year. Previous years’ festivals have taken place in Cranberry, Plumtree and Crossnore.
“It’s really a festival to highlight different communities in the county and to keep people thinking about their heritage and their ancestors and their history,” said Cindy Peters, chair of the festival.
Admission to the festival is free, but donations to the museum and society are accepted.
A free outdoor concert will take place at Aaron Baptist Church on Friday, June 4, the evening before the festival, beginning at 7:00 p.m.
The festival will feature about 30 genealogy groups representing Avery County families. Names common to the Montezuma area include Braswell, Franklin, Ledford and Suddreth, Peters noted. Many family representatives will have computers and scanners available to provide copies of photos and documents to people researching a specific family.
“It’s really nice; people are willing to bring their things out and share them,” Peters said.
In addition, the festival will host authors Michael and Elizabeth Hardy, L.C. Beasley, Julia Ebel, Dr. Lloyd Bailey, Taylor Reese, Jack Pyle, Johnny Graybeal and Ralph Lentz.
Entertainers at the festival will be Jesse Smith, Mike Pritchard, the Avery County Smooth Dancers, Terry McKinney and Dwight Franklin.
Civil War re-enactment groups Sons of the Confederate and Confederate Rose will be present, as will representatives from the Crossnore Weaving Room. Historical groups from Burke, Mitchell, McDowell and Yancey counties will also be represented.
Lecturers include Dr. Lloyd Bailey and Michael Hardy, who will speak on the Revolutionary War and Civil War and the impact of those conflicts in Avery County communities, and Julia Taylor Ebel, who will speak about local storyteller Orville Hicks and the tradition of Beech Mountain Jack Tales.
One of the oldest cemeteries in Avery County is located in Montezuma. The festival will include bus tours to the cemetery and discussions about the famous people buried there.
A major focus of this year’s festival will be the history of the ET&WNC Railroad, also known as “Tweetsie Railroad.” The former railroad’s tracks run behind Aaron Baptist Church in Montezuma.
Ken Riddle, a Tweetsie Railroad expert, will give a lecture on the railroad. The festival organizers also want to call attention to their ongoing restoration of the Tweetsie train depot in Linville. Peters said the restoration project still needs about $40,000 to be completed, with hopes of opening the restored depot by September 2011. The depot will serve as a ET&WNC Railroad museum.
The Avery County Historical Museum, located at 1829 Shultz Circle in Newland, is open every Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., every Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and by appointment.
For more information about the festival or the museum, contact Peters at 828-765-4787.
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