Old Salem
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Old Salem is a living history museum that operates within the restored Moravian community Salem. The non-profit organization named Old Salem began its work in earnest in 1950.
Historic Salem
Salem was originally settled in 1766 by Moravians, members of a Protestant faith that first began in 1457 in the Kingdom of Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. The first exiles (in 1722) to the estate of Count Zinzendorf, the founder of the Moravian Church, came from the March of Moravia, one of the Czech Crown Lands, hence the nickname of the denomination officially called the Unitas Fratrum or Brüder-Unität or Unity of Brethren. From an earlier settlement in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, they came to the colony of North Carolina in 1753. The central town of a 98,000-acre tract named Wachovia was Salem, where construction began in 1766. The residents focused on skilled trades, rather than farming.The community merged with nearby Winston many years later, in 1913, and many of Salem's historic buildings remained until the 1950s, when Old Salem Inc. (a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation [1]) was formed to protect threatened buildings, restore the town, and operate portions of it as a museum.
Old Salem today
Today, the town's preserved and reconstructed buildings, staffed by living-history reenactors, present visitors with a view of Moravian life in the 18th and 19th centuries. The features include skilled reenactors such as blacksmiths, shoemakers, gunsmiths, bakers and carpenters, actually practicing their trade while interacting with visitors.
In recent years, substantial historical and archaeological research has focused on Salem's historical African American population, resulting in significant additions to the historical interpretation presented at Old Salem.
Three other museums are housed in a modern building on the site, and part of the same organization. The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), located at Old Salem, is the only museum dedicated to exhibiting and researching the regional decorative arts of the early South. With its 24 period rooms and six galleries, MESDA showcases the furniture, paintings, textiles, ceramics, silver, and other metalwares made and used in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee through 1820. The Old Salem Toy Museum contains a wide variety of rare, old toys, mostly from the 19th and early 20th century. The Old Salem Children's museum is designed for children aged 4-9 [2].
Salem College, Salem Academy, the Salem Tavern, and a host of old-fashioned shops are located in Old Salem. Students attending the Governor's School of North Carolina stay in the college's dormitories each summer. Home Moravian Church, while not a part of the Old Salem tour per se, will usually have its sanctuary open to visitors during the heavy tourist seasons.
An Easter sunrise service held in annually since 1773 draws several thousand people to the village square and Moravian cemetery. The first two weeks of December play host to the Candletea, an annual fundraiser for local charities held by the Home Moravian Church Women's Fellowship in the Single Brothers House.
The community is popularly represented by a tin coffee pot, originally built by the Moravian Mickey brothers as an advertisement for their tinsmith shop in 1858. It traditionally represented the border between Winston and Salem at a time when the Moravians still remained isolated from their neighbors, but when the cities merged in 1913, it came to symbolize the city as a whole. The pot had to be moved in 1960 when Interstate 40 was planned to go through the place it stood; it has remained safely at its present location since then.
References
[1] Anonymous. 2004. Old Salem Museum - Find yourself in another time & place. Folding pamphlet[2] Anonymous. 2005. Old Salem Museum and Gardens Visitor's Guide. Folding pamphlet
External links
- [Official site]
- [The Historical Archaeology of Early African Americans in the Moravian town of Salem; North Carolina]
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