MANSFIELD — Visitors to South Park on Sept. 8 and 9 will be transported to another time during the fourth-annual Colonial Living History Day.
Organized by the Richland Early American Center for History (REACH), the fair will feature reenactments of what life was like during the early 1800s.
“We want to immerse them in history,” said Tom Pappas. “If they can see, touch and feel, it means a lot more than just being read to.”
“We never had the chance when we were kids to learn history the way kids have the chance today,” added Jack Johnson. “And when they come here next weekend, that’s what they’re going to see.”
REACH is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and education of the history and life of the early settlers in colonial America, with emphasis on Richland County.
According to Johnson, around 15 to 20 professional reenactors are expected to attend the fair in period dress. The actors will teach attendees about period cooking, making shingles and buckets, and will also feature musket and cannon demonstrations.
This is the fourth year for the Colonial Living History Day, but only the second year that the event has spanned two days. The fair will be open from 10-5 p.m. on Saturday, and 10-4 p.m. on Sunday.
“We love history, and they’re not even teaching this history in schools anymore,” Pappas said. “Nobody has a clue of what this stuff is, so we thought we should educate these kids about what it was like 200 years ago.”
Part of the fair will also include tours of the historic Mansfield Blockhouse from 1812, and the new log house from the same period. In September 2015, a log house in Mifflin that dates back to the pre-Civil War era was dismantled for the purpose of moving the logs to South Park, where the house would be reconstructed.
“We ripped off five layers of stuff on the outside, and on the inside we had drywall,” Pappas said. “You couldn’t even tell it was a log cabin.”
Since then, REACH has been in the process of restoring the house. The goal is to use the building for lectures, cooking demonstrations, and so on in the hopes of portraying what life was like for Mansfielders in the 1800s.
The single-story cabin is 26 feet wide by 20 feet deep. It will be large enough to accommodate 15-20 people and it will be handicap accessible. It will also have electricity.
Other restoration projects that remain include chinking and daubing, which is done to help fill the gaps between logs, and installing the chimney, windows and doors. Later down the road, REACH hopes to build additional cabins, including a blacksmith shop and woodworking shop, creating a “small village” at South Park that would be open to local students for tours and reenactments.
“It would be neat to have something like this in our backyard,” Pappas said. “We brewed up this idea and got a couple other people involved that like history.”
“Anybody that wants to come in and learn about the founding of our country, that’s our passion,” Johnson said.
Anyone interested in volunteering to help with the cabin’s reconstruction or becoming involved in REACH is encouraged to contact Pappas at 419-564-5097.
