Day 29. Bennett Place Historical Site

There's a historical site nearish to where we live that has a Memorial Day weekend series of events, so we went there today, and that really resonated with working on these 19th-century stories! Bennett Place in Durham NC was the scene of the last big Confederate surrender of the Civil War, as you can read in Wikipedia. There is a small Bennett Place Museum, and here's one of the museum displays about Johnston surrendering to Sherman:

There was also this informative poster about the African Brigade, later called the United States Colored Troops, including the North Carolina Colored Infantries and North Carolina Colored Cavalary.

There were different displays that people had set up outside; most of them were military-related, but there were also displays from domestic life, like this salmagundi:

The old house and next-door kitchen were open for visitors.

I took these pictures of vintage canned goods and learned from the docent in the kitchen about how Napoleon prompted the creation of canned goods in a quest for supplies for his armies:

I also saw a box of Lucifer matches, which I was excited about because I had been researching the history of matches because of the conspicuous absence of matches in the story Taily-Po. I had no idea about the history of matches until I worked on that story.

We really enjoyed this, and sometime soon we're going to go to Horton Grove, which are the former slave quarters attached to the Stagville plantation; there's an article about Horton Grove at Wikipedia. My husband went there last year when I was in Austin, but I haven't been. I'll snag some pictures when I go.