Westville (Georgia)

This is accomplished by maintaining an authentic village environment, collecting and preserving artifacts, demonstrating traditional work skills, and workshops and special events.

Every day, "townspeople" in period dress demonstrate woodworking, dressmaking, blacksmithing, and other skills from the mid-19th century.

A high school and college teacher, West committed himself and his own money in 1928 to saving "Georgiana" - the buildings, tools, furniture, and work skills of Georgia's settlement.

Then, in 1928 John West opened "The Fair of 1850" on old Highway 41 in Jonesboro, Georgia, about twenty miles south of Atlanta.

Perhaps just as importantly, he and others demonstrated the "old-fashioned" crafts for the visitors - woodworking, cloth-making, open-hearth cooking, shoe-making, and the like.

Five years after West's death, the citizens of Stewart County decided to create a new industry---heritage tourism.

With much encouragement and leadership from Joseph Mahan, he received for the museum the donation of 59 acres of land on the south side of Lumpkin.

Westville's executive board chairman, Tripp Blankenship, had been seriously considering moving the living history museum to Columbus, Georgia.

[4] Historic Westville reopened on June 22, 2019 in Columbus, GA.[5][6] The site is open Wednesday-Sunday to the public and offers school programs and field trips.

Plans to expand interpretation and move other buildings from the Lumpkin site are being set in motion as funding allows.

Historic Westville therefore can rightly claim to be rooted in the third-oldest living-history project in America.

Emphasis lies on the unique and diverse stories of the people that made the area of South Georgia their home.

Westville is also home to a dressmaker that hand stitches all of the clothing worn by employed interpreters at the site.