About Us
Westville is the living history village near Lumpkin, Georgia. Actual historic buildings from the area have been moved to the site to save them from destruction. They replicate a working village of year 1850, complete with appropriate gardens, furnishings, and dirt streets.
Our Mission
The mission of Historic Westville is to conserve and demonstrate the handicrafts, artifacts, landscape, built environment, and other cultural elements of a pre-industrial West Georgia Village used as a living history museum for the educational benefit of the general public.
John West and Westville
John Word West was born in 1876 at a critical time of change in Georgia. He was keenly aware of the drastic economic and social changes caused by the recent American Civil War (1861-65). For West, however, the change brought on by the new growth of Atlanta combined with the decline of farming was even more dreadful. He valued the handicrafts of Georgia's citizens. He wanted young people to learn and value the handicrafts of early Georgians.
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. He admired the work of two other Americans who also took history into their own hands: Rockefeller and Ford. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (Standard Oil Company family) had started Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia in 1927. Henry Ford (the automobile maker) had started Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan in 1928. West engaged both men and even traded artifacts with Ford.
Then, John West opened The Fair of 1850 on U. S. Highway 41 in Jonesboro, Georgia, about twenty miles south of Atlanta in 1928. For West, the Fair was the Deep South version of Williamsburg and Greenfield. From 1932 to 1934, he moved the oldest buildings in his collection to the Fair's site. He filled out the display with numerous other buildings and artifacts.
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.
When West died in 1961, Many thought that his beloved fair was finished as well. However, the Fair was far from finished. Its rescue came from deep within rural Georgia. Five years after West's death, the citizens of Stewart County decided to create a new industry — heritage tourism.
Stewart County was, at the time, making a transition away from its traditional agricultural economy. The county still had many buildings and artifacts from the pre-Civil War days. It also had people who had grown up with the handicrafts that West loved. In some respects, then, the Stewart County of 1850 still existed in 1966.
With much encouragement and leadership from Joseph Mahan, curator of the nearby Columbus Museum of Arts and Crafts (now the Columbus Museum), Westville Village was established in June, 1966 out of rugged land. By 1969, the new museum had purchased the West Collection from West's estate for $25,000. After great work, it opened to the public in Spring 1970.
The six oldest buildings at the Jonesboro site were moved to Westville, along with many West artifacts. These became the core West Collection of this new living history museum. The rest of the collection has been assembled mostly by donations from many different people.
Today, we can appreciate John Word West's contribution in a larger context. With the exception of a few years in the 1960s, West's project has demonstrated Georgiana to the public continuously since 1928. Historic Westville therefore can rightly claim to be rooted in the third-oldest living-history project in America.
Over a million people have enjoyed the Village since it opened in 1970.
Click to open panel; click to close.
