The Steamboat Era Museum, Irvington, is hosting special activities for children and families during the July 4 holiday weekend.
Today, Thursday, June 29, the museum will offer extended hours for a special viewing of the new exhibit “Children’s Lives Around the Northern Neck: 1880s to 1930s.” Visitors will learn about what schools were like from Caleb, Eleanor and Henry: how they traveled to school, what subjects they studied and the textbooks they used. Kids can write their names on a vintage slate board, see McGuffey Readers from the period and discover the art of penmanship.
The exhibit includes film clips of school children in the 1920s-’30s captured by local resident James Wharton. Visitors will also hear the stories of Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, Sallie Holley and others who helped educate Black children during the Jim Crow era. Not to be missed: the rules that teachers had to follow in 1915 and the “computer of the day,” the Chautauqua Industrial Art Scroll.
Extended ...