BEDFORD CO, Pa (WJAC) — For those who have been cooped up and are looking to get away for a little staycation, there are a lot of great places to visit in our neck of the woods.
At the Old Bedford Village, they are making changes for the current times, but the history is still a walk in the park to see.
“We always say that little bridge they come across is our ‘back in time bridge’, and that’s because you’re now in the 17-1800’s. Even the inside of the buildings does not have electricity, so we’re using some of the different tools without electricity.”
“The mission statement of Old Bedford Village is to portray Bedford County history from 1750 to 1899.”
“When we step back in time, we actually are portraying what that person would have been in that time period.”
“I started volunteering here in 1993, and I’ve been here, in one capacity or another, ever since,” said historical interpreter, Becky Edwards.
“Of course, now, with the social distancing, I don’t get as close, and I don’t hand them a book, and that sort of thing. Really, I like being able to teach and show people, even if it’s just one little thing, that they say, ‘oh, I never thought of it that way!’ You figure you’ve done something to peak their interest. They can really find out a lot more, once they get interested. So, if you can get their interest going on one little thing, sometimes that will lead to other things.”
“So, they can touch logs that their ancestor had chopped down, and I say that when these trees were chopped down, to make this house, George Washington was alive. That’s how old this house is!”
“I have to say that I really enjoy the Village because, number one, when we come out here, we are going back in time. We want to portray to people what is was like living back then, because it’s quite different today, then what it was back then. That’s why we try to keep history alive.”
“We want to do that by teaching you what is was to live back in that time. What roles you played as a parent, what roles you played as a child, how you worked together. That’s our main point. We want you to enjoy our village, yet we want to teach you something. We want you to, when you leave, be able to say, ‘wow, that’s what they had to do back then!” They had to do a lot more work than what we think is involved in making candles, or making tin, or blacksmithing. There’s a lot more involved in it than just coming and walking through the buildings here. We want to teach them how hard it really was back then,” said Joy Cooper.
ncG1vNJzZmivmpawtcKNnKamZ56axLR7y6iamqRfqMGissVmpp9ln6Gxbq7EnZ2oqpRiw6q4y5qenmWkp8aqusZmq6hlm5qysXnHoqqtp6KueqK4yK%2Bc