Tour will explore Aiken’s historic downtown
Celebrate Aiken will hold the 175th Anniversary Walking Tour of Historic Downtown Aiken on Feb. 27 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
There is no charge for the tour, and no tickets are required; advance reservations are unavailable and unnecessary.
Thirteen downtown locations have been selected for the special event that commemorates the founding of Aiken.
The self-guided walking tour will begin at Aiken Preparatory School, headquarters for the tour. The school is located at 619 Barnwell Ave. Parking and a tour brochure, including a tour map, will be available. City tour buses will also be available to shuttle people between the sites.
Site docents at each location will elaborate on the history of each property. For easy identification, Celebrate Aiken signs with yellow balloons will identify each site. Some sites are not handicap accessible.
At the end of the tour, the Aiken Choral Society will perform at Rose Hill Estate at 4:15 p.m. Cocktails and food will be available for purchase at the Rose Hill Estate into the evening.
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Dedication of watering trough, hunt breakfast part of Aiken’s birthday
Horses taking a stroll downtown can stop and have a cool drink of water now that a historic water trough has been put back to use.
The Banksia Watering Trough was recently installed on South Boundary Avenue, behind the Frederick Ergle log cabin. It will be dedicated in memory of Dogwood Stable’s Summer Squall on Jan. 23 as a part of the City of Aiken’s 175th anniversary celebration. The event will be held at 11 a.m. at the South Boundary side of the Serpentine Wall of the Aiken County Historical Museum, rain or shine.
The museum is located at 433 Newberry St. S.W.
Elliot Levy, director of the Aiken County Historical Museum, said the trough was moved from behind the Aiken County courthouse to South Boundary by County employees who also installed the trough.
A water fountain was also installed at the site, he said.
“When people go riding or walking in the woods, they can get water from the water fountain, and their horses can get water from the horse trough,” said Levy. “It looks wonderful. It was cleaned up properly, and it looks like everything was done with pride.”
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Museum offers hat-making class for upcoming 1835 celebration.
Period costumes from the 1830s will be shown at the Aiken County Historical Museum at Banksia through Jan. 10.
The exhibit will demonstrate various articles of clothing typical of those worn by Aiken residents at the time that the town was officially founded by charter in 1835. The founding and history of Aiken are the focal points of the 2010 yearlong celebration recently announced by the City’s Celebrate Aiken Committee.
On display at the museum will be dresses and hats common to the times, and patterns for interested seamstresses, as well as information about the basic tenets behind the styles of that period.
The styles varied among the various classes of women, according to their means, but every woman strove to be fashionable in her own way. For instance, hats were “quite gaudy,” said Mary White, director of education at the museum, adding that women adorned their hats with feathers, flowers and other bric-a-brac.
White noted that all of the hats on exhibit are for sale, and others will soon be available for purchase at the Museum Gift Shop in the $40 range.
Also available at the museum will be handouts on how to adapt modern clothing to become 1830s-style garments and how to make and decorate an 1835-appropriate hat for Aiken residents to wear to some of the Celebrate Aiken events.
There will also be a handout listing sources for purchasing period clothing.
Those who wish to make their own hats for the upcoming 175th anniversary of Aiken celebration may attend a workshop at the museum on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Full Story…
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Recipes sought for historic cookbook.
As part of the 175th anniversary of the charter of Aiken next year, a historic cookbook will be published, covering food and recipes from the early 1800s to the present time. Local resident Kathy Urban Huff is author of the cookbook, as yet unnamed. While her research at the Aiken County Historical Museum, the library, private collections and interviews has yielded much valuable information, she is reaching out to the community for more.
“I want to use as many local Aiken recipes as possible,” Huff said. “There are individuals and families I know of whose histories go way back in Aiken, but I know there are many more I will miss unless they respond to this appeal.” For this reason, she is calling upon the community with deep roots in Aiken to send her copies of old family recipes and cooking stories, “the older the better,” for possible inclusion in the final product.
Huff plans to organize the cookbook into time periods instead of the usual course designations of appetizers, soup, salad, bread, etc. “The cookbook will begin with cooking and recipes from the early 1800s. No one cooks over an open fire any more – unless you count grilling – so the truly old recipes will be of more curiosity than use. However, as food equipment and availability changed through the years, recipes became more interesting and varied. For example, the menus from the grand hotel years are fascinating.” Full Details..
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