Oconee County Historic Society minutes Jan meeting
I do subscribe to saving our heritage and helping our government's
support efforts at preserving our history. This group has done a great
service to Oconee County in maintaining an almost unmaintainable
structure in the old Central school house. Below are the minutes of
their most recent meeting:
Hi,
Below you will find the minutes of our last meeting. You are invited to
a couple events which I have put in bold print so you can easily find
them if you want to put them on your calendar.
MINUTES
2009
January 12, 2009
Attendance: John Cleaveland, Peggy Sommer, Danna Anderson, Dory Brown,
Lisa Douglas, Mary Ruth Moore and Richard Pendergrass
Old business:
1. Discussed meeting of Mary Ruth Moore, Richard Pendergrass and Peggy
Sommer with Don Oliver and John Gentry concerning Central School House
They would very much like to see it open for tours and or events on a
regular basis but they do not have the staff to man them. We discussed
having the schoolhouse and cabin open for events such as the Easter Egg
Hunt (April this year) and the Touch a Truck event in March.
There was a lot of interest in Touch a Truck, which is March 21. It was
decided to have the ladies from DAR man the cabin and the historical
society the schoolhouse. We discussed bringing our own 'trucks' (John to
park his antique tractor in front of the schoolhouse and the DAR to see
if they could locate an old timey wagon). We also need to make sure we
have posters, membership flyers, our notecards and scrapbooks on hand.
(Peggy)
To help the DAR prepare *we scheduled a visit to Heritage Park for
January 19 at 10:00 for a visit of the site. All members interested in
helping tour either the schoolhouse or the cabin at future open houses
are welcome to join us.*
The Easter Egg hunt is April 11. Discussion of this event was short.
*Something to think about: *Do we want to gather after the truck event
to evaluate and plan for the egg hunt? There is no regular meeting
between the 2 events but there is a 5^th Monday, which probably doesn't
have much going on. We could meet than and skip the meeting on April 13^th .
We also discussed the possibility of an event or reunion centered on
Central (to build on the dedication event held this August). We
discussed a spring historical society meeting with resfreshments and
family sometime in the spring. This is the time of year folks in the
schoolhouse neighborhood used to have a regular reunion.
We also discussed working with them on the wording (maybe even some
photos) for some permanent signs for the schoolhouse and cabin so that
visitors to the park in between events would be able to learn something
about the buildings. They asked up to work on what we would like to have
on such signs.
We agreed this was a worthwhile project. We discussed including photos
and some quotes from some of our oral history interviews. We also
wondered about the cost, the size and kind of sign involved but did not
set up a specific committee to work on this.
Money will be tight for the immediate future but we could also help them
with investigating what sort of renovations need to be done on the
inside, with a suggested time table and cost information.
Along the lines of money, we discussed setting up some sort of small fee
schedule for groups that wanted to use the schoolhouse with the
resulting money going into a maintenance fund for the 2 historic
structures in the park. The thinking was that people might be more
willing to pay such a fee if they knew it was going towards the school
house rather than into the general funds of the county.
2. Oral history: We discussed trying to get together with Archie Peck
this month for an interview. John and Mary Ruth agreed to try to do that
this month. (Jan 24^th ?)
3. We also discussed setting up a tour/talk on the anniversary of
Stoneman's raid. John agreed to see if he could get that accomplished
this year.
New Business:
1. Election of officers: By a unanimous vote it was decided to keep the
same officers, which are: President, Richard Pendergrass; Vice
President, Alex Murawski and Secretary/treasurer, Margaret Sommer.
2. The DAR ladies filled us in on some of their projects. They are
inventorying the Watkinsville Cemetery and looking into ways to improve
the care and record keeping. *They are meeting with Rev. Dan Maxey, the
author of "All About Books" for the Oconee Enterprise and a collector
and book dealer. They invited us to join them on January 31^st at 10:00
at the Mini Warehouses in Watkinsville (Hwy 15 by the RR tracks)*
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