History on Display

By Walt Williams
The State Journal
Friday, June 6, 2008

HUNTINGTON -- Hanging on the wall of the main office and store of the Heritage Farm Museum and Village is the picture of a dilapidated house, looking as if it is about ready to come apart bit by bit. But that house is where the museum got its start.

A. Michael Perry moved his family into the house back in 1973. It was a fixer-upper.

“It was a log house that had been burned and had no indoor plumbing and one strand of electric lights,” he said, pointing at the picture. “My wife and I moved with our three children into that house within 90 days when that was taken.”

In the course of making the house habitable, Perry and his wife, Henriella Perry, became fascinated with log buildings and the history behind them.

“We started asking ourselves: ‘How did they build this cabin? When did they build this cabin? Why did they build this cabin? Who built this cabin?’” he said. Answering those questions began many weekend odysseys of gathering items that told the story of those people.

More than 30 years later, that odyssey has taken the shape of the Heritage Farm Museum and Village, a series of museums and reconstructed historical buildings sprawling out on a 500-acre farm that showcases the history of the region.

The museum is, to use the cliché, where history comes alive, with re-enactors recreating the lives of the first settlers in the region. The museum doesn’t focus on one particular part of history but instead covers a broad spectrum of years, demonstrating how far we’ve come and, in some ways, what we’ve lost.

Among the exhibits is the Transportation and Mill Museum, in which visitors can view the history of transit, with displays ranging from a covered wagon to some of the first “horseless carriages” to a Ford Model-T. The Progress Museum shows how household technology has changed over the decades, while exhibits such as a one-room school and a working blacksmith shop demonstrate how people used to live in West Virginia.

Perry himself is a former bank CEO, lawyer and interim president of Marshall University with a fondness for collecting anything of historical value. One thing that fascinates him is the resourcefulness of the first settlers of the area, people who were cut off from the larger metropolitan areas on the East Coast. They had to make do with little, yet they persevered.

What is taught about West Virginia’s history always seems to be tied to blood and war, he said. People know about John Brown and Harpers Ferry, the Battle of Blair Mountain or the Hatfields and McCoys. Most children’s textbooks overlook the state, focusing instead on settling the west.

“Well, what about settling this side of the mountains?” Perry said. “If you lived on the East Coast, you probably lived in a town or a village, and you had access to the industrial might of the world as long as you were near a seaport.

“But when you came over the mountains, you were very much on your own,” he said.

“Many times you were not traveling with large groups. And you had a (piece) of some land, something that could be yours. You had a dream, and you were willing to work very, very hard with your wife and family to fulfill that dream.”

This heritage has been overshadowed by the negative stereotype of the hillbilly. Perry’s mission is to show that being a “hillbilly” is nothing to be ashamed about.

“We are continually dealing with people knocking down our Appalachian, hillbilly culture and heritage to such an extent that people, I think, were ashamed of their heritage,” he said. “So we’ve embarked in this effort where primarily schoolchildren, but people of all ages, can become reacquainted with these people, whose story has frankly never been told.”

The Heritage Farm Museum and Village at 3350 Harvey Road also features other activities, such as a petting zoo and nature walk. It also hosts weddings and meetings and has homes it will rent for year-round lodging.

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