Aycock birthplace to celebrate holidays
By From staff reports
Published in News on December 1, 2013 1:50 AM
FREMONT -- Visitors will be able to see the feast of a late 19th century Christmas including meats, collards, biscuits, and plum pudding as might have covered the table at the Aycock farm when the Charles B. Aycock Birthplace Historic Site holds its annual Christmas open house on Tuesday and Thursday.
Although no food will be served, the free Christmas tours will be held from 6:30 until 9 p.m.
Music, a shadow play and demonstrations of open-hearth cooking and holiday traditions will be held. Other festivities include the Primitive Baptist Singers on Tuesday, performing old-fashioned gospel Christmas songs in a capella style in the auditorium. The Harmony Boys bluegrass gospel band of Mount Olive will provide entertainment on Thursday.
Children will be able to put on an old-fashioned shadow play in the 1893 schoolhouse. While a costumed volunteer reads a Christmas story, children will dramatize it by manipulating animal cardboard cut-outs and making animal sounds. In the master bedroom, an interpreter will explain how men prepared their families for Christmas, as an interpreter in the parlor explains traditions such as hanging stockings or homemade decorations on the tree. End the evening by sampling the hot apple cider.
The historic site is the boyhood home of Aycock, who was one of two men from Wayne County to have served as governor.
Aycock was born on the farm in 1859. The site includes a typical 19th century farm house, separate open-hearth kitchen, corn crib and smokehouses. The one-room school house was moved to the site to underscore Aycock's commitment to education.
For information, call (919) 242-5581 or email aycock@ncdcr.gov.