Hands on history
A reenacting Upcountry maid leads children with hands-on experience of history.
After you have played with the fluffy cotton in the textile mill, climbed the steps of the Greenville County Records Building replica and heard the stories of the struggle to desegregate Clemson University, check out the snack area at the Upcountry History Museum.
There you will learn the story of Greenville’s Herman Lay, the 11-year-old who started hawking bottles of Pepsi in his family’s front yard for a nickel a pop in 1920. If the name sounds familiar, it is because that young entrepreneur went on to create Frito-Lay, the nation’s largest snack food company. Lay later became the president of PepsiCo when his company merged with the soda giant in 1965.
Lay’s exhibit is just one of many showcasing the colorful history and diverse culture of our state’s 15-county Upcountry region, but this is no stuffy, everything-behind-glass museum. Curators have included a variety of artifacts and demonstrations into the exhibits and designed them to give guests a hands-on, multimedia experience, says Courtney Tollison, the museum’s historian.
That is why you can slide a pair of headphones over your ears and listen to Harvey Gantt, Clemson University’s first black student, narrate the struggles of the Civil Rights Era, run your fingers across a weaver in the cotton mill display and step inside a World War II era tent used by Upcountry soldiers. The first thing you see upon entering the museum is a 35-foot-high replica of the Robert Mills-designed Greenville County Records Building, circa 1820. Yes, it’s a display, but guests can walk right up the double stairway to reach the second floor.
The museum earned a 2010 Rand McNally “Best of the Road” award and its temporary exhibit on the Upstate’s involvement in World War II earned the Southeastern Museum Conference Award of Excellence. The current temporary exhibit, “The Language of Clay,” is a rare exception to the hands-on policy found throughout the museum. It explores the culture and oral histories of the Catawba people and features rare (not to mention fragile) pottery on loan from USC-Lancaster, says Meg Pierson, program director.
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