Westville (Georgia)

Westville is a living history museum recreating an 1850 west Georgia town in Lumpkin, Georgia, United States.

Westville is a living history museum village with over 30 authentically restored and furnished antebellum buildings and 82 acres of land that include the village, pasture, and fields. The buildings were moved onto the museum site to create an authentic village environment. Westville preserves, demonstrates, and interprets the life and culture of pre-1860 west Georgia. This is accomplished by maintaining an authentic village environment, collecting and preserving artifacts, demonstrating traditional work skills, and providing tours, workshops, and special events. For special events, "townspeople" in period dress demonstrate woodworking, baking, pottery turning, blacksmithing, and other skills from the mid-19th century. Buildings include a courthouse, church, school, stores, craft shops, residences, and cotton plantation buildings.

Westville is being moved to Columbus, Georgia to reopen in 2018.

The history of Westville is connected to Lt. Col. John Word West, a history professor at North Georgia College in Dahlonega. West was born in 1876 at a critical time of change in Georgia due to dramatic economic and social changes caused by the recent American Civil War (1861–65). Also, the great changes were brought on by the new growth of Atlanta and the subsequent decline of farming. As a child West spent many hours listening to his grandparents talk about the old way of life that was disappearing. West listened intently and absorbed the stories and learned the old skills. Later he would convert those experiences into his own museum where he preserved those stories and old skills. A high school and college teacher, West committed himself and his own money in 1928 to saving “Georgiana” - the buildings, tools, furniture, and work skills of Georgia’s settlement. He admired the work of two other Americans who also took history into their own hands: Rockefeller and Ford. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (Standard Oil Company) had started Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia in 1927. Henry Ford (automobile maker) had started Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan in 1928. West engaged both men for advice and may have even traded artifacts with Ford.

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