Let the Historical Association be part of your next program. We offer different topics for all ages. Are you interested in the Victorian Lifestyle? Let us share our very own Harper House with you and the families who have lived there. Wonder what living in the 1930s was like in rural Catawba County? Let our Murray's Mill program bring to life what this family accomplished with hard work and community. If you are curious about the beginning of our beautiful Catawba County, we can share with you the founding families and how Catawba County has helped shape the Western Piedmont Region of North Carolina. 

Our staff will be happy to design a program for your needs. Some examples are:

• Womens Suffrage in Catawba County

• Impact of the WPA in Catawba County

• The HERstory of Catawba County

• The History of Murray's Mill

• The Bunker Hill Covered Bridge

• The Miracle of Hickory

• Caring For and Maintaining a Historic Property

• Cemetery Preservation

Over the years since the pandemic, we have seen a decline in the numbers of school tour groups that come to our sites at the Historical Association. Our educational goals for the association are to be able to reach out into the community as much as possible and share the history of our county with as many as possible. With this objective in mind, we created the Hands-On-History Outreach program. This program would allow us to bring the presentation to the schools if they did not have the ability or access to come to our sites. To help see this plan to fruition, we were so generously granted a portion of funding from the Millholland Endowment.

Presentations Offered:

• Settlers of Catawba County

The first of the three programs is the Settlers of Catawba County. This program involves discussion of the Native American groups that populated this area previous to European settlement as well as info regarding the first European families that settled in the Catawba County region. 

• Victorian Age Catawbans

The second presentation we offer is the Victorian Age Catawbans. This presentation focuses more on the Victorian era in Catawba County, specifically what life was like for children in this time period. 

• Murray's Mill in the 1930's

The third presentation that we offer is Murray’s Mill in the 1930’s which focuses on subsistence living during the Great Depression in this area with emphasis on Murray’s Mill.

 All presentations involve staff from each site dressing in time period appropriate costume and traveling to the schools with materials for hands on activities and crafts. Each presentation is highlighted with activities to help the students critically think about what they’re learning as its being taught. We have successfully done each presentation at multiple schools for different sized groups.     

We have performed all presentations at multiple locations free of charge. We hope to see even more of this programing scheduled in the future. For more information contact our Director of education at (828) 465-0383 or cchaaball@gmail.com