May Faire 2024: A Rural Life, on May 4 will celebrate all aspects of Mathews County’s rural charm.
Since 2017, the Mathews Historical Museum has sponsored the spring festival, focusing on various aspects of the county’s rich history. The focus this year will be on the heritage of the county, with special emphasis on those hardworking individuals who helped shape the county.
“We will harken back to those days when Mathews was a major agricultural community, when its many large farms shipped corn, soybeans, daffodils and other crops nationwide,” said President Tom Robinson.
Activities will be offered along Main Street and the Court Green beginning at 9 a.m. as Joe Reid’s antique fire engine will sound her horn to open festivities.
At the courthouse, at 9:30 a.m., aerial photographers David and Linda Grow will show “Mathews From the Air, Then and Now” going back 60 years; at 11:30 a.m., horticulturist Brent Heath will discuss “100 years of daffodils” in Mathews; at 1 p.m., Mathews middle school teacher Michelle Hill Williams will showcase her students’ work and speak about her family and consumer science class activities.
Indoor Exhibits
Inside the museum at 200 Main Street, a display of fabrics, textile arts, home furnishings and products will “explore the evolution of various aspects of our lives,” said Exhibit Chairman Cheryl Dale, a specialist in lifestyles of earlier days.
Also, there will be a pre-grand opening peek of the Hunley General Store, a gift to the museum from the Hunley family. General stores in Mathews, only a century ago, were a major way of life. This new display, still under construction, will have its grand opening in June.
Also inside the museum, works by the winners of the museum’s newly initiated photography contest will be on display, as will the art of the county’s schoolchildren.
Outdoor Exhibits
Outdoor attractions will include a Children’s Corner, the May Faire miniature farm on Brickbat Street, with piglets, bunnies to pet, baby chicks set to hatch that day, a Clydesdale horse, a pony that children can paint, an antique corn grinder that will spit out corn to feed the chicks, an antique apple cider grinder, music by guitarist Hunter Owens and The Flattones, a May Pole dance performed by area children, the high school band and announcement of the pound cake winners.
Closing the activities at 3 p.m., the Colonial Williamsburg Fife & Drum Corps will signal the beginning of a two-year countdown to the nation’s 250th birthday, July 4, 2026. Special invitees, “Lord Dunmore,” the last seated British royal governor of Virginia, and “General Andrew Lewis,” who took action against the governor at the Battle of Cricket Hill, will make special guest appearances.
This performance is designed and sponsored by the MathewsVA250 Committee. Festival goers are invited to observe the Fife & Drum Corps as they form up at 3 p.m. at the firehouse, and then follow the procession to the stage.
