Kings Mountain Historical Museum — new exhibit “A Delicious Country”

Archivist Talk with Ensley Guffey: The Catawba and the American Revolution
Saturday, July 29, 2023
1 to 2 p.m.
Free (registration required)

Catawba Archivist Mr. Ensley Guffey will present a deeper look into the Catawba People and their participation and involvement in the American Revolution.

Ensley F. Guffey has completed his AA, BA, an MA in History, and an MLIS. Since 2020, Ensley has been the tribal archivist for the Catawba Indian Nation, working out of the Catawba Nation Archives in the Catawba Cultural Center on the Old Reservation outside of Rock Hill, South Carolina. There he cares for a multi-media collection including everything from documents to pottery to projectile points to traditional regalia to audio and video on a variety of formats.

Meet the Author & Curator: Scott Huler’s “A Delicious Country”
Saturday, September 9, 2023
1 to 2 p.m.
Free (registration required)

In 1700, explorer John Lawson left “Charles-Town,” then the only settlement of any size in the Carolina colony, for a walk into the backcountry, “being six English-men in Company, with three Indian-men, and one Woman.” Two months and almost 600 miles later he emerged in what North Carolinians today would call Little Washington, with stories to tell. He put the stories in “A New Voyage to Carolina” in 1709, and it became a best-seller, helping populate the Carolina colony. Three hundred fourteen years later, writer Scott Huler, seeking descriptions of early Carolina, read Lawson’s book. He went looking for a book that connected what Lawson saw with present-day Carolina. That book did not exist, so Huler, like Lawson, took a walk, with the goal of comparing what Lawson saw with what he saw. His walk took a year, and it too yielded stories.

Those stories constitute “A Delicious Country,” an account of his own walk and a comparison with Lawson’s. Like Lawson, Huler described flora and fauna, geography and ecosystem, settlement and culture. Lawson sent his botanical specimens to the British Museum. Huler’s specimens — from plants to rocks, from beer cans to arrows — have been gathered into an exhibit that has been shown in Raleigh and Charlotte and now comes to Kings Mountain.