Thursday, July 29, 2010

A Visit to the Home of The Hamner's....and The Walton's

With my hubby, sister Kelley, and her husband, we got in our buggy with many horses under the hood and stepped back into time when we went to Schuyler, Virginia, home of Earl Hamner, Jr., creator of the Waltons. Now God Bless that town, if ol' Earl hadn't become famous, it would have been wiped off the map a long time ago. it used to be a thriving town when the Hamner family lived there, but all that's left is a few jobs in the soapstone factory, The Walton Family Museum, the Walton memorabilia store, and the boyhood home of Earl Hamner which was bought from auction in 2003 and restored.

The museum is the old school the kids all went to. A foundation has acquired whole sets from the show: living room, kitchen, Ike's store, John-boy's bedroom, and the Baldwin sister's livingroom and moonshine still. Plus covering every wall is so much memorabilia both about the Hamner family, and the show family, you could spend all day there. I never really watched The Waltons much, but I love The Homecoming, the Christmas show that preceded the series. Here are some photos of the visit:


Bill and I are getting ready to enter the museum.




I'm standing next to the Baldwin Sister's Recipe Machine. My family is from West Virginia and I must admit, that the Moonshine Still did not look completely unfamiliar to me. :)







The is the living room from the show. it's also the same furniture used in The Homecoming, well the couches are for sure.






They actually had a really nice, functional kitchen. It's just needs a little updating, ha ha.




God Bless all the women who used cookstoves. My great-grandmother is among them. Can you imagine doing more than just turning it on????



Kelley and I are always looking for kooky photo ops. We actually had to go into another room and get into a closet for this shot. Ike and Corabeth look annoyed with us.




This is the house Earl Hamner and family grew up in. in 2003 it was sold at auction for somewhere in the $120,000's. The woman who bought it, restored it back to it's orginial condition. It took four years. Earl Hamner walked into it once and said it looked just like when he was a kid. They wanted $10 a person or $7.00 a person for a group of four or more to tour it. We passed on that tour.

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