by the Eastern Shore News
ONANCOCK -Civil War history is on the move in Virginia as its custom 18-wheel Civil War HistoryMobile rolls into the Eastern Shore for a three-day visit Sept. 6-11.
An initiative of the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the Civil War Commission, this walk-through museum on wheels will be at the Barrier Islands Center in Machipongo Sept. 6-8 and at Ker Place Historic House Museum in Onancock Sept. 9-11.
The HistoryMobile’s appearance is part of the “Observations and Disco-veries of the Civil War” events sponsored by the Eastern Shore of Virginia Historical Society.
The HistoryMobile contains a high-tech imm-ersive experience detailing Virginia’s incomparable place in Civil War history. The exhibits were designed through a partnership between the Fredericks-burg/Spotsylvania National Battlefields Park and the Virginia Historical Society and examine Virginia’s Civil War history from the viewpoints of soldiers, civilians and slaves. The HistoryMobile is also supported by the Virginia Tourism Corporation through which visitors can obtain information on visiting Virginia Civil War sites at the exhibit, as well as by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.
Visitors will encounter history in ways they may have never experienced as they are confronted in the Battlefield exhibit by the bewildering sense of chaos experienced by soldiers. The Homefront exhibit calls on visitors to place themselves in the shoes of wartime civilians and make the choices that faced Virginians of those times. The Slavery exhibit looks through the eyes of those who escaped to freedom and those who waited for freedom to come to them. The enduring legacy of the war is presented as a loss/gain scenario that challenges visitors to examine their own perspectives.
More information on the HistoryMobile and the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the Civil War Commission can be found at www.virginiacivil war.org. For information on visiting Civil War sites throughout Virginia go to www.Virginia.org/CivilWar.
