Pioneer Village History & Heritage A
~by Julia Pearson
utumn is a special time to put down the guidebooks and Google suggestions and simply follow your nose to the northeast corner of Nashville. There behind the Brown County Courthouse and directly across the street from the Brown County History Center is the Pioneer Village, a collection of nineteenth-century log buildings filled with interesting items from Brown County’s attics. On the weekends during the months of May through October, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., the cozy looking buildings spring to life with demonstrations of heritage crafts and docents ready to converse about the lifeways and history of the bygone era. No admission fees! But donations will always be gratefully accepted. Special tours can be arranged by calling the History Center at (812) 988-2899. The grounds are open year-round for interested visitors to see the construction of the buildings up close, sit down on one of the benches and rest their feet, or pose for special photographs.
16 Our Brown County Sept./Oct. 2021
photos by Cindy Steele
The smoke fire of the blacksmith shop and resounding ping of hammer “smiting” against anvil draws you to the blacksmith workshop. A vital fixture of every crossroads community in Brown County in centuries past, the blacksmith provided nails and hinges for building, tool repair, as well as horseshoes. The smithy’s shop is a living illustration of the schoolchildren immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Village Blacksmith.” And children coming home from school/Look in at the open door; they love to see the flaming forge./and hear the bellows roar. The blacksmith shop has been restored by volunteers, with the doors completely remade with suitable findings made by master blacksmith, Jim Jesse. Beside the blacksmith shop is the small white clapboard medical office of Nashville’s native son, Dr. A.J. Ralphy, who was born in 1854. He is noted for making house calls to patients. Of his obstetrics services, he did not lose a baby or mother. Restored to its original condition, Dr. Ralphy’s office is furnished with his medical books, instruments, furniture, and some of his taxidermy specimens,
