Retired Extension Agent Founded State Fair's Village of Yesteryear and the Museum of North Carolina Handicrafts

Mary Cornwell of Wayneville, retired Extension home economics agent, creator of North Carolina State Fair’s Village of Yesteryear, and founder of the Museum of North Carolina Handicrafts, received the Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Award in 1989. Her work as an agent with the North Carolina Extension Service in Cherokee and Haywood counties from 1942 to 1976 introduced her to mountain crafts.

“During the ‘40s she helped relocate families displaced by the Tennessee Valley dam projects Fontana and Appalachia.

And it was in Cherokee County that she met homemaker and crafts-woman Laura Warner, sister of Penland School of Crafts founder Lucy Morgon, and learned about crafts through her and the John C. Campbell Folk School at Brasstown.

“Mrs. Warner called me the first day I was there,” Miss Cornwell said. “And she said, ‘What do you about crafts?’ I said ‘I don’t know a thing, but I want to learn.’ She said, ‘God bless you, I’m on my way to see you.’

“And here she came driving a T-Model Ford. She walked in the office and gave me a bunch of necklaces with pewter crosses. And it created my interest.”

In 1949 she moved to Waynesville as Haywood County Home Demonstration agent, and two years later was asked by State Fair Director J.S. Dorton to create the Village of Yesteryear, which would be devoted to mountain handicrafts and craftspeople demonstrating the old crafts.

The Village of Yesteryear, Mary Cornwell recalled, began with 14 craftspeople from Cherokee, Haywood, Yancey, and Watauga counties in a small slab building 14 feet by 20 feet with two tables. Today more than 100 craftspeople demonstrate and explain their work in a permanent spacious brick structure.”

For the rest of this article on Mary Cornwell, go to http://digitalheritage.org/2012/12/mary-cornwell-1989/