Mulberry Fields Meeting House
Go to the back-right side of the museum along Broad Street, at the corner with North Street (which runs behind the building).
Long before the Revolutionary War, this area was named Mulberry Fields by Native Americans. During the war a wooden community building, the Mulberry Fields Meeting House, stood on or near the current museum site.[1] (Though built by Baptists, by this time it was just a community building.[2]) In 1778, when Wilkes County was formed by the state legislature, this village was designated for the court house. Until one was built after the war, the meeting house served the purpose, despite it’s poor condition: a lawyer described it as an uncomfortable, “‘‘open log house.’”[3] The county was much larger then, stretching north to Virginia and west all the way to the Great Smoky Mountains.
A Hanging Tree
Look at the picnic table nearest North Street, between two trees. In the 1770s a large black oak tree stood on that spot.
