Local History Events

The Burwell School also serves as a cultural arts center, offering a variety of special events that interpret local history.

Living History Events

Each spring, the Burwell School hosts an annual Living History Event featuring professional re-enactors portraying an aspect of the site’s history. The events have included demonstrations of “high tea” etiquette and a 19th century fashion show.

Annual Burwell School Living History Tea
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Come see costumed interpreters at the School! Visitors will get a chance to glimpse into 19th century school life and learn about the daily routine of a girls' school in the antebellum south. Afterwards, depending on weather, enjoy tea and refreshments on our beautiful lawn or in one of our parlors. $7 for adults, $4 for children under 12.

The 2006 Living History Tea: Life at THE BEEHIVE:
The Burwell School Historic Site came alive with this living history event exploring the daily life of the Site's Civil War era residents. In 1862, the Collins family fled their coastal Somerset Plantation and came to settle at the Burwell School. The Collins family was one of the wealthiest plantation owners in the South. Life at the simpler Burwell home proved to be a very different experience for them while the extravagant lifestyle they had once known vanished before their eyes. Thirty family members and several domestic slaves came to inhabit the Burwell School, which became known as "the beehive" because of all the inhabitants. Costumed interpreters interpreted the experience of the Collins family in Hillsborough and reflected on several life changing events.

The 2005 Living History Tea, “A Day in the Life of a Burwell School Student" followed a student through a typical day, from running on the front lawn to getting warm before school to doing morning chores, to a school lesson in the original school building.

Workshops

A two-year series of workshops, Crafting Freedom: Thomas Day and Elizabeth Hobbes Keckly, Black Artisans and Entrepreneurs in the Making of America, have opened a new role for the Burwell School as a resource for educators from across the nation.

Funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, these workshops bring 200 educators from across the country to learn about the life and work of Elizabeth Hobbes Keckly.

Candlelight Tour

Each year, the Burwell School develops a special program for the annual Hillsborough/Orange County Chamber of Commerce Christmas Candlelight Tour. Past Candlelight Tour programs have included a large-scale re-enactment of Christmas 1863, “Cards, Gifts and Santa: Three Christmas Traditions Revealed,” and “Christmas at the Beehive

Garden Tour

The Burwell School develops specific programs for the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough’s bi-annual Garden Tour. In May 2005, the program focused on the debut of the newly restored Carrie Waitt Spurgeon Garden, a showcase of old-fashioned plants gathered from local Hillsborough gardens.