Andrew Price The Greene County Historical Society hosted its 53rd annual Harvest Festival event over the weekend on Saturday, Oct. 5, and Sunday, Oct. 6, where hundreds from the area, and elsewhere came to gather to experience all that the campus had to offer, including several vendors, food trucks, tours and their Civil War reenactment, according to the visitgreene Instagram page.
Peter Stefanski, who was one of the individuals who were part of putting the together the “Bloody Kirk,” which he described as a mid-18th century tavern for the event, described the setting that he, along with other individuals such as Rich Baker did to make the setting of the Bloody Kirk as authentic to the time period as possible.
“We have the displays to show you what they would definitely have had back, but we are doing a display to display firearms through time,” Stefanski said, noting how the timeframe of weapons is to stretch to the modern day. “It takes you from the 1600’s to the modern day, just to show people some of the changes, modifications how things have been modified, added to, improved upon throughout time.”
Another individual who has made their presence known during the festival was Roger Doty, who is one of the four founders of the 140th Pennsylvania, and was portraying a member of the Veteran’s Reserve Core of the United States Army for the festival, spoke on the experience it has been to have his reenactment group, who just celebrated their 30-year anniversary this past spring, still be featured for this festival.
“It is flat out amazing to me,” Doty said, while elaborating on the first time his group congregated for the event. “The first event that we did was here at the Harvest Festival, and when we did that first event, I brought my daughter with me. My daughter was two months old at the time. My daughter turns 30 this year, so we’ve been doing this for a while at this event.”
Matthew Cumberledge, who has served as the executive director of the GCHS since 2019, was spoken of in high regard by Stefanski and Doty, as well as several others throughout the event, spoke about how “rewarding” it has been to fulfill the role he has served in for five years, as well as being recognized by many for the work he has done.
“When I took over this building, it was in a state if disrepair, absolute mess. We have renovated the entire building, we have tried to revamp our schedule, of events as much as possible and when it comes to this event specifically, I decided I was going to run it this year specifically it’s felt quite good,” Cumberledge said.
Referring back to the visitors that come from the Harvest Festival from outside of Greene County, Cumberledge spoke on not just people from outside the state, but even the country who set their schedule aside to come to this event.
“We’ve had people come from Australia, from South Africa, from England, Canada , that’s just in the last few weeks,” Cumberledge said, while adding the reason he sees for people coming from such distances to celebrate such a tight knit event. “People travel here from all over the country that have ancestral roots in Greene County. People will come from all over the world for the paranormal activity that’s associated with this building. We’ve been featured on several tv shows in regard to that, and more Youtube videos than I can count.”
For the GCHS, their next event is their annual Christmas Open House, which is set for Dec. 7 and 8, from 12-5 p.m.