The Vann House - My Review

If you have been following the blog, you know I recently did a Wordless Wednesday - photo tour of the Vann House in Georgia. I visited there in September 2010 during a trip to several historical Cherokee sites in the southeast. 

When we arrived, we were the only people there, so my experience might have been a little different had there been more people visiting at the same time. Anyway, there were about five different "segments" of our visit. The first two include a short movie that includes some Cherokee history as well as the history of the Vann House and the museum. We were allowed to walk around the museum at our leisure and spend as much or as little time as we wanted there. Photographs are allowed (as you can probably tell from my previous posts!)

After we were done viewing the movie and visiting the museum, we were taken on a guided tour of the house. We were allowed to walk around and spend as much time as we wanted looking at the various rooms, taking photographs and asking questions. The tour guide was knowledgeable on the house and restoration of it. He shared lots of information including how they discovered the original colors of paint on the walls and the fact that the floating staircase was quite unusual, especially for the time it was constructed. He did, early in the tour, say the Vanns owned all the land there, and I felt the need to say something about that statement since the land belonged to the Cherokee Nation and the Vanns only owned the improvements on the land. The tour guide appeared to think it was a small thing, but it isn't. I can't explain it any better than my friend, David Cornsilk, did later when we spoke privately about it -

The concepts of the tribe's land base and its disposition, both east and west of the Mississippi, greatly impacted the lives of the Cherokee people. Land was at the heart of every negotiation that took place between the whites and Cherokees. Land was the root of every conflict that has ever surfaced in our tribe. And the private ownership and loss of our lands due to allotment has profoundly changed who we are as a people. For the sake of our ancestors and what made them who they were, the land, we must always say something.

After the tour of the house, visitors are free to walk around the grounds and the Vann Spring Interpretive Trail. Though they take less time than the other parts of the tour, there are interesting things to see and I suggest everyone spend a little time on both. 

I really enjoyed visiting the Vann House site and taking the tour despite the mistake made by the guide concerning land ownership. I highly recommend it as a "must see" stop if you are interested in historical Cherokee places. Allow plenty of time (I think we were there for 3 hours) on this stop because there is a lot to see. The site is open Thursday - Saturday, 9 - 5. The cost is $5 for adults, $4.50 for senior adults (62 and above), and $3.50 for youth (6-18). Children 5 and under are free.

Those are my thoughts for today. 

Thanks for reading. 

CC 

The Granddaughter 

copyright 2011, Polly's Granddaughter - TCB

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