The 26th annual Spring Place Community Festival will be Saturday, Aug. 19 at the Old Spring Place Methodist Church just off Georgia Highway 225 South. The theme this year is “What’s Cooking in Spring Place”.
Sponsored by the Spring Place Ruritan Club and the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society, the festival commemorates Spring Place’s past and raises funds for the preservation of the church, which is an 1875 structure and Murray County’s oldest building built for public use.
There is no admission fee, but visitors are welcome to purchase raffle tickets for a special “cooking” gift basket which will contain a Food City gift card, food, and cooking items. T-shirts will be on sale, too.
The festival opens at 8 a.m. and will have something for everyone. Breakfast biscuits, coffee, soft drinks, snacks, and bottled water will be available for purchase. Members of the Ruritan Club will have their usual bake sale with homemade cakes and sweets of all kinds. A huge amount of used books, collectibles, and flea market items such as vintage glass and cookware, dishes, Christmas and other seasonal decorations, pictures and frames, vinyl records and CD’s, linens, baskets, tools, toys, and other household items attract buyers as well.
Special features will include a display of antique kitchen items, many from the Spring Place area which remind us that kitchens did not always include microwaves, food processors, and dishwashers, but things like churns, milking stools, iron skillets, enamel pans, jelly jar glasses, cloths from feed sacks, strainers, dippers, and kerosene lamps. Recipes and cookbooks will also be on display.
Vendors include Judy Alred of Cedartown with wreaths, Benny Huggins selling locally produced honey, local crafter Michelle Kolf and woodworkers Ken Vance and Chris Davis. Author Jodi Lowery, a festival regular, will be on hand to sell and autograph her books about local historic events. Jacob Howard will have his “Family History Videos” for sale—one about the interesting burials in the famous Spring Place Cemetery and another on the history of Murray County. Various publications of the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society will also be available and some of those authors will be around to autograph purchases, too.
The popular auction begins at 10 a.m. This year the auction will include antique and vintage furniture, rugs, lots of local artist prints, gift cards from area restaurants and businesses, a quilting frame (and quilt), antique push lawn mowers, an antique school desk, and even some building materials. Auction items can be previewed on the Old Spring Place Methodist Church Facebook page during festival Week.
The Murray High Alumni Association will also have prints, postcards, and notecards featuring the “Old Rock Building” on sale and the Old Church Museum room will be open throughout the day as well. New there will be a display of Native American artifacts found locally and donated to the historical society recently by the Tankersley Family of Eton.
Parking will be available on Elm Street with shuttles to the church and auction site provided. Handicapped parking is now available adjacent to the old church thanks to a generous donor and the work of the Murray County Road Department.
To find out more about the festival, call Elizabeth Robinson at 706-695- 6021, Jyana and Chuck Smith at 706-695-8297, Tim Howard at 706-695-2740 or check us out on Facebook.
