The Jesse Franklin Pioneers club from the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History received second place for a group project in the Literary Contest at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh this spring for the 2013 Tar Heel Junior Historian Association annual convention.

Club member Jonathan Casey placed first in the essay contest while Olivia Edwards and Emily Richardson were winners in the artifact search contest.

The local club members were among m,ore than 350 students, advisers and parents from across North Carolina who gathered at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh for the convention, an all-day event.

Hands-on workshops at the convention focused on two topics: conflict in the 1800s and North Carolina A to Z. Students learned about subjects ranging from the history of the “Star Spangled Banner” to earthenware pottery. The Museum of History and the Museum of History Associates co-sponsored the statewide convention.

As a result of a $5,000 grant received last year from Bay and Paul Foundation, the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History is embarking on a mission to better preserve and archive its extensive collections, which includes around 20,000 objects and 10,000 photographs.

The grant was intended for “collections management, digitization and archival supplies and equipment,” according to Matthew Edwards, executive director of the museum.

Museum volunteers gathered Tuesday afternoon for a training session to teach them how to repackage, document and digitize a large part of the museum’s collections.

Adrienne Berney, collections care trainer with the Connecting to Collections project, led the volunteers in a series of training activities, including an examination of multiple training objects in order to properly train them to archive materials and know the techniques needed to examine and document each object.

“Our goal is to help small museums and this grant helps us to go out in the state, to museums like this one, and host regional workshops to reform and revise the archives as well as learn object handling techniques. Some volunteers will work with objects and others will work primarily with the digitization of the archives,” Berney explained to the volunteers.

Read more: Mount Airy News - Behind the scenes at the museum

This Saturday, The Mount Airy Museum of Regional History premieres its newest traveling exhibit, The Luthier’s Craft: Instrument Making Traditions of the Blue Ridge.

The exhibit explores the luthier’s craft of making stringed instruments and will include sections on banjo, guitar, and fiddle creation in the southern Appalachia and Blue Ridge Mountain areas, as well as biographical information on the luthiers.

The exhibit includes a number of hands-on activities, audio/visual, and interactive components. Admission to the museum is free this Saturday, but donations are encouraged.

Three luthiers are featured, including Johnny Gentry from the Mountain Park area, who crafts banjos; Wayne Henderson, a guitar-maker from the Mouth of Wilson area in Virginia; and a pair of old-time fiddler makers, Chris Testerman and Audrey Hash Ham.

Read more: Mount Airy News - Museum’s Luthier’s Craft exhibit opens Saturday

On Saturday the History Talks lecture series continues at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History with a free presentation about Eng and Chang Bunker, the famous Siamese Twins, and how their families were affected by The Civil War.

Tom Perry, local author of more than 30 books and a regional historian, will present the lecture at 2 p.m. on the third floor of the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History. The event is free and no advance registration is required.

The focus of Saturday’s presentation is Eng and Chang Bunker’s family and how they were affected by The Civil War, including Christopher and Steven, the sons of the Bunkers who enlisted to fight in the war in Virginia. Both sons were in the 37th Virginia Calvary Battalion.

Stoneman’s Raid came through Surry County in April of 1865, and Perry said he wants to address the “many stories and myths” about some of the men in the raid who visited the Siamese Twins.

Read more: Mount Airy News - Saturday History Talk focusing on Siamese twins Civil War