CIVIL WAR REVISITS CHAMBERSBURG, PA
Meet Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman and other American Heroes

The Pennsylvania Civil War Road Show, a portable interactive museum folds into an expandable 53-foot trailer. The exhibit will make an apperance in all 67 Pennsylvania counties during the four-year commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. The road show stopped in Chambersburg, PA on July 15, 16 & 17, 2011. Programs were given by actors portraying Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, and other historical figures from the era. The road show features hands-on, interactive displays to tell stories , show scenes of camp and home life, all with the aim of immersing visitors in a new understanding of how America's great rift changed the lives of Pennsylvanians forever. The whole 150th commemoration has been in the works for more than a year, and part of the purpose of the Road Show grew out of a seminar two years ago about digitizing primary historical source records in all of the counties in the state.The road show will not only be bringing history with it; it will be taking some away with it, one story at a time.
Through a "Share Your Story" recording booth, visitors may share their own Civil War-era family photographs, artifacts and other material and stories. These are digitized into computer formats, then uploaded to the Pennsylvania Civil War 150 website, that gets bigger and more in depth as the Road Show travels the Commonwealth. John Seitter, project manager for the overall Pennsylvania Civil War 150 program, said one of the most important aspects of the road show is telling the stories of those Pennsylvanians who were not among the uniformed. It's a way to tell the stories of the state's African-Americans, people on the homefront trying to find lumber and food, women working in factories, and how people back home started to memorialize these sites.
The idea, he said, is through the organization's website publication and line of products, to provide a non-traditional Pennsylvania-centric' approach to commemorating the Civil War.
The Pa.Civil War 150 website, http://www.PACivilWar150.com