Garfield Farm Museum offers Blacksmithing 101 & 201

On Saturday, Oct. 8, Garfield Farm Museum staff member Joseph Coleman will offer a "Blacksmithing 101" lecture/demonstration at 10 a.m.

There will be a discussion of how we arrived at the Iron Age and how blacksmithing impacted the industrial revolution. He also will demonstrate 19th-century blacksmithing skills.

"Blacksmithing 201" at 1 p.m. will include a lecture, demonstration and hands-on experience for the guests. No prior experience is needed.

Iron has been used by numerous civilizations over the course of thousands of years. It played a pivotal role during the industrial revolution. Iron also had many practical applications on prairie farmsteads like Garfield Farm. It was a Rockingham, Vt., boyhood friend of Timothy Garfield, one Horace Bancroft, who first came to Illinois and upon Garfield's 1841 arrival told him of the Culbertson claim that Garfield would buy for his farm and inn. Bancroft was a blacksmith by trade in St. Charles.

Coleman has been in the history museum field for 10 years. He has demonstrated 19th-century blacksmithing in Naperville for 5 years and during his hobby of Civil War re-enacting. Coleman took an interest in blacksmithing during Garfield Farm's "1840s Days" on how it could be applied to farm life.

The cost of "Blacksmithing 101" is $8, "Blacksmithing 201" is $40; materials and refreshments are included. For reservations, contact the museum at (630) 584-8485 or info@garfieldfarm.org.

Garfield Farm Museum is located on Garfield Road, off Route 38, five miles west of Geneva. The 375-acre site is a historically intact former 1840s farm and teamster inn being restored as an 1840s working farm museum by volunteers and donors from around the country.

Visit www.garfieldfarm.org or www.facebook.com/GarfieldFarmMuseum/.