BEVERLY HERITAGE DAYS is our big living history event every July. We have a variety of living history camps, games and activities, demonstrations, and all sorts of interactive elements. A typical schedule includes the Parade of History, a Pie Sale fundraiser and lunch for purchase, presentations on historic topics, and more. This event is always free to attend!

OLD FASHIONED CHRISTMAS is the first weekend of December. Every year, we do a tote bag giveaway for the area children, we have music and carols, and a visit from a Victorian-era Santa Claus called Father Christmas! This event is always free to attend!

WALKING TOURS are offered periodically throughout the year. Check our events calendar for our current offerings. Below are some of the many themed tours that we have offered in the past:

–          “Lantern Tours” is one of our most popular walking tours. Every October, we lead a walking tour of Beverly at night, lit only by lanterns. We tell true stories about spooky and macabre goings on in our town’s history. Learn about the fate of first settlers in the Tygart Valley, one of the first amputations of the Civil War, death and feats of escape in the Randolph County Jail, and local supernatural experiences. Tickets are $10

–          “Hidden Spaces Tours” focus on touring the inside of buildings not open to the public to see their current state of historic preservation. You get to see inside the 1841 Jail, the Logan House, the Collett House, and the IOOF building. Tickets are $20.

–          “Women of Beverly” focuses on several remarkable and interesting women from Beverly. Highlights include stories about Edna Kildow, who at 11 years old became the youngest member of the Associated Press, and the story of George and Mary Watkins, an interracial couple who lived on the outskirts of Beverly in the 1920s. Tickets are $10.

–          “African-Americans of Beverly” takes visitors on 9 stops around town, telling remarkable stories of seeking freedom and revealing the difficult choices that people of color had to navigate in Beverly. Stops include the site of the former African Methodist Episcopal Church and the 1813 Jail which housed a freedom seeker trying to escape north. Tickets are $10.

–          “Lost Beverly” is a unique tour that goes to the sites of demolished historic buildings. This tour emphasizes the importance of Historic Preservation in our community as we see where the second courthouse used to be as well as the site of the former Beverly Depot. Tickets are $10.

–          The “Architecture” Tour highlights the variety of different buildings that we have in our special town. We showcase some ghost advertising on one building that dates from the 1890s as well as walk a tableau through the Federal, Queen Anne, Second Empire, and Gothic Revival styles. Tickets are $10.

–          “Beverly’s Cemetery” Tour goes through 12-15 gravestones in our cemetery that are particularly notable. This is a combination of telling about the lives of important historic figures like H.G. Kump and Lemuel Chenoweth, as well as deciphering the meaning of various symbols seen on gravestones of the period, such as willows, lambs, hands, and books. Tickets are $10.

Tours may be available on request pending staff availability.