On November 20, 2014, Jim Mitchell will present “Firearms throughout West Virginia’s Early History” at the Thursday evening lecture in the Archives and History Library of the Culture Center in Charleston. The program will begin at 6:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Mitchell’s discussion will begin with early flintlocks and end with some of the later cartridge rifles and shotguns. His talk will focus primarily on civilian muzzle loading percussion cap lock rifles that were made by hand working gunsmiths and were either made in West Virginia or gravitated to the state and used here. Mitchell will have several period weapons on display.
Mitchell is the curator of the West Virginia State Museum in The Culture Center in Charleston. As a professional decorative arts and technological history curator for 50 years, he has worked for the state museums in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, as well as at The Bennington (Vt.) Museum and the defunct Carborundum Museum of Ceramics in Niagara Falls, New York. He has also been a museum director twice. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, of which he is a native. He also received a master of arts degree from the University of Delaware in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture and a master of science degree in public administration from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. In his spare time, he is a woodworker and an amateur musician, singing and playing bass instruments.
For additional information, contact the Archives and History Library at (304) 558-0230.
