Tannenbaum Park video
Everyone knows the whereabouts of Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. They go there not so much to learn history but to walk dogs, jog, stroll and picnic. The park's 220-plus acres get crowded on weekends.
Then there's tiny Tannenbaum Historical Park a block away at the corner of New Garden Road and Battleground Avenue. Visitors come, but not as many as park director Adrienne Byrd would like. She has long called the city-operated park "Greensboro's best kept secret." She and her staff watch cars pass the entrance to the six-acre park and continue on to the federal park.
"We kept telling people we were tired of being the best-kept secret," she says. "We figured it was time to raise awareness."
The result: a seven-minute video, called, not surprisingly, "Best Kept Secret," that will officially air on Greensboro Cable Channel 13 Thursday at 11 p.m. and be repeated almost every day through Sept. 8.
The video stars local actor Mack McClain as farmer Joseph Hoskins, whose farm house is believed to have stood at the park site in 1781 when the British and Americans fought the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. In and around the Hoskins house, the British took up positions and prepared to advance against the American front line.
After the battle, the British treated their wounded at the house and, according to legend, buried their dead in a mass grave that archaeologists are still searching for.
This important tract was left out between the 1880s and 1917 when battlefield land was acquired and eventually made a national park. The park covers only about one-fifth of the 1,000 acres over which the battle was fought. The rest is now covered over with apartments, houses and shopping centers.
In the 1980s, the Hoskins property, then the site of a private home, was threatened with a shopping center development. This resulted in the re-activation of The Guilford Battleground Co., which Judge David Schenck had formed in the 1880s to save as much battlefield land as possible. The new generation of company members worked to preserve the property and did so with help of donations from the Sternberger-Tannenbaum Foundation and from the city and county.
The park is devoted to interpreting domestic life before and at the time of the battle. The setting includes the Colonial Heritage Center, featuring exhibits, a gift shop and meeting space.
The video was shot by Channel 13 photographer Ahmed Sabir-Calloway. Adrienne Byrd says over a period of months, Sabir-Calloway video taped special events in the park. He also would show up on pretty days to do landscape scenes.
Here's Channel 13's schedule of "Best Kept Secret":
Thursday, 11 p.m.
Friday, noon and 11:30 p.m.
Saturday: 9:30 p.m.
Monday: 8 p.m.
Wednesday: 9:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Thursday, 11 p.m.
