Lebanon History Day

How does an idea become an event? It starts with a spark. The Lebanon History Museum's spark was a visit to the Fite-Fessenden House for their High Tea.

After Alexa Moscardelli and Judy Sullivan asked us to coordinate something with their museum, Mattie Neely and Kathleen Vail sparked an idea while they were still in the car driving back to work. Our own museum team agreed with the idea and we set to create Lebanon History Day.

We contacted the Director of Lebanon Special School District, Scott Benson to see if this spark could become a flame. He was beyond excited with the idea.

Five Schools, four hundred fifth graders!

1. Coles Ferry Elementary
2. Sam Houston School
3. Jones Brummett School
4. Byars Dowdy School
5. Castle Heights Elementary

Representatives from the Fite-Fessenden House, the Veterans Museum, the Wilson County Archives, Fiddlers Grove, Cumberland University and Lebanon Special School District met with members of the Lebanon History Museum for the first time, at the Historic Mitchell House back on October 20, 2021.  They came to hear this crazy idea to see if they wanted to become part of an initiative to educate our children on the history of Lebanon. Thus, the Lebanon History Committee was formed and the excitement about the project was contagious!

After many months of building lesson plans that worked with the school's standards, developing bus routes, detailed scheduling for each location, and all the other little minute details that went into it, we had a community-building event known as Lebanon History Day.