Video: Local Kids Learn about Toys from 1800s

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By Chad Groening

TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) – It was a chance to learn what children played with 200 years ago.

The Natchez Trace Parkway Visitors Center hosted a special Junior Ranger Program called “The Natchez Trace Toy Box.”

Children learned about toys like buzz saws and Jacobs Ladders which were popular in the 1800s.

Park guide Amy Williams says it’s good for kids to get away from high tech gadgets of the 21st Century.

“They’ll come in here,” she said. “They will put those video games down. They’ll put their cell phones down and they’ll pick up a toy from 200 years ago and they will have more fun with a simple wooden toy than they would with a $200 piece of equipment. And it’s really fun that, to see them play with a toy that kids would have played with 200 years ago and have just as much fun with that toy as they do with their expensive ones.”

Williams says toys like Jacob’s Ladder were probably carried by the boatmen or the Cain-tuck on the old Trace.