We are excited about the return of our history walking tour program which will begin on Tuesday, January 17th and run through Thursday, April 27th 2023. We have some exciting updates to this year's tour schedule and pricing structure. Back by popular demand, the "Old Coronado Beach Flagler Avenue" tour is back on schedule for 2023. Also, it pays to be a member as we have reduced the price of the tour for our members from $10 to $5.

Here is a list of this year's tour selections.

Tuesdays - "The Three Downtowns of Old New Smyrna" Explore multiple areas that started to become the town center for New Smyrna beginning with the Smyrnea' Settlement of 1768 through the arrival of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway.

Visit multiple local historic landmark buildings as well as sites where New Smyrna's first residents made their homes.

Discover a tomb in the middle of the street and a WWII watchtower site as you explore the story of the community formerly known as Coronado Beach. This tour will meet and depart from the South Pine Parking Lot on Flagler Ave.

We are always excited to meet younger folks who are enthusiastic about history, that is certainly the case with Ryan Brennan. Ryan is a Senior at Flagler College in St. Augustine and volunteer at the Ximenez-Fatio House Museum in that same city. If you follow our Facebook page you likely saw some recent posts about Ryan's project, "Hiking Through History". Ryan set out Sunday, November 27th in the early morning from the front porch here at the New Smyrna Museum of History enroute to St. Augustine. Ryan traced the steps taken by the members of the Turnbull Settlement as they struggled to regain their freedom from indenture in 1777, and he shared video posts along the way. You can learn more about Ryan and this adventurous project, "Hiking Through History", by visiting https://www.ximenezfatiohouse.org/hiking-through-history

Visit our Facebook page to see Ryan's posts in these final days of his project. https://www.facebook.com/newsmyrnamuseumofhistory/

Join us for "The Florida Highwaymen Painters" with Gary Monroe.

Gary Monroe, a native of Miami Beach is a renowned urban landscape and documentary photographer, and former professor of fine art and photography with Daytona State College. Gary became fascinated with the story of the Florida Highwaymen painters and other renegade artists from the state of Florida and has written numerous books on the Florida Highwaymen painters.

We are in full holiday mode at the museum as we wrap up another year that somehow seems to have passed more quickly than the last. As you can see from this newsletter, we are already looking forward to next year and the events it will bring. Our walking tours will pick up in January and we will be hosting our first collaborative event with the Mary S. Harrell Black Heritage Museum in February.

Besides those public events here are just a few plans that are being worked on behind the scenes that we are excited about. The museum will be getting a new website in the coming year. After 5 years with our current site, we are excited to be working with Hosting NSB to provide a cleaner, more modern looking site that is easier to navigate in the coming months. We will also be moving the location of our front desk at the museum to the Southeast corner of the lobby. This will allow an expansion of the Museum Store space, and provide better traffic flow for those entering and exiting the museum.

Our video production team is working on a new video presentation that will tell the story of the first railroad that came to New Smyrna back in the 1880s, the Blue Spring / Orange City / Atlantic line. We can't quite project a release date at this point, but look forward to updating you in the coming months as the project progresses. We also hope to bring our museum matinee programs back this spring so we can begin offering some programming during the day.

Looking forward, it seems like 2023 will be another exciting year.

We hope you can make it out this coming Thursday to join us at our Museum Members Holiday Party. You can RSVP and let us know if you are coming directly from this newsletter, just look for the holiday party info a little further down the page.

We hope to see you soon, at the New Smyrna Museum of History!

As their story recaptures the imagination of Floridians and their paintings fetch ever-escalating prices, the legacy of their freshly conceived landscapes exerts a new and powerful influence on the popular conception of the Sunshine State. Order today:

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Mark your calendars and join us as we kick off the Holiday season with all our friends, here at the Museum.

Thursday, December 8th at 6:00 PM

The museum will supply a ham, wine, beer, and soft drinks. You bring your favorite appetizer, holiday side dish, or dessert to help us complete the meal.

Not a member yet? It's ok, just RSVP and join us on Thursday. Let the front desk know you need to sign up as a member when you arrive.

Join us next year on Thursday, January 12th as we welcome our former museum director and local historian Robert Redd as he shares information about his newest book "Hidden History of Civil War Florida".

At the outset of the Civil War, Florida's entire population was only a bit larger than present-day Gainesville. Still, the state played an outsized role in the conflict. Join us and Author Robert Redd on a tour of the lessor-known aspects of Florida in the Civil War.

Stop by the museum store to pick up a copy of the book or order online today through the link below.

with Joe Vetter

Having a second hurricane inside of 6 weeks was frustrating enough, we were doubly saddened to miss the chance to spend time with Joe Vetter and experience his presentation about John James Audubon.

We are excited to announce that he is back on schedule for this coming March.

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Jennifer Devine

Sandra Harpen

Alice Gail Domroski

William Higgins

Sharon R. Miller

Anne Mlod

Jimmy & Donna Lane

Tina & Raymond Baliatico

www.NSBHistory.org