UPDATE: Due to inclement weather, the event has been rescheduled for noon to 4 p.m. on February 25.

From the Civil War burning of Meridian to a tornado wiping out the city’s business district 1906, the history of the Queen City will come alive for area residents Saturday during the second annual Meridian Downtown History Walk.

Area residents will find the walk enlightening as it brings to life stories of notable people and places in downtown Meridian through captivating scripts and performances presented by the Rose Hill Company of Storytellers.

“We are coming out to celebrate Meridian’s birthday which is Feb. 10 and to tell documented history about the city,” said Storyteller Anne McKee, one of the leading organizers of the event.

“We have about 20 stops on the walk and our stories at each stop are small vignettes that last about 10 to 15 minutes,” she said.

Free to the public, the self-guided history walk will begin at noon and run until 4 p.m. Attendees can pick up tour maps at Dumont Plaza.

“We are very excited about the tour. We have been planning it for the past year,” said Rose Hill member Margaret Remy. “It is an educational tour based on documented history, and it is very family oriented.”

The tour basically follows a loop between City Hall and the Courthouse.

“We are repeating the tour from last year, but we have added four new stories,” McKee said.

This year’s walk will include a presentation on gypsy wagon history by Jan Mardis complete with a replica gypsy wagon set up in front of the MSU-Riley Center on Fifth Street.

McKee said the company received a grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council to acquire the wagon.

Also new will be a story presented by the Meridian Freedom Project on the old E.F. Young Hotel and its historical importance. The skit will center around the hotel’s inclusion in the Green Book, a travel guide published during segregation in the South that identified hotels and businesses that would accept African American customers. 

“I am real excited about this addition to the walk,” McKee said of the presentation, which will include an old car prop with the storytellers portraying a traveling family stopping at the Meridian hotel for the night.

Remy, who participated last year, will portray Clara Weidmann and briefly tell the story of how Clara and her husband, Felix, came to the U.S. from Zurich, Switzerland, in 1868.

Set up outside the current Weidmann’s Restaurant, Remy will relate how the couple went from owning a four-stool cafe in the Union Hotel to opening the city’s most well-known eating establishment.

“I will be dressed in costume and sitting at a table with some props, and I have a cute little story about the peanut butter jar,” Remy said, as well as a story about Clara’s pet lamp that followed the wagon from the hotel to the restaurant.

Storyteller Terrence Roberts will return to the walk this year to tell the story of Meridian resident Earnest Brock who served with the 9th U.S. Calvary Regiment, one of the Army’s four segregated African-American regiments more widely known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

“I will be presenting a little story about a Meridian resident by the name of Earnest Brock, who was a private in the 9th Calvary. The 9th and 10th U.S. Calvary soldiers are part of what was referred to as the Buffalo Soldiers. Well, Mr. Brock served with the 9th Calvary in the Philippines during World War I,” Roberts said. “He is buried in Odd Fellow Cemetery on 10th Avenue.”

The downtown history walk is funded in part by Lauderdale Tourism and the East Mississippi Community Foundation, McKee said, adding that an estimated 1,000 people attended last year’s event.