Mooresville Museum Launches Sale
Of Mooresville History Book

The Mooresville Museum held its second Annual Meeting on March 13, 2007 at the Charles Mack Citizen Center. New members of the board of Directors elected were: Miles Atkins, Richard Hollister, Mitchell Mack and John Sparrow.

The Museum chose this opportunity to launch its sale of the reprinted book of Mooresville history entitled Mooresville-The Early Years by W. J. Haselden. Originally published in 1967, this book was a result of the efforts of the Mooresville Chamber of Commerce to preserve the stories of the citizens of Mooresville at that time, particularly because of the upcoming Centennial celebration in 1973.

Because this is the earliest printed history of Mooresville, the Museum wanted to reprint it to provide that story to today’s citizens. With the permission of Mr. Haselden’s family and a donated copy from Dr. Bill Brown, The Museum now has copies available for purchase. The cost is $18.00 for members and $20.00 for non-members.

Books made be ordered online here.

"How It Came About"

Mitchell Mack describes the story behind the original:

Back in the 60's there was some thought in the community that Mooresville would in a few years be 100 years old (1973), plus even then it was recognized that many older citizens were dying off, and with that we were losing some valuable history information and resources. Some individuals, even back then, felt the need for a means for collecting and recording valuable history and historical information.

This mutual feeling to record valuable historical information, before it is too late, culminated in our local Chamber leaders talking at the board meetings to do something. Willis (W. J.) Haselden was the Executive Secretary of the Chamber at that time, and with the Board's encouragement he gladly undertook the job.

With Peg Crooks, secretary and only other employee of the Chamber, he organized and sent letters and appeared at civic club meetings, churches, and any way they could to get the word out for folks to send in histories of their older families and their members. Pictures and photos were especially wanted. This collection process lasted, it seems, a couple years.

Written info in some cases was used as submitted. Most of the material needed to be rewritten, and although he and Peg did so much, W. J. had numerous individuals to help him. The school's Media Center helped in printing the material for the book form. The assembly of the pages for each book was done by hand with volunteer community helpers picking up page by page, stacking them in order. No telling how many hours it took to write all the articles, assemble all the information, rewrite and rewrite many articles, and the procedure to assemble the pages in proper order, and bind them in a book.

-contributed by Mitchell Mack