LISA O’DONNELL Winston-Salem Journal

Jacob Chilton started working at Old Salem in 2016 as a house interpreter, showing visitors how early Americans made pottery and cabinets, dressed, cooked and spent their leisure time, while dressed in period clothing, or kits, as he calls them.

He is now an interpretive education coordinator, where he translates the past into ways that modern folks can understand.

“We try to relay an accurate day-to-day story of how people lived their lives,” said Chilton, who was raised in Walnut Cove.

Did you grow up loving history?

I liked it and I was good at it, but it didn’t engage me until college. I had been taught names and dates, and that’s not engaging. In college, our teachers started asking questions, analyzing, and I found that immensely fascinating.

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