A brand new exhibit opened at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History on Friday. It features art from the Yadkin Valley Craft Guild.

The exhibit is located on the third floor of the museum and it will be an ever-changing exhibit, because the items on display are also for sale.

Matt Edwards, executive director for the museum, hopes this exhibit will become an annual event at the museum. He said the exhibit was timed to open just in time for the Autumn Leaves Festival. Last year, he met Aaron Blackwelder, who is the president of the Yadkin Valley Craft Guild, during the Autumn Leaves Festival and he asked him then if the guild would be interested in exhibiting its work at the museum.

The Mount Airy Museum of Regional History opened its doors last night after hours to preview its brand new African-American Builders exhibit to members and their guests.

Many in attendance at the event had relatives who were African-American builders and some said they truly learned from the exhibit.

Although, the Casino Royale night is being planned for Oct. 21 as a fundraiser for the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History, tickets for the big event went on sale Friday.

Matt Edwards, executive director of the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History, said the event will be held at Cross Creek Country Club from 7 to 11 p.m.

“It’s a great new event for the museum and the community. We’ve kind of refrained this year from doing a lot of true fund raising. We did a few parties earlier in the year, but this is really our big one and done event for the year. It will determine whether the museum closes out the year in the black or in the red. It’s a pretty big deal for us in terms of getting folks in the community behind it. It’s something that we think is going to be tremendously fun for everybody involved,” said Edwards.

"Not everything we’re told about our history is true.” That was one of the key statements made by researcher, author and documentary filmmaker Kevin Duffus at the start of his lecture at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History on Sunday.

Duffus was at the museum to speak about the last days of Blackbeard, one of the state’s most infamous pirates. But Duffus, who has spent years combing archives for information about the pirate, said most accounts people have heard about Blackbeard are inaccurate. He said much of the history about Blackbeard and his men was only superficially researched, with most people rehashing the same inaccurate information. So he set out to find truth about Blackbeard. He asked those gathered at the lecture to reconsider what they have heard about the pirate.