Photo by Deb Gau Brooklyn Pehrson uses a dowel to carve into a piece of soap that Tiffany Fassler got started for her, during Saturday’s Arts and Living History Festival in Marshall. Visitors could use stencils to help carve plain bars of Ivory soap into shapes like hearts and fish

MARSHALL — There are lots of ways to learn about history. On Saturday, Olivia Hlavka and Noah Hlavka got a hands-on lesson on how past generations had fun by mastering a 19th-century game called graces.

Olivia and Noah stood on a lawn using sticks to launch hoops through the air to each other.

“You have to catch it, and then throw it out” over the sticks, Olivia Hlavka said.

While the two youths didn’t have trouble getting the hoops to fly, they were sometimes scrambling to try and catch them again.

“I’m having too much fun with this,” Noah Hlavka said.

Hands-on activities and historical demonstrations were a big part of the Arts and Living History Festival in Marshall on Saturday. The event, held near the Marshall Farmers Market, brought together musicians, vendors and more.

At different booths at the festival, visitors could try carding or spinning wool, playing games from the 19th century, or make-and-take projects like soap carving.

At the carving table, festival visitors like Nolan Fassler and Teagan Fassler used wooden dowels to carve bars of Ivory soap into shapes like hearts or fish. Wood carver David Haen said using materials like soap and dowels was a way to adapt woodcarving techniques to help make them safer and easier for kids to try.

At another festival booth, representatives of the Living History Society of Minnesota brought together a variety of historical toys and games, ranging from games like graces, to board games and simple toys like building blocks and dolls.

“It really helps history come alive,” said Karla Hovde of the Living History Society of Minnesota.

The display at the festival helped highlight some of the everyday parts of people’s lives, like how they had fun. Presenters like Hovde also wore 1800s period dress.

“It helps you feel a sense of what people’s lives were like,” she said.

Part of this year’s festival also included more recent local history. Marshall resident and former firefighter Craig Schafer gave a short talk about the background of Memorial Park, and the 9/11 Memorial beam there.

The idea for the 9/11 memorial grew out of trips Schafer made with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in 2001 and 2002, to learn about the disaster response after the World Trade Center attacks in New York. Schafer recalled seeing the level of care and respect that 9/11 responders showed as they searched through debris for any sign of human remains.

While he was in New York, Schafer learned that some pieces of debris from the Twin Towers were being saved for possible use in memorials. He reached out to then-fire chief Mark Klaith.

“I told Mark, we need to do something physical in Marshall,” Schafer said. He applied for permission to bring a piece of beam back to Marshall. The beam stayed at the Marshall fire hall for nine years, while the community fundraised for construction of the 9/11 memorial. The memorial was dedicated in 2011.