Early American Life Magazine June 2021 - Historic Place Ideas

I have written many times about Erly American Life Magazine. Every single issue has something of interest to me even though I am no longer working as a histori site docent. For those of you new to my blog, I used to be a volunteer at half a dozen historic sites in New Jersey, but over the past ten years or so, I have had to cut back, and then the pandemic put a full stop to my final volunteer experience which was at the James and Ann Whitall HOuse at Red Bank Battlefield, in National Park, New Jersey. When I began there well over ten years ago, a brilliant and charismatic young curator, Meghan Giordano, sadly deceased at an early age, was an inspiration to everyone who volunteered there.

During that time, early in my retirement, I was introduced to EArly American Life by a librarian friend and I have subsribed to it ever since. Along with my passion for history, I have always had a fascination and respect for hand-made, hand crafted objects such as pottery, quilting, metal work, wood work and so on. It oes with the territory. I have a degree in Art and taught Art most of career of 35 years. Although I have a very large yard, oddly pie shaped, narrow at the front and spread out like a fan at the back, I was never much interested in gardening until I met the master gardners of Whitall House, in particular, my favorite, Joyce Connolly. She took me on a tour of her garden once, and she gave me Lily of the Valley, one of my most beloved little plants, the fragrance is intoxicating. And she gave me a mystery plant which she identified for me a couple of years after as Helibore. It blooms with tennis ball sized yellow blossoms early in the spring, about the time the crocus peak up their brave little heads.

AS I said, I usually read EAL from cover to cover, so I may be back after this entry with a review of another article but for this post I wanted to mention Greenfield Village, I think it is somewhere near Detroit because in the article the Manager of Greenfield mentioned moving the Detroit Central Market Building to their 80 acre, 83 historic structure site. What I found interesting was the wide array of events they sponsor there in order to bring in the visitors and to spark their interest and keep them coming back. That's how you get tax support to keep this historic treasures for the future.

At Greenfield they hold antique automobile shows, they do a big splash for Halloween and Christmas; they recently bought the farm of the founder of Firestone and they are plowing and raising farm produce and crops. The plan for the Detroit Central Market is to compare urban and rural food history, and to open the discussion on food literacy, the history of distribution, food deserts, and other topics of contemporary importance.

I understood the push at Whitall House after a big consultation effort to design the future, to focus on the specific main incident of Red Bank Battlefield which was the October 1775 Battle, but I always thought it was a shame to be narrow like that because one of the MOST popular events we ever held was a World War II Reenactment. Hundreds of people came and visited our site for the first time. And we could justify it at that time because there had been a WWII Sentry Tower on the site to guard the Delaware River owing to the stealthy patrolling of our Atlantic coast by U Boats at the time. They were slaughtering our Merchant fleet. My father had been a Merchant Seaman before he joined the Navy and so I was well aware of the dangers to Merchant ships at that time.

Personal history often plays a big part in the stimulation of and the depth of the appreciation of younger people for history. Since so many of my family members participated in so many big events in our history, it was all very real to me. My Grandfather Lyons was on the Mexican border during the first World War to protect our Sothern border. My father and his brothers wer in the navy during World War II, and my grandfather on the paternal side was a Merchant Seaman. My mother worked at the Navy Yard during the War before she joined my father in Florida and after she came home to Philadelphia when he shipped out.

One of the extra types of vents we still hold at Red Bank, however, is the annual Garden show which is popular and beautiful. Look for that in the end of the summer, and in the fall come to our October re-enactment. Perhaps by then, I will be back to giving tours! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Early American Life Magazine

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