Historic site interpreting, from an amateur/volunteer perspective

One of the my most enjoyed magazines over decades of magazine subscriptions, is EARLY AMERICAN LIFE. It has restoration of historic sites and homes, it has gardens, utilitarian craft as well as aesthetic, it has textile, pottery, tools, clothing - so much, I could just go on and on. And in the most recent issue, as is so often the case, they discussed interpretation of historic sites with the new awareness of the rich and fullsome world in the rooms behind, below and above the rooms of the 'Great Men, the State.' There was whole huge network of lives thronging through all those days of history, plowing, cooking, carving, boiling, feeding, gathering, commenting, laughing, crying, praying, planning - making.

One of the things I always enjoyed about the early tools of various crafts I have tried, is the meditative, routine, structured physicality of it. Each night when I go to bed, I look at two linoleum cut prints I did back in the 70's and of which I am still both proud and delighted. They were so laborious I cannot imaging such an undertaking now. I used to weave too. It was a lot like factory work, which I also did, in a Mill!

Anyhow, two of the historic sites in the article I was reading in EAL were being interpreted through the inhabitants, the servants, the enslaved and indentured workers. I am always drawn to the people, the ones whispering in the kitchen, laughing in the field, plunging the wooden stirrer into the cauldron of boiling laundry, shooting the heddle back and forth on the loom. These people are my antecedents and they are the ones I am interested in.

They are also the ones I would like to know more about at historic sites too. Much as I admire G. Washington, I am tired of him and would love to know more about Hercules, the talented chef who escaped, and Ona Judge, who also escaped and was never caught. What about the Native Lenape trader at the door who has a pelt to trade or a request for assistance in the 'businesses of the colonials' - these people have faded away into the background and they are the ones I want to see.

It is thrilling to me that newer historians are adopting this interest as well. Don't you want to know about that illiterate young camp follower in the train following her soldier husband's unit. She is hauling the baby, the toddler and her little girl with a wheelbarrow of camping supplies. Where did she come from? The Indentured servants of the James and Ann Whitall farm, where did they come from? Where did they go?

At least we have one diary of Ann Whitall, to have some view of the thoughts of a woman of that time. It is priceless!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann