The Zimmerman House

I have been hiking around the Zimmerman House for the past few years. It's located in the middle of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, which seems a little strange to a hiker who walks through miles of forest, and suddenly comes upon a rather imposing house and outbuildings in the middle of the woods. The house is maintained by the National Park Service, and there is a Pennsylvania Historic Marker on the property.

Like I said, I've hiked around the Zimmerman House for years and never gave it much of a thought. The other day I was walking my dog there and I realized, "My God, there's history to this place, what have I been overlooking?" So I googled it. Apparently the Zimmerman house was built by a man named John Zimmerman, and it was inherited by Marie Zimmerman, his daughter, in the mid to late 1930s. Marie Zimmerman was an artist with a studio in Gramarcy Park, who worked with many different media. She made jewlery, cabinets, and even blacksmithed. After she moved into her father's country estate, Marie stopped working as an artist and took up hunting, marksmanship, and fishing.

Here are some photos I have taken of the Zimmerman house over the years.

The House. I guess you could call it eclectic in its architectural style. There are definitely some Dutch elements there is that gambrel roof and kicked eve, but the house is much more complex than to call it a Dutch revival.


There are numerous outbuildings on the property in various states of repair and disrepair. When I first started hiking near the Zimmerman House some of the outbuildings were full of garbage that modern visitors to the house had left behind. Now the property is cleaner.




There is still some agricultural equipment laying around.


The tree-lined alee.


A copper beech! And it's not fairing too well I must say, half of it has broken off, and I shudder to think of the state that it's in right now after the storms we've been getting.


I don't know that the NPS has any plans to open up the Zimmerman house as a historic site. The house does not contain anything valuable, and it appears that the NPS is more concerned simply with maintaining it. Although it would be nice to someday see the inside of the house, I give the NPS a lot of credit for maintaining the site so well. The concept of stewardship has been lost on many of us in this economy, and I am glad that for once someone isn't turning their back on a site just because it isn't turning a profit.

Hyde Park

The staff of Grey Towers took a field trip the other day to Hyde Park, one of the homes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The goal of the trip was to understand how other sites interpret history to the public. My boss told me that at the end of the tour I needed to tell her one technique that I wanted to incorperate into my tour.

Our visit started out with a trip to the visitor's center where there was a gift shop, museum displays, and a movie theater where we watched an introductory film. Teh museum displays held few objects; they consisted mostly of curving, wall-like displays with pictures and texts that you could walk around and read. This reminded me of the displays at Valley Forge, minus the objects. The introductory film was very well-done. It showed a human side to Roosevlet and his wife, Eleanor. The Roosevelt's granschildren spoke of their memories of the house, and the lives of their grandparents. They spoke of FDR's courageous attitudes when faced with paralysis, and about Eleanor's humanitarian work. They also touched on numerous events in history like the great depression.

After the movie had ended we met our tour guide in the visitor's center. She explained the lay of the land around Hyde Park to us and told us where we were going to go on our tour. She encouraged all of us to visit ValKill, the home of Eleanor Roosevelt. The first place she took us was the flower garden where she told us a few annecdotes about the Roosevelts, and encouaged us all to visit his grave on our own time. After the tour, I did, and here are some photos of the garden and graves.


Two of their dogs are buried under the sundial. That's how I want to be interred: in a garden with my pets.

Pretty flowers.




We weren't allowed to take photos inside of the house. I don't know why some historic sites are afraid that the flash will hurt the objects and some aren't. We have much older stuff at Grey Towers and we let people -photograph it.

FDR's House.


Overall I was not terribly impressed with the tour. I guess I could have asked more questions so that the tour guide would have given us more information. Overall she liked to tell a lot of stories (which I thoroughly enjoyed) but she was not really concerned with teaching her audience a whole lot about the Roosevelts. There were numerous ways to learn about FDR and his family at the site, so I still came away feeling like I learned a lot, just not from my tour guide.

You exited the house via the fire escape. It was a good way to keep the traffic flowing through the house, but once you got outside people just sort of trickled wherever they decided to go. There was no conlcusion to the tour. I was left thinking what's next?



We then went to look at the FDR Presidential library. At first I didn't realize that this was a museum, and I was wondering if I was going to get to look at his books and papers. I didn't. Instead there were rooms upon rooms of museum displays on FDR. I thought this was the most educational part of the whole trip.




There were many aspects of Hyde Park that both impressed and disapointed me. The brand-new visitor's center, as well as many extremely well-done and informative displays in the Presidential Library were eye opening and made the whole trip worthwhile. I learned more through those two things than I did through getting a tour of the house. Overall I was very moved by my trip to Hyde Park. It made me want to read up on the Roosevelts. Our tour guide reminded us that they call the men and women who participated in WWII the "greatest generation," and that FDR was the person who inspired that generation. I guess that is what made being there so impressive.

The Sawkill Waterfall

The Sawkill Creek runs through the Pinchot estate, and the land still belongs to the Pinchot family. There is a decent sized waterfall on Pinchot land that up until about ten years ago the family allowed the public to visit. They have since asked that people refrain from visiting for security and liability reasons. I don't blame them for being concerned.

In the 19th and 20th centuries the people of Milford would use the falls and creek as a swimming hole and a place to recreate. When the Yale school of Forestry held their summer program at Grey Towers the students would swim there nude. This produced a controversy when young, female townspeople went to bathe there and saw all of the yale students naked.

I used to hike to the falls when I was a little girl, before public access had been denied. I hadn't been there since I was about six. Last Monday my coworker Paul took Meg and I to the falls. Here are some photos.

New Banner

I would like to thank Jacob Smiley, artist and graphic designer out of Scranton, PA, for designing the new banner for this blog. You should all check out Jake's work at http://www.jacobsmileyart.blogspot.com/ and at http://jacobsmiley.com/home.html.

A Mixed Multitude: The Struggle for Toleration in Colonial Pennsylvania

Lately I have been reading A Mixed Multitude: The Struggle for Religous Toleration in Colonial Pennsylvania by Sally Schwartz. This 302 page work gives an overview not only of the policies of Wiliam Penn toward religious toleration but also attempts to outline the way ordinary Pennsylvanians dealt with life in a pluralistic society. In the first chapter Schwartz explains that in the 1790 census 61% of the U.S. popuation was English, 9% were German, 8% were Scotish, 6% were Scots-Irish, and and the remainder consisted of even smaller, unidentified groups. In contrast Pennsylvania's population 35% English, 33% German, 11% were Scots-Irish, and 9 % were Scotish. Pennsylvania had a much more pluralistic society than the rest of the U.S. and probably the rest of the colonies before the U.S. gained independence. This gave Pennsylvanians uniqu opportunities to define norms of toleration that other people did not have, but that would largely be put into practice throughout the U.S. when the seperation of church and state was established.

In the first chapter Schwartz warns us not to think about ethnicity in the eighteenth century through our modern understanding of it. It would be a mistake to consider enthic groups in terms of the "minority" and "majority" status that we label ethnic groups today. In colonial Pennsylvania groups were moving in and creating a new society, not trying to blend into an already established one as would happen with the immigratns of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The greatest drawback to Schwartz's book is the lack of a voice for ordinary eighteenth century Pennsylvanians. This is not the fault of the author, however, because written documents by the common sort in Pa in the 18th century are hard to come by, and when people did leave a written record they were often times not expounding on their feelings about ethnic identity and religous toleration. The sources are mostly from government officials, the better sort of people who outlined their feelings on religious life in colonial Pennsylvania, and numerous minister of different denominations who recorded their feelings on the religious chaos.

Overall, however, Schwartz gives a thought provoking account of religious life in colonial Pennsylvania. She shows the numerous shades of gray that existed when it came to religous identity, and how people in Pennsylvania transitioned fluidly from one religious group to the next. She also does well to illuminate the tensions that existed between groups like Anglicans and Quakers, Moravians and Church Germans, and the Catholics verses everyone else. I would recommend Schwartz's book to anyone who wanted to get an overview of the complex religious situation in colonial Pennsylvania.

Dinner at the Fingerbowl

Occasionally at Grey Towers we allow catered dinners for conference groups to take place around the fingerbowl. And occasionally I have to work those dinners. Here are a few pics.



We decorate the fingerbowl with flowers and it always looks really really pretty.


My part in all of this is setting up table that the food will be served on, putting the food out once it arrives from the caterer, and cleaning it all up.

The grad finale of the night is floating a baked alaska on a raft accross the table.


The cake is delicious. These are two pieces stacked on top of each other. The best part about working these dinners is that I get to eat the food that is left over.

The Laurel Hill Cemetery

One of my projects this summer is to write the text for an interpretive sign for the Laurel Hill Cemetery, which was at one time the town cemetery for Milford. The graveyard us located on Grey Towers' property, and houses 123 graves, including several ancestors of Gifford Pinchot. The sign that I am working on illuminates that relationship between these ancestors and Gifford and gives a little information about who they lived, made their money, etc.

I will be working on this for the next few weeks and will give you information on the ancestors of GP as I find it. For right now I will just give you some background on the history and state of the cemetery, and show you some pictures I took of the Pinchots graves.

The Laurel Hill Cemetery was used primarily between 1820 and 1899, although some internments are later or earlier. Some early Milford residents like the Quick family are buried there. Tom Quick, for those of you unfamiliar with the local lore, was a man who vowed revenge after his father was killed by Indians, and ended up slaying a prolific number of them throughout his life. Nice right? In Milford there is even an Inn named after him. Other families include the Cross, Cadoo, and Metz families. The burials are arranged in family plots. Prior to the cleanup efforts that Grey Towers undertook in 2000-2001 the family plots were surrounded by iron fences and gates. There are two distinct pathways in the cemetery, a hearse road, and another access road.

Over the years the cemetery fell into a state of disrepair. I remember hiking to the cemetery as a kid with my dad and sister, and the graves were shaded by a thick canopy of hemlock and white pines. The trees caused a great deal of damage to the gravestones. Limbs and sometimes entire trees fell on stones and destroyed them. Sap, tannin, and the acidic soil that the trees produced broke down the stones and give them a "sugary" appearance today. Moss grew on many of the stones and caused the inscriptions to deteriorate. Grey Towers has since taken down the trees that were not planted in the cemetery in the 19th century, and they generally try to maintain the site.

Here is the Pinchot plot.


All but one of the stones is legible.



Footstones!! Exciting. I think that they merit attention in my sign. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries the grave was concieved of as a bed for the desceased. The headstone and footstone made the grave look like a bed or cradle.


This Cyrile Pinchot (there are several) died when he was only 22. He has a tombstone and an obelisk. I don't know why someone so young would have all that. I want to research him a little further and try to find out why he died. I'm guessing consumption.


Here's a good example of the damage that's been done to the stones over the years.



More to come on my research. I am excited about this project. I hope I can help make this cemetery more accessible to the public, as I remember it when it was completely run down.

The Gardens: More Pictures. This Time They're Not Just Irises

Grey Towers is known for its gardens. In fact lots of people just come to the Mansion to see the gardens. Cornelia was very interested in landscaping and she loved to garden. A coworker of mine's father-in-law was a plumber who worked for the Pinchots in later years and he said that whenever he would come over, Cornelia would be in her garden.

Mountain Laurel. It's the PA state flower, and it is everywhere at Grey Towers. Must of have something to do with GP being Governor.




Climbing Hydrangea.


There are lots of millstones around the property. Cornelia offered to pay anyone who could get a millstone up to Grey Towers five dollars, which during the great depression was a lot.






After the daphodils bloom and die the hortilcultre people tie them up like this. It supposedly keeps more nutrients in the bulbs so you will have more blooms next year.

A Tour of the Pinchot House:More Stuff I took picutres of and Include on My Tours

The tours I give of Grey Towers include three historic rooms and a few gardens and outbuildings that are on the property. I have already walked you through one of Joe's tours, but I was taking pictures yesterday and decided I would show you all some other things. Some of these things I talk about on my tour, and others are just in the house and I usually only talk about them if people ask.

I always start out by going through the front door and taking people into the Great Hall, which was the first room that anyone would have walked into when they came to the mansion. The front door is actually on the side of the house, and it would be on the left hand side of this photo. Stage coaches would have come up the drive and dropped people off right at the front door.



This is the solid oak front door. Originally Richard Morris Hunt, who was the mansion's architect, wanted there to be French Doors on the house, but James decided to put in this humongous door instead.

The Pinchots were big hunters and fishermen. I stress to people that they were conservationists, not preservationists, and thus, they were ok with hunting. As long as you didn't hunt things to extinction.


I then take people into the library. Here is a neat little ladder that they used in it.


Cornelia's really pretty writing desk. She loved to collect things from Asia. I wish I had one of these.


This is a painting by Alexander Cabanel of Gifford, his mom, and sister.


After I take people through the house we go outside. I show them numerous landscape features including the reflecting pool, at the end of which is the Bait Box. This was a playhouse/teenage hang out for Gifford and Cornelia's son Giffy.

Thoughts on Giving Tours

I have been giving tours of the mansion and grounds at Grey Towers now for a few weeks and have been giving a lot of thought to the way I approach tours, and the ways in which I can make people understand the history I am presenting to them. Overall I have been a little bit disapointed with people's impatience, lack of attentiveness, and all out rude behavior on tours. I never gave a tour at Daniel Boone where someone in the group asked me to hurry up, or talked on their cell phone during a tour. These things have happened at Grey Towers.

The first thing I began to wonder was why? Was it the way I was giving a tour, or was it just that the people on the tour were in a rush or had other things on their minds? I think it was a little of both. The tour is supposed to last 50 minutes, but can easily last an hour if some people ask questions. This is just too long of a time to have to try to hold someone's attention. Most people have an attitude of "I'm not in college anymore, why should I listen to a lecture?" The other reasons for visitor's bad behavior is the location of Grey Towers. It's in Milford, the Pocono Mts., and the Delware Water Gap National Recreation Area is right near by. People have other things that they are doing while they are on vacation. They have dinner reservations, canoe trips, and hotels to check into. I think that at Daniel Boone they knew that the site was pretty large and they built more time into their schedules for it. At Grey Towers people think that they'll just poke around the house and the gardens for a few minutes and then be on their way.

So how do I make my tour more interesting for people? How do I hold their attention? I can't shorten my tour because I am not the one who determined how long it had to be in the first place, my boss did. I have experimented with a few things over the past few days with mixed results. I usually give a fairly long introduction (10 min.) outside of the house that fills visitors in on the construction of the house, how Gifford's father made his money, and I give an overvview of GP's life and work as a forester and governor. For a few tours I decided to keep the intro short and give more of that information once we got into the Great Hall (the first room of the house that is included on the tour). I thought that maybe it would keep people from getting too antsy to get inside the house. What I found instead was that people got very anxious to get out of the Great Hall after spending about 15 minutes in it, and they were getting even more impatient, and were less likely to ask questions about things in the room. I also tried to simplify my message. I spelled out my key messages right in the beginning of the tour by saying "these are the two things I want you to come away understanding after the tour today." I think that this helps, but most people understand the themes whether you come out and say it or not. I am also toying with the idea of using photos in the introduction to grab people's attention in the beginning of the tour.

We'll see how these innovations go. If they don't work, I will be convinced that as a nation we have collectively lost our attention spans, and that on our vacations we are in such a hurry to do all of the activities that we've planned that we don't take time to enjoy ourselves.

Biographies of Gifford Pinchot

I am currently reading by Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism by Char Miller. He is a history prof at Trinity University, and a senior fellow of the Pinchot institute. The book is probably the best bio of GP out there, much better than Pinchot's autobiography Breaking New Ground. If you're interested in environmental history you should check it out.

A Blast from the Past: Hunting for Samuel Boone's House

Every now and then I will post some photos from historic sites and other adventures I went on when I didn't have time to blog as much as I do now. Below are photos and some narration from when my friends Ryan, Nat, and I explored the outer limits of the Daniel Boone Homestead last December (it was actually the day before New Years and I was house sitting in Macungie for two weeks remember?). We found the foundation of Samuel Boone's house.
We met up at Daniel Boone and had a happy reunion with old coworkers and animal friends.



We started out on the horse trail because that was the only map that existed of that part of the homestead, and Jim gave us a rough idea of where he thought the foundation was in relation to the horse trails.


It was muddy.


We also got lost a little.


But in general it was fun, fun, fun. Indeed it was idyllic.




And then there was the thorn bushes. We fought our way through a great deal of them. In fact, the foundation was actually located inside of a grove of thorn bushes.


But we made it! The foundation just looked like a pile of rocks. But wouldn't it be cool to do an excavation? I wish I knew more about archeology, I would dig it up myself.



After such an excursion the three of us went home better friends then ever before. I will look back at that experience as one of the happiest moments of my life. It wasn't anything fancy or elaborate, just three friends working together for a common goal, and discovering something really amazing.