School Groups

On my second and third days at Grey Towers I shadowed a few staff members doing programs with groups of second graders. I first watched a seasonal interpreter named Cora give one class a tour of the first floor of the mansion. As soon as the kids got off of the bus I could tell that they were more hyper than most kids that I had dealt with at Daniel Boone. I soon saw, however, that Cora ran quite a tight ship when she gave tours to school groups, and that besides being a little loud, the students were failry well behaved. Each class got a tour of the mansion, as well as a hike on our forestry trail.

At Daniel Boone it was easy to keep kids occupied. Start baking, spinning, or making candles, and you had their attention for the morning. Grey Towers is decidedly less kid friendly. There isn’t anything to touch. You can’t show them how the Pinchots made things like food or clothes because the Pinchots were rich enough to have other people do those things for them, and their kitchen has not been preserved anyway. The Pinchot mansion is full of antiques that we tell everyone up front they cannot touch. A house tour with school kids consists of us telling them about what would have went on in each room of the house, and then walking them through it in an orderly line.

The kids seemed to be quite amazed by the fingerbowl. They couldn’t believe that the Pinchots only used it to pass food. “They never swam in it?” the kids asked, as if they couldn’t see the use of having a pool that no one ever swam in.

We also took the kids on the forestry trail, which is a half mile long path through the woods that is designed to teach people a little about foresty. (I say this with hesitance, if you walked the trail without a guide you’d probably just think it was a normal trail). Lee, who guided the kids through this trail, was very good at teaching them about forestry, and about basic wildlife behavior. He started out by talking to the kids about how they got their food, and how animals get theirs. As we went along the path he pointed out things animals ate. Further along the trail he showed us how to take a core sample from a tree to count the rings and determine its age, and he let all of the kids turn the tool he used to bore into the tree. He also talked to the kids about the Yale Forestry Summer School which Pinchot hosted at Grey Towers for a few years.

The Farmhouse

I was nervous when I drove to Grey Towers on Monday morning. Even though I had worked in the field of public history before and knew what to expect (somewhat) from this job, the idea of living on site all summer made me a bit apprehensive. When I got to Grey Towers and Lori McKean, my boss, showed me around, I immediately felt better. Below are some photos I snapped that first day when Lori brought me to the farmhouse, which is where I will be living for the rest of the summer.

In the front yard there is this sweet creek, and a picnic table.

The porch is nice to sit and read on when the weather is warm.

Inside the farmhouse is somewhat modern. There is no internet access or cable television, but that just means that I will have lots of time to read, right? I have not begun to explore the area outside of the farmhouse very much, but it seems like there are lots of places to walk, bike, and there are a few hiking trails on Grey Towers’ property.

This Summer

I have not written in a while because I was just too darn busy with life, finishing up school (I graduated from Kutztown University this May with a BA in history) and planning for the future (I am starting an MA program at the University of Vermont this fall). This summer I am starting work at Grey Towers National Historic Site, which is administered by the National Forestry Service, as a seasonal interpretive intern. It's pretty much the same thing I did at Boone. Grey Towers was the summer home of Gifford Pinchot, the father of the forestry movement in the United States, and a Governor of Pennsylvania. I will not bore you with more details about Pinchot, the times he was living in, or the site, because in the coming weeks you will learn all you need to know.

So this summer's mission is similar to last summer's. I want to better understand the ways that history is presented to the public. I also am curious about how the public interacts with history. As you all probably know, the state of Pennsylvania is shutting down six historic sites this summer in order to cut costs. Everyone keeps saying that this is a bad thing, but why? What do historic sites provide to the American Public. My own personal view on this is that they educate people about history. For many people historic sites are one of the few ways they expand their knowledge about history after they graduate from high school. This summer I want to explore this topic and see what else historic sites do.

The Berks County Courthouse

I made a spur of the moment trip to the Berks County Court House today. I was originally thinking about going back to the Genealogical Society to look at estate inventories and wills. When I called however, the woman said I'd need to go to the court house for the actuall wills.

Not knowing what to expect I got in my car and drove to Reading once again. I am really getting good at navigating around in that city. (NOT!). Actually I found the Courthouse without too much trouble. When I got to the research room where they keep all of the old wills a very nice woman helped me locate the people's wills I needed. She dug out every Boone I asked for and William Bird. Mark Bird's will was absent. I need to look into this because I have no idea why that would be unless he died outside of Berks county.

This is where it got exciting. Inside of these files were the ORIGINAL wills and estate inventories. not photocopies. The real thing. I touched them all. I spent fourteen dollars on photocopies today, and I was only able to get through the Boones, not any other residents of the Oley Valley that I have been meaning to look into like Lesher or Jaeger.

I found all of the documents to be very helpful. The estate inventories will allow me to discuss the economic situation of the Boones in relation to other members of the Oley Valley. There were also lists of the people that the deceased were in debt to. These will help me discuss relations between ethnic groups in the Oley Valley.

The Berks County Genealogical Society

The Berks County Genealogical Society saved my life. Well, maybe that is an overstatement, but it certainly saved my honors thesis. I went there a week and a half ago, after I had spent so much time (and gas) getting to the David Library in a completely fruitless attempt at locating some primary sources. I went to the BCGS on some advice from its president, who I happened to run into while I was researching. I discovered a strange, convoluted, and yet very helpful collection called the Pennsylvania Archives while I was there. Since my visit, I have been able to narrow my topic and finally get the first (actually second, but first acceptable) ten pages written out.

I walked into the Heritage Center Library a day or two after my somewhat failed visit to the David Library feeling a little hopeless. I had eight or ten relatively crappy pages of my honors thesis written. I was torn between several different theses that I liked, but that I was not sure were viable. I was at the HC library simply to scan over a few church records I missed for Exeter Qauker names. Volunteering that day was a man I had never seen before. This was unusual because I thought I knew all of the Library volunteers and staff, and I was prepared for an afternoon with the Glicks, a married couple who fill in for the main librarian some weekdays. This was an older fellow who, I thought, spoke with a slight Pennsylvania German accent. Since I was the only person in the tiny library, he asked me if I needed any help. I explained my project to him and immediately began leaving through some bound church records. I tried to ignore him at first, honestly, because I thought that there was no way he could help me. Then he started asking me about the sources I was using. I told him about the trouble I'd had so far. "Why don't you go down to the Berks COunty Genealogical Society?" He asked. "We have a lot more that was the HC has." "Do you have tax records?" I asked. "What about a map of the townships and who owned what land?" "Or more church records? Earliers ones?" "We have a lot more than what is here," he reiterated "I'm the president of the BCGS."

So the next day had me driving to Reading. The BCGS is located in Goggleworks, which is a big building full of galleries, studios, dance studios, and other cultural organizations. Don't ask me why or how it got there, it just is. Oh, and they have a nice gift shop, with pretty jewlery that I almost spent too much money on that day, but I digress. As soon as I go into the BCGS I was immediately aware that I was the youngest person in the room by a good forty years. Not that I was surprised by this, in fact I was expecting it. I have become completely used to being surrounded by people who are much older than me; it comes with the territory of being a historian and working in the public history feild. A very bent old man is sitting behind a desk having a conversation about "rag heads" with a woman sitting accross the room. The desk is on its own in the front of the room and it looks pretty official. He's the one I'm going to have to talk to first. "what have I gotten myself into?" I think.

I tell the man that I am looking for tax lists for certain townships and he sets me up on the microfilm. It's s;low going but somewhat helpful. He's attentive towards me and constantly asks me how I'm doing. FInally I tell him I am researching the boones. "The Boones?" he says. I knew I should have probably said something earlier.

He takes me back to the stacks and starts shuffling through books. I can hardly understand him because everything comes out in a sort of stream of consciosuness. He leaves me to string the disjointed phrases together to for a complete thought. A woman with long grey hair and a sharp, creased face walks over to us. By now I have been able to deduce that she works here too. She hands me a volume of the Pennsylvania Archives. "This is the volume you want," she says, "I've just researched with this series so much that I know where certain things are by now."

For those of you not aware, this woman's experitise with the Pennsylvania ARchives is no mean feat. These things are divided by series, volume, with no rhyme or reason to the order that documents were edited in. It's a mess that I had always avioded using. Inside this particular volume though were tax lists from the years and townships that I needed. And the really good part? The PA Archives are in any library. I didn't really even need to drive to Reading to read them.

So to make a much too long story short (how do I always end up writing so much?) I found a lot of helpful material at the BCGS. And what's more, because of that material I was convinced that I could change my topic a little. I am now just focusing on the Boones and how they were becoming assimilated into an Anglican and GErman elite and showed their assimilation by fighting in the Revolution. This is a lot more manageable becuase I don't have to trace the genealogy of ten different families in order to track ethnic assimilation. I can just focus on the Boones.

I will write more about this new topic later on. For now just know that I have ten pages written already that I am happy with.

The David Library

This is where I was last Wednesday. The David Library in Washington Crossing PA. I went there to do research for my honors thesis which is about Quakers in the American Revolution. The David Library has a really helpful microfilm collection of pension applications made by Rev. War vets and their widows years after they had served. It wasn't until the 1810s that Congress passed the first bill that allowed Revolutionary War Veterans to collect pensions. Once it was passed the veterans who were still alive had to apply by describing their experience and answering a series of questions. Their answers are extremely revealing about life in Colonial and early America, and they give a fascinating account of the life of continental soldiers.

I was looking for a few specific Quakers from the Exeter Monthly Meeting who I knew fought in the Revolution. I was able to get a hold of a paper index before I made the two hour drive to the library. I was at the disadvantage of looking for men with names like John Hughes, John Boone, etc. Soooooo common. And the index revealed that there were many Higheses and Boones who applied for pensions in Pennsylvania.

Unfortuntaley when I got to the library I realized that it would be little help. None of the men whose applications I read seemed to be the Exeter Quakers I was looking for. One John Boone was related to the John Boone I needed. That was as close as I got. Researching in History is like being a detective. Sometimes, by the most curious serendipity you will find some piece of evidence that changes the way you see everything, or bolsters your argument and helps you immensly. A lot of other times you do a lot of work hunting for things that were never there to being with.

I'm Back

My internship ended August 8th and I ran out of steam the last few weeks with my blog. I've decided to start blogging again for a couple of reasons. First of all I feel like the things I learned at Daniel Boone have not just stopped because the internship is over, they will contunue to affect me, probably forever. Secondly, I feel like I still have a lot to say about history, and blogging gives me an outlet. Thirdly, blogging helps me articulate thoughts and get them out in the open, so that they can develop into ideas for papers, projects, etc. And finally, I'm going to keep blogging because I am working on two rather exciting projects that I would like to document, recieve feedback on, and describe online.

One thing to keep in mind about all this is that I am now back at school. I don't have the time to write voluminous entries like I did over the summer. Nor do I have time to blog everyday. However, I will still try to make time for it, and update the blog with some amount of regularity.

Now onto those projects I mentioned. The first is my honors thesis. It's supposedly the seminal project of my education . I actually got the idea for it from working at Daniel Boone. I am writing about participation in the American Revolution by Quakers who belonged to the Exeter Monthly Meeting. I am trying to make the connection between Quakers who had a lot of contact with other ethnic groups, and those who fought in the War. I think that the Quakers who were more accustomed to dealing with people who did not adhere to thethey Quaker creed were probably more likely to fight. I am trying to prove this "ethnic mingling" if you will, by looking at marriage patterns, property ownership, god parentage, partnerships, and other legal relationships between people of different ethnicities.

The other project has to do with ethnicity as well. This one I am very excited about . I am writing a paper about the Pennsylvania Germans during WWI. I am trying to prove that the reason the Pennsylvania German Society (do I always get inspired by old employers?) halted meetings during the war years was because it was trying to distance itself from the German immigratns of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this paper, I am exploring the Pennsylvania Germans' sense of ethnic identity, the ideas they had that made them feel separate from other German groups, and those that made them feel that they were being American in their own way.

I will elucidate more on both these topics later on. You will hear about my sources, the process I use to write and edit, as well as get a more detailed sense of what each paper is about.