Phily Trip Day 14 – Home and Wrap-up comments

June 14, 2008

Colorado beckons, so it’s time to head ‘em up, move ‘em out. Here’s the University of Pennsylvania dormitory where I called home for the past two weeks.

We said goodbye and thank you to our favorite bus driver, Bob. We left him with two books, one of which was The Gettysburg Gospel authographed by Gabor Boritt.

Then we arrived with smiling faces at the airport four hours before our plane was scheduled to leave…and we waited in a serpentine line for two hours before we could check in.

Then we sat on the plane for three hours on the runway because a thunderstorm hovering over Philadelphia grounded all flights. We took off within minutes of our expected arrival time in Denver. After a five hour drive from the airport, I arrived home at 5:15 a.m. Sunday morning.

June 19, 2008

It’s been a few days now and I’m finally rested and ready to reflect on my Philadelphia excursion experiences. I came into teaching junior high and high school history through the back door, so to speak, and not via a degree in history. I have a strong interest in history and I’ve taught history for two years. I’m explaining this because the information I came away with from this experience has filled in many gaps in my basic knowledge-base of early American history. I understand so much more now than I did June 1. I know several of the activities and lectures repeated some of the same information, but for me, much of it was new and I appreciated hearing it more than once. An example is all the stories I heard about Benjamin Franklin. I’m going to read these books about Franklin:

I also purchased a Discovery Channel dvd entitled: Rediscovering America: The Real Ben Franklin, to use in my classroom.

I have many new resources from which to pull as I make lesson plans. I have books to read to deepen my understanding of several topics, such as Alexander Hamilton, A Life by Willard Sterne Randall. I knew who Hamilton was on a superficial level, but as a result of the Philadelphia history experience, I want to know more. His life is fascinating to me.

I have American history quiz cards to use with my students in those few minutes at the end of class when a lesson doesn’t quite fill the hour. I have little replicas of the Liberty Bell to give to the students whom I bribed at the end of the school year that if they’d blog with me while I was in Philadelphia, I’d put their names in a drawing.

I have notes and pictures to remind me of what I saw and where I went. My favorite was Gettysburg, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy or value every single activity. Independence Hall, Franklin Institute (especially the Real Pirates exhibit), Valley Forge, Crossing the Delaware, Monmouth Battlefield, Carol Berkin…each and every activity was invaluable to me.

Signer’s Hall at the National Constitution Center was eerily realistic. It seemed that some of the bronze statues were almost life-like in the animation of their expressions and eyes. 

Actually walking the battlefields at Valley Forge, Monmouth, and Princeton, and listening to the park rangers tell the stories of the battles, helped me better understand and internalize the struggle our founding fathers faced as they fought for America’s independence from Britain. One of the comments that sticks in my mind happened in the auditorium at Washington’s Crossing. The famous picture of Washington in the Durham boat crossing the Delware was across the stage and the tour guide said: This painting is meant to be inspirational, not historical.  

I know about Joseph Plumb Martin now and I’m going to use the diary he wrote about his experiences as a Revolutionary War soldier as a whole-class reading activity.

I’m enamored with the American artist Thomas Eakins as a result of my time in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I purchased this book

to learn more about him. I’m going to work in as much information about American artists into my history classes as time allows. Students aren’t exposed to the artistic aspect of history as much as they should be.

To actually stand on Little Round Top at Gettysburg and to see where Pickett made his fateful charge…I don’t know how to explain the emotions it stirred in me.

I felt much the same way when I visited the Alamo. Humbled. Tearful. Inspired. Thankful. The magnitude of what occurred at Gettysburg is truly awe inspiring.

These are two books of the books I purchased at Gettysburg:

  

Most importantly, I’ve expanded my network of colleagues who teach history. I have already made plans with Liz and Delphine to visit them and see what they do in their classrooms in order to better teach history to my own students.

The first picture is Delphine on a mission to take pictures at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. Every time I tried to snap a picture of her, I seemed to always get the back of her head. The next one is the three of us, Del, Liz, and Debra at the Gettysburg Monument.

 

A project I’m going to work on this summer is to put all the maps I purchased under some sort of document case or frame. I’m going to display the maps in my classroom in a simulated museum viewing fashion to give my students a sense of what it’s like to see the original documents in a museum. This is the sort of document case I’m thinking of.

I could go on ad infinitum, but I’ll stop here.

I want to thank Matt, Jonathan, and Scott for including me in the Philadelphia excursion and for organizing all the activities, explorations, and lectures. It was great and I truly appreciated all their work.

Until later…

debra

 

Phily Trip Day 13 – Gettysburg

June 13, 2008

Gettysburg.

July 1-3, 1865.

Single bloodiest battle of the American Civil War.

Considered the turning point in the war.

North led by the Army of the Potomac and George Meade.

South commanded by Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia.

Same two armies met in May 1863 at Chancellorsville.

After spending only an afternoon on the battlefield and in the museum, how does one sum up in a few paragraphs the magnitude of what happened over the course of three days of fighting at Gettysburg?

Perhaps this quote by Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine says what I cannot.

The Gettysburg National Military Park

covers nearly 6,000 acres and hosts a plethora of monuments and statues dedicated to both the Northern and Southern soldiers who fought there. I’m only including a few museum pictures, landscape scenes, statues, and monuments that were particularly moving to me.  There are only two Confederate monuments inside the areas of battle held by the Union. One commemorates Lewis A. Armistead’s farthest advance on July 3.

  

These three pictures are Confederate General George S. Pickett, his rallying cry,  and the battlefield where his entire division was killed. Pickett would never recover emotionally from the devastation to his division. The fourth picture is a portion of the rock wall such as Lewis Armistead would have climbed over as he led his men in the charge that would take his life.

 

    

Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the realization of his decision to stay and fight.

Lee relied on General James Longstreet (below) for advice, but Lee didn’t heed Longstreet’s warning to attack from the right of the battlefield and it proved to be a poor decision on Lee’s part.

   

  

 

Carrying the flag was an honorable and dangerous position, as this plaque explains.

                                                           

 

 

 

 

 

This is information about the colored troops.

    

Little Round Top – Chamberlain was ordered to hold the hill to the last. If he failed, it was likely the Confederates would overtake the battlefield and the day. Probably the battle, and possibly the war, would be lost to the South. Chamberlain was the end of the line; the flank. He couldn’t withdraw or retreat. The 20th Maine fought until their ammunition (60 rounds per man) was exhausted. With nothing left to lose nor other alternative, Chamberlain had his men fit their weapons with bayonets and they made an unprecedented charge down the rocky slope into Confederate fire. The 20th Maine held Little Round Top against all odds.

 

  

 Me on Little Round Top

To use a cliche, it was a dream come true to stand on the rocks at Little Round Top and gaze over the battlefield where the 20th Maine made what could easily have turned out to be a hopeless last stand.  I regret not being able to spend more time there.

Devil’s Den is in the distance along the road at the bottom of the picture. It was the site of massive deaths. The next is a museum picture of Devil’s Den followed by a plaque with information.

     

 

 North Carolina statue with monument.

     

Women and the war

This is Matilda “Tillie” Pierce (1848-1914). She left her home on Baltimore Street July 1,1863 to accompany her neighbors to the Jacob Weikert farm several miles south of town. She was unaware that the second day’s fighting would rage nearby at Little Round Top. Although only 15, she assisted with the wounded soldiers over the next several days including Brigadeer General Stephen Weed and Colonel William Colvill. In 1888, Tillie Pierce Alleman published one of the most comprehensive narratives of civilian experiences during the Battle of Gettysburg entitled At Gettysburg: Or What a Girl Saw and Heard at the Battle.

The aftermath…

After the battle, the Army of the Potomac and the citizens of Gettysburg were left with appalling burdens. The battlefield was strewn with over 7,000 dead men and the houses, farms, churches, and public buildings were struggling to deal with 30,000 wounded men. The stench from the dead soldiers and from the thousands of animal carcasses was overwhelming. To the east of town, a massive tent city was erected to attempt medical care for the soldiers, which was named Camp Letterman after Jonathan Letterman, chief surgeon of the Army of the Potomac. Contracts were let with entrepreneurs to bury men and animals and the majority were buried near where they fell. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Battlefield)

This is a “pig low-cow high” fence.

This is Gabor Boritt, the author of The Gettysburg Gospel, one of the books I read in preparation of this trip to Philadelphia. He invited us to his home and talked for about 30 minutes about Abraham Lincoln writing the Gettysburg Address.

This is the house where Lincoln stayed overnight and wrote the Address. It’s currently undergoing renovations.

I’m including pictures of the site where President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. It is altogether fitting and proper that I do this. The Gettysburg Address monument is in this cemetery.

This is the marker for the unknown dead.

This monument marks the general area where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. The smaller monument has the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln’s handwriting.

         

 

   

Delphine, Liz, and Debra

Visting Gettysburg was a satisfying ending to the Philadelphia excursion. I’ll use the pictures of Gettysburg in my class room in a power point with more elaboration than I’ve included in this blog. I like to have my students watch the movie Gettysburg and now I can give it a more personal touch.

I found this website when I was searching for a list of the monuments and statues at Gettysburg. Click here: Virtual Gettysburg: locate monuments.

Tomorrow…home.

debra 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phily Trip Day 12 – Winterthur – du Pont Estate

June 12, 2008

Since the trip today was to Delaware, here’s a trivia question: Why is Delaware nicknamed the Constitution State? (answer at the end)

It was a beautiful day in the Wilmington, Delaware area where we traveled to tour the du Pont Estate of Winterthur (pronounced: Winter-tour). The du Pont mansion is now a museum of 19th century material culture. The du Pont fortune originated with gunpowder. The following paragraph is a brief summary.

DuPont was founded in 1802 by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, using capital raised in France and gunpowder machinery imported from France. The company was started at the Eleutherian Mills, on the Brandywine Creek, near Wilmington, Delaware, USA two years after he and his family left France to escape the French Revolution. It began as a manufacturer of gunpowder, as du Pont had noticed that the industry in North America was lagging behind Europe and saw a market for it. The company grew quickly, and by the mid nineteenth century had become the largest supplier of gunpowder to the United States military, supplying as much as half of the powder used by the Union Army during the American Civil War. The Eleutherian Mills site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and is now a museum covering this history that may be visited today. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont)

Winterthur was most recently the home of Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969). The mansion has over 170 rooms and the gardens cover about 60 acres.

We went on guided tours inside the mansion. These are a few pictures of the antiques on display. Each room in the mansion is designed as it was originally. This picture is a set of china.

Canopy beds were a common style and quite functional rather than simply decorative. Obviously, the curtains could be pulled around the bedposts for privacy, but also to keep mosquitoes away from the sleepers. The purpose of the canopy was to catch the bugs that often fell from the ceiling.

 

These dishes once belonged to George and Martha Washington.

 

 

This is an ice chest. It’s certainly fancier than the styrofoam one I have.

 

This is a wall mural.

This is a formal dining room.

 

Click on this link for a short history of Winterthur. If you clicked and read the information, you know that there is an educational component to the estate called “The Touch-It Room”. We spent time there experiencing a simulated general store and playing with toys of years gone by.

Before we toured the gardens by tram, then the mansion,  we attended a lecture about the consumer revolution and market revolution presented by Cathy Matson. She described the components of a consumer revolution beginning with the history in North America. It came about in the 18th century (roughly 1740s and 1750s) with a noticable spike in production and consumption of goods in homes and shops. Economic exchange doubled and quickly quadrupled from England to America.

Ms. Matson showed an entertaining and informative power point of historic Philadelphia. Many of the pictures were of places I’ve visited during this excursion and I liked seeing the original buildings or streets as they were in the 1700s in comparison to what they look like now. Ms. Matson mentioned that fairly well-to-do people lived in Elfreth’s Alley. I found that interesting since I’d just visited the alley.

The consumer revolution transformed the way people did work. It impacted the hours they worked by shortening them, it influenced the goods they used, and their relationship swith masters or owners. The plow came along in 1735 and changed farming forever. Sawmills grew fast. Stones became standard for grinding in grist mills. A sign of the consumer revolution was that people could purchase already made goods because money was freer and they didn’t have to make so many of their necessities. An example was candles. It was during this time that “non-nutritive” stimulants began popping up in shops dedicated to their consumption. These would have been tea shops, coffee shops, candy shops, tobacco shops, liquor establishments, and so on. Non-nutritives had to be sold to the consumer as an idea in order to get people to purchase them and as soon as sugar was added to make foods taste better, sugar became a valuable consumer commodity. Honey, molasses, and dried fruits, especially raisins and currants, were already part of the culture, but refined sugar displaced the natural sugars as food sweetners.

The legacy of the consumer revolution is refined white sugar. Another note on the concept of a coffee house is that the demand for coffee preceded the ability to get it from the field to the consumer. Coffee houses were meeting houses where merchants and consumers got together. The latest fashions showed up there and appearances were important. Men went to coffee houses to show off. The London Coffee House in Philadelphia in 1754 often had slave auctions just outside its doors. The genteel, authorities, and the richest of Philadelphia frequented this establishment. Civil courts were held here; people received the latest news here. Loitering was commonplace. British soldiers set up headquarters in the London Coffee House during the American Revolution and the Sons of Liberty met there up to the Revolution.

 (http://www.explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=36)

We also spent time in the library archives area of Winththur and were able to view, and touch, several artifacts dating back as early 1620. There were books, doll clothes, maps, scrapbooks, and many other historic items. Winterthur has a research library that is widely respected and frequented.

Our group was fortunate to each receive Cathy Matson’s power point presentation about the consumer and market revolutions. The information is incredible. I will have no trouble using every bit of it with my students. I appreciate her generosity in sharing it with us.

That’s all for today. The answer to the trivia question is: Delaware is nicknamed the Constitution State because it was the first state to sign the Constitution.

Day 13 is Gettysburg. I’ve been looking forward to this experience for months, especially the site of Little Round Top and Pickett’s Charge.

Until tomorrow…

debra

 

Phily Trip Day 11 – Lectures and self-guided exploration

June 11, 2008

Greetings everyone. Yes, some may call me a slacker because I have three days still to blog, but I prefer to think of it as building the reader’s anticipation and suspense.

I spent the morning of Day 11 attending two lectures. The first with Professor David Waldstreicher and the second with Robert Engs. The lectures were held on the University of Pennsylvania campus in this building.

Benjamin Franklin sits in front of this building.

And this sculpture is in front of him. Apparently, he’s popped a button.

Back to the lectures…Professor Waldstreicher spoke about his book, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution.  Franklin was a man who envisioned the future and tried to prepare for it. He was a leader; he formed organizations; he was a statesman; he was a politician. Mostly, he was a Renaissance man. He was ahead of his time. Franklin was amazing in every facet of his life and especially that he molded all these personal attributes into one cohesive persona. In his later life, he added abolitionist to his many interests and causes.

For me, the most interesting part of Franklin’s life was that he was a runaway indentured servant (carpentry) who fled a cruel master and ended up in Philadelphia at age 15. Eventually, he married Deborah Reed, became involved in printing his own newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, prospered financially, and was able to retire around the age of 40.

Professor Waldstreicher’s posed this question. How did Benjamin Franklin become free? His answer is thought-provoking. Franklin became free out of his own ingenuity, the distance between his place of servitude and Philadelphia, trickery on his own behalf, and lack of what we now call extradition of fugitives.  Professor Waldstreicher left me with another point to contemplate. Indentured servitude is the theft of a person’s labor. I’m still mulling over the ramifications of that statement.

I could go on and on about Franklin’s life, but in addition to Professor Waldstreicher’s book, these two books, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon Wood and Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Issacson, would obviously be better sources of information for further reading.

Robert Engs said his lecture is called Banned from Gettysburg because of the controversial material of the Great American Slave Rebellion because the subject matter doesn’t show up in history texts. His main points were these:

*Slaves were denied the right to write their own history.

*The South called the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression.

*It is a myth that President Lincoln freed the slaves. They freed themselves through cooperation with the North, participation as soldiers, and noncooperation with the South.

Professor Engs explained there the four questions that whites were preoccupied with during the Civil War.

1. Would blacks rebell?

2. Do blacks want freedom?

3. Will blacks fight for their freedom?

4. Will blacks know what to do with freedom when/if they get it?

These are his answers.

Answer #1. Slave insurrection wasn’t a viable worry because blacks weren’t fools nor were they suicidal. They knew what would happen. They were well aware the war was, in part, about their freedom. They knew that to rebell on their own was futile and they bided their time, but desertion and noncooperation helped bring the South down through passive resistance. They also aided the northern wounded and those that make it to the northern states provided intelligence information. If there was rebellion on their parts, it was a silent rebellion. 

Answer #2. This question implies that slaves were a subhuman species who couldn’t think. Professor Engs said, “Of course they wanted freedom. So long as they could obtain it without losing their lives.” Whenever northern troops were close enough, slaves deserted by the droves. However, the downside of this was sometimes the escaped slaves were treated worse by the north than by the southern plantation owners. Often times in the Union camps, they were little more than contraband and not considered freemen. Quartermasters tended to rerout the supplies and food allocations for runaway blacks (refugees) rather than give it to them.

Answer #3. Blacks learned to survive. They worked for officers for money and also went out to work land on their own. There were 400,000+ slave/laborers and 200,000+ served in the military. This means that that same number of northern white men would have been needed to continue fighting and these men didn’t exist. So blacks helped move the North to victory by sheer numbers. In essence, blacks were prepared to fight for their own freedom. The white South was furious over the North using black troops and even some northern newspapers said it was better to lose the war than to use blacks to help win it. The South didn’t use black soldiers until the ending days of the war and this had been a practice of the North for two years. Freedom was offered in exchange for service. Blacks served mostly in the navy. Lincoln approved black soldiers, not bewcause he wanted to, but because he couldn’t win without them. Black soldiers were often in as much danger from Union whites as Confederate whites. There were even instances where northern white soldiers actually fired upon the black soldiers in their regiments.

Professor Engs mentioned that the movie Glory was a fairly well-done depictment of the 54th Massachusetts black regiment, although it has its issues in showing the black soldiers as mostly uneducated, which is incorrect, and it was overdone in Robert Shaw’s portrayal as the hero. It was the first black regiment to fight and, Shaw, the commander was a white Boston aristocrat. This group was renouned for its refusal to accept wages that were unequal to white soldiers.

Answer #4. Blacks knew clearly what they wanted in freedom: rights, physical freedom, privledges of whites, political freedom, and education. Professor Engs said they wanted four houses: farm, court, church, and school.

It should be noted that the Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure without Constitutional validity and it was the 13th Amendment that ultimately freed the slaves.

Both lectures prompted me to want to research farther into the topics.

Here’s a bronze of Benjamin Franklin on the university campus.

Following the lectures, I spent the afternoon exploring several places of historic interest.

I mailed postcards home from the Benjamin Franklin post office. The cancellation mark reads:  B Free Franklin.  

There is a small postal museum upstairs. Since I have a particular fondness for the American Old West, here’s the display of the Pony Express.

 The next pictures are close-ups of the display.                        

 

This is Elfreth’s Alley. It is the longest continuously inhabited street in America.

                    

    

             

I didn’t actually make it all the way to Penn’s Landing, but this is the statue near the entrance. 

The following information is an excerpt from: A SHORT HISTORY OF PENN’S LANDING ( http://www.ushistory.org/tour/tour_landing.htm )

William Penn first sailed up the Delaware River in the fall of 1682 aboard the ship Welcome, an aptly named vessel, for in Penn’s progressive vision of his colony, all religions would be welcome to pray as they pleased. Penn arrived in Philadelphia by barge from the downriver town of Chester where the Welcome had moored. He alit near a tidewater basin called the Dock fed by a creek of the same name. At the time of Penn’s arrival, the area was inhabited, though sparsely, by some landowners in his “holy experiment,” as well as by Swedes, Dutch, and Indians. Many of these locals gathered to welcome Penn near the Blue Anchor Tavern, an inn being built along Dock Creek.

Nineteenth-century historian John Fanning Watson, author of the nonpareil “Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania,” believed that the landing of Penn in Philadelphia rivaled the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in importance and should have been similarly canonized. Writing in 1842, a time when the Penn’s Landing area was a web of wharves and commerce, he rhapsodized fancifully about what Penn might have seen in 1682: “the creek adorned with every grace of shrubbery and foliage, and beyond it…a few of the natives’ wigwams, intermixed among the shadowy trees.”

Penn himself, mindful of the salubrious effect of greenery and open space within a city, had intended to have a tree-lined promenade planted along the area today named for him. Economics dictated otherwise.

Another place I visited was the Christ Church cemetery where Benjamin Franklin is buried.

     

   

These are the graves of Benjamin and his wife Deborah. There’s a tradition to throw pennies on Franklin’s grave. Heads up: long and prosperous life. Tails up: you’ll die within the year. I refrained from tossing a penny. I decided to continue living the wildly adventurous and unpredictable life to which I’ve grown accustomed and blatantly mock fate.

While walking through this cemetery, I also came across the Powell family graves. You might remember the Powells from my haunted house tour a few days ago. 

 Carpenter’s Hall was another stop. 

Carpenter’s Hall had just been completed in September of 1774 when it hosted the First Continental Congress which was meeting to oppose British rule. Franklin hired the master architect, Robert Smith, of the Carpenter’s Company. The company had been founded in 1724. The carpenters group became influential and the center of Philadelphia politics. It was also the headquarters of the First Bank of the United States in 1791. The building itself is in the form of a Greek cross with Palladian windown on the second story. Inside there is a display of early carpentry tools and a display of eight Windsor chairs that were used by members of the First Continental Congress. 

      

 I also browsed through the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. I have a lot of pictures, but the policy for taking pictures inside the museum was they couldn’t be published.

      

 Click on this link – What would Indiana Jones think? – for a little taste of one of the museum’s exhibits.

 Now, how could I use any of this information in my classroom? Let me count the ways…I could have students explore what their history text doesn’t tell about Benjamin Franklin’s life and how the slaves viewed the war and their ultimate role in winning their own freedom. We could study the history of the postal service beginning with Franklin’s post office. I sent postcards home from the Franklin post office so I’d have a real example (primary source) of the B Free Franklin cancellation stamp for the students to see. We could investigate the Pony Express and Carpenter’s Hall and the critical role the Carpenter Company played in the early days of America’s independence. Delving into William Penn’s life and the role he played in Philadelphia’s history could be another activity.

Day 12…off to Winterthur in Delaware.

Until later.

debra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phily Trip Day 10 – American Philosophical Society and Atwater Kent Museum

June 10, 2008

Greetings,

This morning I toured the American Philosophical Society (APS) building and the Benjamin Franklin Library Hall. Pictures weren’t allowed in the APS building.

The following is quoted directly from the APS website because it gives a succinct description of its founding and purpose.

“The first drudgery of settling new colonies is now pretty well over,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1743, “and there are many in every province in circumstances that set them at ease, and afford leisure to cultivate the finer arts, and improve the common stock of knowledge.” The scholarly society he advocated became a reality that year. By 1769 international acclaim for its accomplishments assured its permanence. Franklin’s influence and the needs of American settlements led the Society in its early days to pursue equally “all philosophical Experiments that let Light into the Nature of Things, tend to increase the Power of Man over Matter, and multiply the Conveniencies or Pleasures of Life.” Early members included doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and merchants interested in science, and also many learned artisans and tradesmen like Franklin. Many founders of the republic were members: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, James Madison, and John Marshall; as were many distinguished foreigners: Lafayette, von Steuben, Kosciusko.” (http://www.amphilsoc.org/about/)

The focus of the information on display in the APS building was entitled: Undaunted, Explorers of the American Philosophical Society, 1760-2007. The five explorers featured were: David Rittenhouse, John James Audobon, TItian Ramsay Peale Elisha Kent Kane, and Ruth Patrick.

Of the many items on display, I found the surveying tools and an original map of the Mason-Dixon Line survey interesting.  Rittenhouse actually completed the Mason-Dixon Line survey.

A visit to the APS Library Hall across the street followed. This is Franklin’s library.

This library has the only document with the signatures of the first four presidents. The document was for funding the Lewis and Clark expedition. Our guide said Washington put up $100, which was apparently a substantial amount.

                  

This library is a history of science repository and it is the largest holder of Darwin materials outside of England. Franklin’s books are here also.

 

This is a picture of one of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence.

I spent the afternoon at the Atwater Kent Museum. In the 1830s, it was a rental hall and the site of anti-slavery meetings. Frederick Douglas recruited here.

 

This picture has a heart-rending story. There was an earthquake in Port Royal, Jamaica June 7, 1692. Houses were sinking, people were literally up to their necks in water. The father in a slave family probably handed this silver bowl through a window to rescuers. Inside the bowl was his baby girl. The child lived and somehow it was figured out to take the girl to Philadelphia because of the Norris family crest engravings on the bowl. The Norris’ were somehow connected with the slave family in Jamaica.

 

 These shackles were used to subdue slaves.

 

Anti-slavery speakers carried shackles with them to illustrate the inhumanity of slavery. Actually seeing shackles was a powerful weapon the speakers used to excite the crowds to the abolitionist cause. The Anti-slavery Declaration was printed on silk and read in Philadelphia. The silk represented the growing coalition of using Free Trade Products.

If I were to use any of this information with my students, I would incorporate the story about the silver bowl and the baby girl, and the shackles,as visual representations to illustrate that slaves were people, not commodities. These people had families. They had hope and dreams. I’d also delve farther into Frederick Douglas’ abolitionist efforts and what he stood for. Students like to hear about Benjamin Franklin and I could also go into his abolitionist activities.

That’s all for today. Tomorrow morning I’ll be listening to two lectures. One about Benjamin Franklin and the other about slavery and black participation in the Civil War.

Until then…

debra

 

Phily Trip Day 9 – Amish culture – Amish country

June 9, 2008

We drove to the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area today to experience a little of the Amish, Mennonite,  and Amish-Mennonite cultures. This is one topic on this excursion for which I have some first-hand experience from the years I lived in Ohio not too far from Geauga County where there is a large Amish community around Middlefield.

The countryside was beautiful and serene. It was easy to tell the difference between the Amish and the “English” houses. Amish houses do not have telephone or electric lines running to them; they have a long clothes line system strung out through the yards; there are green shades in the windows; and no automobiles. The children go barefoot just as soon as the weather is warm enough. Mennonite families will have vehicles and electricity.

These two pictures are the buggies the Amish use for transportation and the harness room in a barn at a farm where we stopped to look around.

I couldn’t find a date on the age of this clock. It is double-faced, but not functional. It was about 11 a.m. when I took the picture.

We stopped in a town called Intercourse for lunch, sightseeing, and tourist shopping in Kettle Village. I tried a local dessert called Shoo Fly Pie.  Click here for history and a recipe.

Our tour guide was a delightful lady named Ada Fisher. She was about ninety years old, still driving, and spry as could be. She was Amish-Mennonite, but had been raised Amish. She and her husband left the strict Amish faith and were consequently excommunicated and shunned. The Amish faith is built around two concepts: community and unity. They don’t own vehicles, but they will ride in them. They don’t use electricity, but they will use gas-powered machines in some cases. They believe machines separate people from each other rather than bring them together. I’ve been contemplating her comment about Amish beliefs and customs:

It doesn’t have to be that way, it happens to be that way.

At the visitors center in Intercourse, Pennsylvania, where we made our lunch stop, we gyatched two videos that explained the history of the Amish and Mennonite cultures. Of the many new things I learned, I learned the Amish were originally (in Switzerland) called “Anabaptists” which means re-baptizers.One possible way I might use this in my classroom is in Colorado history.  I used James Michener’s book (and the movie) Centennial as a tool for learning about Colorado, the settling of the west, and the troubles faced by the Native Americans. One of the main characters, Levi Zendt, was a Mennonite. I touched on the Amish and Mennonite cultures, but not in great detail. I could spend more time with the students on the Amish and Mennonites and certainly have them research into the history. Then there could be discussion related to religious intolerance in Europe and how that prompted so many people to come to America to worship as they chose. From there, a logical step is discussion of the First Amendment to the Constitution and how important it was and still is.

Mrs. Fisher later added more details as we drove to the house where Katie and Abner Allgyer, and their six children, had prepared supper for us.  Preparing Amish meals for people, particularly tour groups, is how the Allgyer family supports themselves. Mrs. Fisher explained that there often isn’t enough farm land, or buying land is very expensive, for children to “stay on the farm” when they’re grown and with their own families – just as it is where I live in Baca County, Colorado – so people supplement their farming with outside income. There are many carpenters in the area. The meal was a “stick to your ribs/meat and potatoes” fare and absolutely great. For me, the best part was doing dishes to help them clean up. I felt useful and helpful.

  This picture is just for the “ahhhhh” factor.

No questions today.

The next item on the itinerary is the American Philosophical Society and Atwater Kent Museum.

Until then…

debra

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phily Trip Day 8 – Philadelphia Museum of Art

June 8, 2008

Hello everyone,

Today’s excursion was a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, specifically, The American Collection. Art is not one of my strong areas of expertise, although I have the historian’s interest and understanding of the importance of art as a representation and interpretation of events throughout history.

I’m more familiar with the great masters such as Rembrandt, DaVinci, Vermeer, Wister, to name a few, than I am with American artists. Until visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art, my knowledge of American painters was limited to Charles Russell, Ansel Adams, George Catlin, and Georgia O’Keefe. I admire the work of these three American artists and I recognize their work when I see them. I even know a little about their lives, but none of them really caught my attention to want to know more about them or any other American artists.

That changed as a result of my visit to the museum when I discovered the American artist, Thomas Eakins (1844-1916). As a result of seeing his paintings and listening to the tour guide tell about his life, I purchased a book entitled, The Revenge of Thomas Eakins by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, to learn more about him. I also purchased several note cards of his paintings. His works seem to cover the person as both an individual and as a member of society. I like that his paintings represent regular people in everyday settings doing ordinary activities.

I think so many times, art and music aren’t given enough attention when we teach students about history. I think there’s a tendency to focus on the battles, the key players, the world events, and so on and gloss over the fine arts.

With Eakins, there is opportunity to delve into visual intrepretation and symbolism as well as the culture of the time. For instance, this painting entitled, The Concert Singer, could lead a discussion or a writing activity to compare the singer’s clothing compared to the clothing a concert singer wears today. Students could research the music of the time period, the famous singers, the theater or opera houses of the time, etc.

  This painting lends itself to research into the medical practices of the time as well as the role women played in medicine and the societal attitudes toward women in the medical field.

 

I intend to use Eakins’ work in my 11th grade U.S. History class after introducing other American artists. I will delve more deeply into Eakins’ work, using the book as reference.

The last stop was down the steps to the Rocky statue. The Rocky persona is part of America’s pop culture and certainly worth mentioning here as a part of American history.

Then the last activity of the day was a guided tour through the haunted places around Independence Hall. The history behind the stories was quite interesting. I learned that the site of Washington Square (a city park now) was once a Potter’s field and the site of a gallows for public hangings. The story goes that during the terrible years of the Yellow Fever epidemics (1793 being the worst summer) people were buried in what is now Washington Square. A woman known only as “Leah” was appalled by the grave robbing that was going on, so she appointed herself “Keeper of the graves; protector of the souls” and she patrolled the area at night to stop people from looting the graves of the 6,000+ buried there. At some point, she simply disappeared, but she’s been seen in spectral form many times since then. The last documented sighting being 2005 by a beat cop who didn’t believe in ghosts.

Another story is that of Peggy Shippen. She is supposedly still still haunting the Powel mansion. Hers is a tragic story. 

The Powels and George and Martha Washington were close friends. The Washington’s danced in the Powel’s ballroom on one of their anniversaries. Ben Franklin frequented the residence also. You knew you’d made it in Philadelphia’s Polite Society if you were invited to the Powel mansion.

 Benjamin Franklin is said to haunt the halls of the American Philosophical Society Library. 

 Just a little side note, the next picture is the church that was used in the filming of the movie The 6th Sense.

Researching the paranormal in U.S. history could be another avenue of discussion for the classroom. Many students like this topic. On a historical validity note, the guide said the people who own the tour group company have researched each story and they have several different sources of reference. Are any of the stories really true? Who knows, but putting the hauntings aside, the historical information was interesting and gave me a different snapshot of many of the places and people I’d already heard about in prior lectures and other tours.

I will also add that one of the events occurring at Gettysburg June 13th (the day I’ll be there) through 15th is “The Great Ghosthunters Gathering”, aka: G-4 Summit. It’s a gathering of 500 paranormal investigators from across the U.S. at Gettysburg which is reportedly one of the most haunted places in the country.

Going back to the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793: this has come up repeatedly in our tours. Here is a painting by Charles Willson Peale that depicts a mother’s sorrow at the death of her child from Yellow Fever. This would be an excellent sequey into a study and discussion of the diseases that plagued the colonists and the remedies used.

So, questions for Whittney and my history students.

Who was Peggy Shippen’s husband and what was the scandal related to him that devastated Peggy’s life and caused her to be shunned in Philadelphia’s polite society?

What is a Potter’s field?

Tomorrow, I’ll be visiting Lancaster, Pennsylvania to spend the day learning more about the Amish and Mennonite cultures.

Until later…

debra

 

 

 

Phily Trip Day 7 – Monmouth Battlefield and Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware

June 7, 2008

Hello everyone,

I began the day at the site where George Washington crossed the Delaware River Christmas night 1776 just before the Battle of Trenton in New Jersey.  

Here is the monument

and the Delaware River. The Delaware River is the longest fresh water river in the eastern U.S. It is 400 miles long and 800 feet wide at the widest part. On average, the water in the river moves at 11,000 cubic feet per second. I’ll come back to this number in a bit. The first two pictures of the river are all looking east into New Jersey right on the opposite shore.

 

 This one is looking down stream from the same location. New Jersey is on the left side of the picture.

These pictures are peaceful and calm. Very relaxing. But also deceiving. This river flooded three times in the past two years and the water reached the bottom of the bridge and where I was standing would have been underwater.

Back up on the picture of the monument, you read that the troops crossed the river on Christmas night 1776. Now you have to use your imagination to envision what it was like for the soldiers. There were 2,400 people with all their horses, supplies, cannon, guns, and everything else they needed trying to cross the river. You’d think crossing a river that looked like the ones in the pictures would be easy, but that night, they were crossing in a raging snowstorm; ice flowed thick and deadly in the river; the British and Hessians (German mercenaries) were on the other side. It took 11 hours to get all the men, supplies, cannon, guns, etc across the river via boat and ferry. 11 hours! It is estimated that the river that night was moving at 43,000 cubic feet per second. Have Grandpa compare the numbers for you. That’s a lot of water with a lot of power behind it.

This is the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. I watched a video of the crossing and this was the backdrop on the stage.

There you see Washington standing, facing the onslaught of the snowstorm, leading his men onward through adversity… Our tour guide explained that he doesn’t believe Washington crossed the Delaware as depicted in the painting. His word were, “This painting was meant to be inspirational, not historical.” The guide said that Washington was a horseman. He was very fond of his horse, so he would have been on the ferry with the cannon and horses when he crossed, and not in the boat.

These are pictures of Durham boats. 

 

 

  

 

 

 

The next pictures show the buildings that are on the site of the crossing. The first is the information about it.

 Boat Barn     Blacksmith 

 McConkey Ferry Inn (tavern) – the small, rounded building low to the ground with the pointed top (on the left) was the ice house. Inside the tavern, I discovered a Puzzle Mug”. Look at the design for a moment. How would you drink beer from this mug? There are holes near the lip and some sort of protuberances on the lip which leads you to believe you could drink from them. Hmmm. But how without spilling your beer?

Answer: The handle is hollow. You plug two of the spouts with your fingers and drink out of the third like a straw.

Now here’s a bit of trivia for you. Look at this picture. It is the bartender’s area of the tavern. Without refrigeration, beer couldn’t be kept cold in the bar area itself, so it was kept underground in a cooler location. When the bartender ran out of beer, he/she might have to leave the bar unattended and wouldn’t be able to trust the patrons not to steal or drink the other alcohol. So, the bartender would lock up the area by pulling down the two panels you see in the pictures. The one on the right was the “bar” and the one on the left was the “grill”, thus evolved the “Bar and Grill” that many restaurants or bars nowadays have in their names.

It’s time to leave the Delaware Crossing and drive on to Monmouth Battlefield. It was around 95 degees with 85% humidity under a clear, sunny sky as I walked…and walked…and walked…the battlefield with a tour guide who moved us along with military commands. “Troops. Fall in!” “Front and Center!” “Forward. March!”

Monmouth Battlefield State Park on the left and a view of the overall field on the right (looking north). Notice the footbridge in the lower left. I went with the group that walked what the guide said was two-thirds of a mile, but it seemed longer in the heat. I’ll come back to the heat later.

        

The building below is the parsonage that was used as a meeting house and a field hospital during the battle. Surgeons were allowed to move back and forth between British and American lines under a white flag, often blindfolded so they couldn’t reveal the exact locations of each side, as they tended to the wounded. Whittney, I mentioned there was a book you and I would read together. This location is in the book and the tree was standing at the time of the battle. It’s a White Oak. This meeting house was at the center of a convergence of three roads that formed a triangular round-about so it was an important location. It’s called White Oak Hill. The British fired upon this location.

       

This plaque is on the church.

We moved on to the battlefield itself. Again, Whittney, we’ll read more about this in the book.

 

This information plaque was one of many on the battlefield. I know you can’t read it very well, but the second paragraph begins: The French welcomed the war between their British enemies and the Americans.” As you already know, France funded much of the Revolution for the Americans and the French were delighted to be fighting the British. One of our guides summed it up this way: “The French were worried that peace might break out.” So they did whatever they could to keep the war going.

The reason I mentioned the heat and humidity was our guide said on the actual day of the battle the temperature was comparable to what I experienced and the sight of this bridge just yards away from the visitor’s center was a welcomed relief. The soldiers suffered, and some died, from the temperature/humidity, lack of water, and exhaustion.

                         This is me with the statue commemorating Baron von Steuben.

My day ended at Hard Rock Cafe for supper and my favorite, the Subway. I’m a little out of focus in this picture, but I wanted to show you what it looks like at the “End of the Line”. I’d always wondered what it looked like to reach that point. Now I know.

I might use this information about crossing the Delaware and the details of the Monmouth battle with my middle school students. They have the basic information about Washington and the crossing, but I could go into more detail now that I know more myself. I’m also contemplating having the students read Yankee Doodle Boy. We’d read it together in class, use the pictures I’ve taken as illustrations in the story, and possibly watch the movie The Crossing as a culminating activity. The students would have enough information at that point to be more critical in their viewing and we could talk about Hollywood vs. history.

Next stop, The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Whittney, ask your mom and dad who ran up the steps of this building in a series of movies they like to watch. I know it’s not very historical, but it is interesting tourist trivia.

Until next time…

debra

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phily Trip Day 6 – Franklin Institute

June 6, 2008

Greetings one and all,

First of all, I will post answers to the questions I’ve asked in my earliers blogs…just not yet. It’s a ploy to get readers to return because they feel they lack closure in their lives without the answers.   (just kidding).

I spent today at the Franklin Institute.

The picture below is looking east from the front steps. As an aside, Nicolas Cage in National Treasure probably stood on these same steps while filming and gazed out upon the city park across the way.

Here’s the Benjamin Franklin Memorial statue. Pretty impressive.

The Franklin Institute opened in 1934, but the statue wasn’t completed until 1938. It’s 22 feet high and the sculptor was James Earl Frasier. He also designed the buffalo on the buffalo head nickel. The room in which Ben sits is a replica of the Rome Parthenon as a symbolic reference to Benjamin Franklin as the world’s greatest enlightenment natural philosopher. Franklin was often referred to as a scientist, but he preferred the term “natural philosopher.”

This next one was really interesting. This plaque was on the stairway railing. I know it’s hard to read, but if you can get through it, it’s really interesting because…

…I looked over the railing and took a picture of the pendulum swinging. First to the north then as it swung back south. You can barely see where the pins have been knocked over. It was around 9:30 a.m.

 

From here, we went upstairs to the Trustees Board room where we spent a couple of wonderful hours actually touching and holding museum artifacts that belonged to Franklin. We wore the little white gloves like you see in the movies.

This first picture is his silver pitcher. The next two pictures are of the book that made him internationally famous. I actually held it in my hands and read several pages. This book was published in 1751. Imagine that, I held a book that is 257 years old.   

      

Around 1:30, with classmates, Liz and Del, lI eft the Institute for a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood toward the subway…

The three of us made it to the park across from the Institute and took pictures of the statues of Native Americans in the fountain in the beautiful city park. The statues symbolize the Three Rivers. Kids were playing in the water.

We continued on to the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul and crashed a wedding rehearsal. We did wait until they were finished before we took our pictures.

You may remember from reading previous blogs that I like pipe organs. The ones in this church were beautiful. 

 Continuing on our journey, we found City Hall with what looks to be a minute man as the spire.

It took us nearly two hours to wander five blocks from the Institute and we were apparently living right today because Del received a phone call summoning us back to the Institute to go through the exhibit: Real Pirates. I was in hog heaven there. I can’t begin to do justice to the information about pirates and slave ships in this exhibit. It began with a short movie to set the stage for the walk through of the exhibit. It was all about the ship The Whydah (wee-dah). I could go on for pages about this ship and what happened to it. Suffice it to say that I’ll be looking for books and more information about this one. Sorry, no pictures allowed inside the exhibit.

But, click on this link, Whydah documentary. It’s a six-minute National Geographic clip. Click here, for another Whydah documentary from National Geographic (four minutes). 

With kids so interested in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, this real, historic information might just catch their attention. I could use it in my classroom to prompt research and discussion into the history of pirates along the Atlantic coast and the impact on the shipping industry to the 13 colonies and later. I’ll definitely use it in discussing Hollywood vs. acurate history in film.

Click here, Real Pirates Education Guide, to read the educator’s guide to this exhibit, and here, Whydah at Institute homepage, to read more.

This exhibit made my day. I need to find out when it’s coming to Denver so I can see it again. Whittney, you’d really like it.

Well, no questions tonight. I know you’re sad about that. Tomorrow, I’m off to Monmouth Battle Field and Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware in Washington State Park. It’s supposed to be 100 degrees and high humidity and it’s mostly a walking day. Wish me luck because you know how much I love the heat.

Until the next time…

debra

 

 

 

 

 

Phily Trip Day 5 – The National Constitution Center

June 5, 2008

Greetings one and all,

I spent the day at The National Constitution Center.

Carol Berkin, the author of A Brilliant Solution, one of the books I read in preparation of going on this excursion, spoke to us most of the morning. She is a humorous and engaging speaker. I could have listened to her for many more hours. She discussed the men who worked to construct the Constitution as living, breathing brilliant men rather than the larger-than-life personas that we’ve always read about…

[We interupt this blog with an important emergency message...the emergency alarm went off and we had to evacuate the building for about thirty minutes. The fire department arrived and we waited outside in our Philly Excursionist huddle. I'm on the 11th floor of a 25+ floor dormitory building. It wasn't so bad going down, but the elevators here aren't terribly efficient on a good day, so you can only imagine the congestion when we were allowed back in the building. Several of us took the stairs. Funny how it seems longer going up than down.]

Back to the day…Ms. Berkin. I’m looking forward to her new books about Civil War women and I need to get a hold of “Revolutionary Mothers”. I hadn’t made the connection about nations having birth myths, so when she mentioned Romulus and Remus and the story of Rome then compared it to the American Revolution stories, it made perfect sense. It’s evident that she thinks highly of Alexander Hamilton and I agree with her. I purchased a book about him in the Constitution Center bookstore. I like his words that summed up the process of writing the Constitution: Nobody got everything they wanted; no one got nothing; but everyone got someting. Speaking of Alexander Hamilton, here’s a picture of us hanging out together…

 …and one of him solo.

   

I liked her comment about the measure of a man’s wealth was his library and wine cellar. I’m comfortably well off then.

I’d never heard that these men considered democracy to mean mob rule by a group who had nothing invested, so they had nothing to lose. By the time I’d finished reading A Brilliant Solution, I certainly understood how truly worried these men were about America dissolving. I also understood how obsessed they were with the danger of power and that absolute power corrupts even the best of men, as Benjamin Franklin said. It was interesting to me that they’d studied the world’s governments since the earliest civilizations and that they believed every republic had failed, from Caesar to oligarchies to democratic societies. They wanted a republic. Until about a year ago, I’d never contemplated the difference between a democracy and a republic.

It’s amazing to me that these men were able to craft a document that was dynamic and fluid and has weathered the years in fine form.

Here are pictures from the room at the Constitution Center that has bronze (?) replicas of the men who worked that summer of 1787 to write the Constitution. The first one is Benjamin Franklin (sitting) and Gubernor Morris standing.

  Notice Morris’ peg leg.

  Sorry, I don’t remember who these two are, but they’re certainly in deep discussion. These bronzes were very life-like.

After lunch, we had another interesting talk from Eli Lesser, education coordinator at the Center. He gave us teacher resources for teaching the Constitution and civic education. Eli had a great sense of humor and I liked his explanation that since the Constitution Center is a non-collecting museum, you have to tell students they’re going to a museum to see nothing.

We also watched an interesting theatrical production in a “theater in the round” environment. It was called Freedom Rising and it covered America from the Revolutionary times to the present then we toured the exhibits.

I had trouble with my camera today, so I don’t have as many pictures as I’d planned, but here’s a picture from the second floor of the Center looking directly toward Independence Hall in the distance. Independence Hall is in the center at the bottom of the picture.

Now, here are the questions for today.

1. List the six Constitutional delegates who also signed the Declaration of Independence (they’re called double signers).

2. Which of the states was not represented at the signing of the Constitution?

3. How many total delegates came worked on crafting the Constitution during the summer of 1787? (not from each state, but altogether)

4. Did Samuel Adams, John Adams, and/or Thomas Jefferson participate in crafting the Constitution?

We didn’t go on the Haunted house tour tonight. We hope to catch it another night. We’ll spend tomorrow at the Franklin Institute learning about Benjamin Franklin, science, and the enlightenment. We’ll also have free time to spend browsing the Franklin Institute or we can take a trip to the Wagner Free Institute of Science to look at late Nineteenth Century memorabilia and artifacts.

Here’s what it looks like out my window at night.

Until tomorrow…

debra