Most of my career has focused on early American history, especially in Virginia. Although none of it has traditionally been defined as public history, I consider it all to be a form of it: from excavating a Revolutionary War site only with volunteers to teaching teachers how to make history more exciting in the classroom to transcribing 18th-century ledgers using students and volunteers from across the country. In each case, making connections between the past and the present was essential to engaging the participants.
While an undergraduate, my home town’s crossroads started to undergo development on what was thought to be the location of a Revolutionary War encampment and Anglican chapel-of-ease. This oral tradition was something that I had been aware of since childhood. Using only my newly learned college skills in archaeology and my enthusiasm, I recruited the local archaeological society and a host of like-minded volunteers to help me excavate the corner to see what might be found – not to try to save the site, but to make sure the knowledge wasn’t lost in the development of the land. And, we did find something! The foundation to that chapel was encountered with the third hole dug. This small project introduced me to the power of the news media (in the days before the existence of social media) for exciting the public in something many didn’t even know they might be interested in learning: TV station stories; newspaper articles; presentations given to local schools, civic groups, and historical societies; and even letters shared with an incarcerated felon are all examples of ways the public learned about real-life archaeology (not Indiana Jones), colonial Virginia history, and more about their own neighborhood. My lesson was to use the media to my advantage to educate the public by telling stories that connected people to their home town. One of the most powerful images, post development, when talking to children (and adults too) was showing the before picture of the original Chapel Green adjacent to the after picture of the constructed bank and pharmacy. Images are crucial to making connections.
As a program developer and manager at Colonial Williamsburg, I was responsible for educating over a thousand primary and secondary teachers on ways to make the story of early America (from the mid-Atlantic and Virginia perspective) more engaging in their classrooms. While lectures were part of our program, hands-on demonstrations were much more successful and better received by the teachers. By teaching how the currency worked through setting up stores to make purchases or conducting a court trial to learn about the judicial system in colonial Virginia, teachers were provided not only the content but also engaging ways to show their students more about these concepts. One of the reasons this teaching style worked was we could place the teachers in locations in Williamsburg where these activities originally took place. The power of place cannot be overcome in helping people connect to the past, so we also provided suggestions on ways to approximate the environment in the classroom to help the teachers’ students understand. My lesson was to use your environment to your advantage when engaging your audience by either being where an event happened or recreate it to give them a ‘sense’ of what it was like. Involve your audience in the early American past by using as many senses as possible – and especially don’t forget the power of smell!
Most recently, I have been working with students and volunteers on a digital project to transcribe 18th-century ledgers from two stores in Virginia. The project began as a complement to a doctoral dissertation comparing the use of consignment and direct sales of raw materials to purchase desired goods. Yes, this sounds really dry and not something that would interest your average individual. But, as I learned, it is all how you spin it! Transcribing 18th-century documents is becoming more challenging as fewer individuals know how to write in cursive; however, I realized that not writing in cursive does not mean that your participants cannot read it or do not want to read it. Treating it like a foreign language enables me to talk about it as a translation rather than a transcription; it challenges volunteers to think of it more like a puzzle to be solved than squiggly, meaningless lines on the page. As to what the pages contain, the volunteers have the opportunity through the account pages to learn for example more about the colonial economy (how much something cost and did the price vary over time), material culture (a peak at the shelves of a colonial Walmart), gender (both men and a few women had accounts), race (enslaved individuals had accounts, but more frequently were making purchases on behalf of their owners), social networks (accounts opened on security through someone else, payments made by/for others), religion (taxes and tithes paid through the store), and Virginia geography (how far someone travelled to shop at the store). Transcribing becomes the hook to get volunteers interested in the rest of the story as it actively involves them in the process of ‘discovering’ history. This project has yet to make it beyond the data collection phase, but I intend to make not only the transcripts publicly available, but intend to provide as many context essays as time and space allows. Thusfar, my lesson has been to not misjudge someone’s ability to become interested in history simply because they are not local to the story; volunteers participated from as far away as Alaska and Afghanistan. Because this project involves no face-to-face time with its participants, constant communication and good constructive criticism go a long way to keeping your volunteers engaged – be willing to put in the time needed to create and to conduct a quality project as it will pay off in the end.
In everything I do, I try to be as inclusive as possible and to never underestimate my audience’s abilities or interest. I have often been surprised by the enthusiasm someone brings to the topic – the felon’s desire to learn more about archaeology and local history or the student who was nearly failing her history class until she encountered the ledgers and started to see how she could contribute in a meaningful way to the narrative of the past. I will continue to strive to find ways to include early American history in my work and not be discouraged by STEM or subject matter standards that give the perception that early American history is not valued or should not be included in our educational system. My lessons have taught me that I need to remember to use all forms of media, place, as well as audience involvement in telling early America’s stories. The greatest challenge for myself, as a public historian interested in the exploration of early America, is to find ways to reach beyond the self-selected audience that I often work with and recognize that that format may come increasingly through digital means.
Return to this Working Group’s homepage.