Preparing the Great House for Winter

This past week we have been working on readying the Great House for not only our Christmas program (1774:  A Stratford Christmastide), but also setting up new room scenarios for the winter in general.  You've already heard about how I like to change the house displays for the seasons (like summertime scenarios), so the winter is no exception.  Here's a glimpse into how I prepare for the winter scenarios and the Christmas program each year...

First, we decide on a theme for the Christmas program.  This year Jon Bachman, our Educational Events Coordinator, picked a year - 1774 - as the interpretive theme.  Having one particular year gave me a good starting point for deciding how to set up the house appropriately.  Then I took some time looking at Lee family papers (like the 1776 household inventory) and period accounts (like the diaries of planter Landon Carter and local schoolmaster Philip Vickers Fithian).  Pulling information from secondary sources came next (At Home and The Festive Tradition are two favorites).

I then spend a lot of time writing a memo (11 pages this year) to outline the stories I want to tell in each space.  The Blue Bedchamber, for instance, is set up loosely based on a diary entry of Landon Carter where he is taken ill with colic (abdominal pain and constipation) after eating a dinner of pork and oysters.  Carter describes taking a syrup of white walnut bark and molasses, and as a result goes "with ease to the close stool pan twice."  The diary entry is a rather graphic description of his bathroom habits and we have a close stool (toilet) pulled out in the room along with a glass of the syrup sitting nearby to help interpret this.

The Dining Closet is set up with a hunt breakfast:  cold meat and vegetables, bread, hoecakes, and hot coffee.  Here we take the opportunity to talk about outdoor activities in the wintertime.  Did you know that included in the 1776 household inventory was a pair of snow shoes?  Well, fox hunting was a favorite pastime and you can see the gentleman eating breakfast here before their big hunt begins.  A couple of hats and a wool great coat lay nearby awaiting their departure.

Downstairs, a number of rooms help illustrate how the slaves and servants experienced the holiday season - some receiving gifts from their masters (coins and bottles of rum) and others with more work to do.  The holiday season was a time of merriment for the Virginia gentry, but for their household slaves and servants it was a busy season full of extra guests and fancy dinners and dances.  You see the Servants Hall set up as though some of the indentured and hired servants have been able to carve out a few free moments to enjoy some food and fellowship before being called to their next task.

That's just a sneak peak of what we have going on in the Great House this holiday season.  Come see it all aglow on December 11th and throughout December, January, and February.

Landon Carter quote: Jack P. Greene, ed., The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752-1778, II (Richmond, Va., 1987), p. 908.

Slave Quarters Exhibits On The Way

At the beginning of July we officially closed our slave quarters to the public. These two buildings are reconstructions on the site of the late-18th century stone quarters that housed "home farm" slaves (domestic workers and other skilled laborers).

You've heard already about the preservation work currently in progress, and the planning for educational hands-on and classroom space that will open in the east building in the coming months. But remember I mentioned that there are two buildings? What about the west building (the one closest to the Great House, pictured above)? In October 2010 we'll be revealing a brand new exhibit space in this structure. Designers are putting the finishing touches on the text and graphic panels. I'm working feverishly on lists of museum objects and appropriate reproduction objects to furnish the two lower-level rooms (the building is a double quarter for two families, with main living rooms below and attic lofts above). And Sarah, our collections manager, is getting dirty this week as she tries to safely clean and move the historic furnishings out of the spaces and into storage.

What will you see when we reopen the space in October? You will see two separate living spaces. One will house an enslaved gardener named Anthony (he appears in a 1776 inventory) and other skilled male workers. I am hesitant to call this a "bachelor" household, though. Slave women often worked as field laborers, so perhaps the single men living here had wives and children that they visited on Sundays and holidays at outlying farm quarters away from the Stratford home farm.

The other living space will be furnished to represent a female domestic family, specifically a woman named Nelly and her daughter Mary. Nelly and her child Mary appear in a 1776 estate inventory, and we find Mary again in a 1782 slave list with the descriptor "blind" after her name. What was life like for Mary? That's just one topic we'll touch upon in these new exhibits.

You'll also soon see on display fragments found in archeological digs in the area. We've included things like a stoneware and creamware dish fragments, a sewing needle, and a shell button. Artifacts that indicate that slaves were consumers. They purchased fashionable goods using money earned by raising and selling vegetables and other goods, or bartering their skills.

This project has been in the research and development phase for close to two years, drawing upon period documents, archaeology, and current scholarship. Stay tuned for the big reveal in October. We look forward to having you visit and hearing what you think!

Setting up house

It is wedding season and I've been looking at a lot of wedding registries lately for a few friends who are getting married.  Most couples today register for "fancy" goods like china and expensive wine glasses, but also for "practical" goods like a dish drainer or trash can.  It got me thinking...when Thomas and Hannah Lee set up house at Stratford in the late 1730s/early 1740s, what did they need?  Granted, at that point they had young children and a household already, but I bet they needed new furniture and other items when they moved into the new digs.

Looking at the inventory taken after Thomas Lee's death in 1750 (excerpt above - click to zoom), you definitely see a mixture of fancy and practical.  A clock worth 10 pounds and a "Chandeleer" worth 21 pounds are listed along with "a Parcell of Cannisters," a coffee roaster, and "4 Water Glasses and other things" worth less than a pound combined.

Recently I've been trying to fill in our collection with the small, everyday sorts of things that I know would have been needed by residents of Stratford in their daily lives.  One of my most recent acquisitions for the collection is a small looking glass that would have been useful in a family bedchamber or upper servant's chamber.  We see low-cost looking glasses in the Stratford household inventory, like in the Blue Room inventory in 1775, where appraisers found "1 small glass" valued at 3 shillings.  Not every room in the Lee household would have had fancy, gilded and carved looking glasses (although some would have!).  Like our own homes, the rooms at Stratford would have been decorated in a hierarchy - the fancy public rooms with expensive furniture, the more intimate family rooms that you used on a daily basis, and the private service rooms that only the staff or family would see.

Now I just need to decide which way to go with my wedding gifts...


Looking glass image courtesy Pook and Pook.

Dressing J. Paxton the joiner: using primary documents

The collections team is working feverishly to get ready for the installation of the Southwest outbuilding next week.  One of my tasks in all of this is to create a furnishing plan that draws on what we know about Stratford and its residents.  In the servants' chamber, we have chosen to highlight the domestic life of the skilled craftsmen who worked here based on archaeology and documentary research.  J. Paxton, a joiner, is one of our named residents.  From a surviving account book, we know he worked at Stratford, that he borrowed specialty planes from nearby Chantilly plantation, and that he was paid in cash as well as brandy and sugar.  But that's about it.

So we have the who, but how do you bring Paxton to life through objects when you have very few clues?  Well, I've been using 18th-century runaway advertisements from Virginia newspapers (here and here) as a start.  Strange, you may think, but take a look at the entries for indentured joiners* and you get a whole host of details about what joiners like Paxton wore, looked like, how they spoke, or their personality quirks.

For instance, newly-indentured joiner Robert Robinson ran away from his post in 1775 and his "owner" advertised for his return:

"Run away from the subscriber, Robert Robinson, a valuable joiner and carpenter...had on, a fasionable good beaver hat, a fine cloth coat, of a parson's gray color, with hair buttons...light blue worsted (wool) stockings...wears in his sleeves either a pair of black or a pair of oval purple buttons set in yellow metal."

Another fellow, by the name of Hugh Rogers, was not only described in appearance, but also in personality:

"Run away from the Subscriber...an indented Servant Man named Hugh Rogers,...has light brown straight Hair, is very fond of Liquor, and when drunk is talkative and quarrelsome, but when sober is peaceable and of few Words, by Trade a Carpenter and Joiner, and can saw with the Whip Saw.  He had on, when seen upon the Road, a Check Shirt...and a fine Hat about Half worn."

A studied survey of these advertisements left me with a list of clothing and personal articles (as well as some good laughs).  Patterns began to emerge that helped illuminate the common dress of joiners working on Virginia plantations in the 18th century.  Early next week we'll install reproduction clothing in the chamber, reflecting those findings and ultimately bringing J. Paxton, the joiner, and his companions to light.

*To find indentured joiners in the Colonial Williamsburg database, browse under 'indentured' and then 'joiners' in the list.

A week in the work shop with the M-WTCA

 Last week we had the pleasure of hosting a group of members of the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association (M-WTCA).  This knowledgeable group had agreed to help us with the furnishing and installation of our work shop and were very eager to get the job done.  Using research collected regarding the skilled craftsmen who worked at Stratford in the 18th and early 19th centuries, a wish list of tools typical of an 18th-century work shop, and images of period work benches, the group was able to gather a donation of period tools appropriate for the shop as well as construct a reproduction work bench from native poplar.

Phil Baker and Jack Sciara of the group came armed with a plan for a reproduction work bench based on one in the shop of the Dominy family of East Hampton, New York (now at Winterthur Museum), as well as period paintings and illustrations. With help from our own Phil Mark and Doris Sciara, the team constructed a 14-foot work bench with back boards to hold tools.  Although they used modern saws and nailers for efficiency, they made sure to finish the wood with hand planes to take away any indication of modernity.

Meanwhile, Neil Bohnert, Henry Caudle, Herb Caudle, and Jim DePoy worked with our Collections staff to identify and assess the group of tools donated by M-WTCA members.  The men examined each tool, noting any maker or owner marks, recording time period, woods, and other important factors.  Through the members of the M-WTCA, Stratford Hall now possesses a group of 18th- and 19th-century woodworking tools of great quality - perfect for our plantation work shop.

With the exhibit set to open to the public on April 22nd, we still have some way to go:  Collections and Preservation staff still need to finalize tool donations, reinforce the bench top with reproduction rose-headed nails, and arrange the tools in the shop to mimic period images of working shops.  A big thank you goes to the M-WTCA and their contributions to this exhibit.  The progress made last week was invaluable to the display and what we hope to teach our visitors about skilled crafts at Stratford.

Progress in the workshop thanks to the M-WTCA

Phil Baker and Neil Bohnert of the M-WTCA look over potential tools with Phil Mark, Stratford's Director of Preservation

With the official reopening of the Southwest outbuilding slated for April 2010, we are coming down the home stretch with furnishing research.  The workshop area of the building (the first room you walk into) is in good shape thanks to the support of the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association (M-WTCA).

These avid tool collectors and scholars have been helping to identify period-appropriate tools for a woodworking shop and are helping us understand the meaning of notations from our Lee family documents.

In the inventory of Stratford taken in 1758, for instance, we see listed:

Coopers Ditto [tools]

sawyers tools

Carpenters Do [tools]

What specialized tools did each of these kinds of craftsmen need?

And in Richard Henry Lee's memorandum book [in the Huntington Library collection] we have been finding even further information about woodworking at Stratford.  In the document are notations for Lee lending J. Paxton, Stratford's joiner, tools such as "1 1/2 inch Mortice chisel" as well as planes and other items.  This raises questions for us:  What does a 1/2 inch mortise chisel look like in 1787?  Where did the Stratford joiners, carpenters, sawyers, and coopers get their tools?  Who were these men?

We hope to answer these questions and many more with our new display.

Southwest Furnishing Research

The Southwest outbuilding is currently closed to the public during this restoration and reinterpretation phase. Right now I am researching the history of the use of this building - we aren't quite sure what the Lees and other residents of Stratford used the building for in the 18th and 19th centuries. An 1801 insurance document indicates it may have been a work shop. Prior to its closing to the public we interpreted it as a clerk's quarter (or living area), office, and servants' hall complex (see image). What will it be next?

Before this space can be opened back up to the public, I will be developing a furnishing plan. This document will outline the overall look of the spaces, the specific objects displayed, as well as the historic documentation available to help inform this plan. Each room will tell a story - reflecting what we know about the Lee family, their hired and enslaved servants, and other residents or visitors to Stratford.