With my internship at Richmond National Battlefield Park landing in the middle of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, I have been fortunate enough to experience the world of public history during a major anniversary. However, going to school at Gettysburg College during the same anniversary provides me the academic side of historical interpretation. There has been a great debate about the connection between these two worlds. Whether this connection exists or not has been the question of the summer for me, and while working with Richmond National Battlefield Park, I believe I have found my answer:
Children.
Emma at Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond National Battlefield Park
Last time I interned at the Gettysburg National Military Park, it was January of 2011. And if anyone needs reassurance that not many people visit Gettysburg in the dead of winter…not many people visit Gettysburg in the dead of winter. So, having the opportunity to spend a summer, especially the summer of the 150th, at Gettysburg was quite the culture shock. Not that my primary job involved much interaction with visitors, which personally is how I enjoy working. Five days a week, I worked in museum services in the Visitor Center lower level (aka the basement).
I’ve had an interest in the archival and curatorial side of museums since high school. I now work in Special Collections at Musselman Library at Gettysburg College, and it’s the general direction I hope to go with my life. I greatly respect interpreters for what they do, because they’re passionate enough to go out everyday and hype up visitors with a story that hopefully will stick with the visitor for a long time. For me, I like being able to prepare behind the scenes and let the visitor interpret the object, exhibit, etc. for themselves. This internship allowed me to see more of both archival and curatorial duties, practices, and even problems.
Mosby’s scarf in the new “Treasures of the Civil War” exhibit.
For the first weeks of the summer, another intern and I had to go through a back log of nearly 1,000 photos from the 1990s, assign them catalog numbers, write the individual catalog number on every single photo, put them in our special archival photo boxes, and label them. Although the grunt work part of this project was dull at times, it did lead to learning about cold storage (how photos are stored in order to best preserve them). Once the photos were in the archival photo boxes, the box is wrapped in two layers of plastic (making sure everything is sealed as air tight as possible) and put in a fridge. A humidity strip on the box and between the layers of plastic show if there’s air leaking into the box. Continue reading “Stories from the (Gettysburg) Basement”
Before the start of my internship at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, I only had vague ideas of what it was like to be a teacher. My thoughts were mostly along the lines of, “yeah, I could teach”. However, abstract thoughts rarely prepare you for the real thing. My vision of flawlessly teaching 30 middle-schoolers about history inevitably did not line up with reality, leaving room for doubt to creep in. At first it seemed daunting to be in charge of so many students and lead them through the history of Harpers Ferry. But as I observed and taught more I realized how much fun it was, in addition to being challenging.
Blair at Harpers Ferry NHP
The best thing about my Mondays and Tuesdays working with middle school students from around the country is having the opportunity to teach them new things and possibly leave an everlasting mark on them. But this potential for success and failure is what made me so apprehensive about teaching in the first place. For most of the children that I teach, this is the first time they have ever learned about John Brown, and this both excites and scares me. On one hand, it is exciting because I have the chance to inspire a child to become a historian, but on the other hand they could lose interest and label all history as “boring”. I have always been aware of the power teachers hold in regard to the interests and futures of their students, and this summer that responsibility has fallen to me. Even though I only have my students for a day, I still believe that just one day can make a huge impact. Continue reading “Apprehension and Excitement: My Summer at Harpers Ferry”
As the days in Virginia grow hotter and the summer begins to come to a close, most of us only having a mere few weeks with our parks, I have found myself reflecting on my experience here at Manassas National Battlefield Park. My summer has been more fulfilling than I ever thought it was going to be when I accepted the internship position.
When I arrived at the park in late May I immediately started my weeklong training. By the end of that week, I felt like there was no way I was ever going to present all of the information surrounding the First Battle of Manassas to visitors in a tour. To say the least, I was overwhelmed. I was faced with the task of developing a Henry Hill walking tour covering the events of the first battle which I introduced to my very first visitors just a week after arriving in Manassas. The first tour was rough but after a couple of weeks I had worked out the kinks and finally felt comfortable with my narrative. Over the next six weeks, I found myself truly enjoying giving tours and talking with visitors, whether at the front desk or down at the Stone House. Continue reading “Telling their Stories: My Memorable Summer Internship at Manassas National Battlefield Park”
“I left Danville when I was seventeen,” Mr. Davis repeats for the third time as we settle in for our oral history interview. Faced with a camera and sharing his memories, the sixty-six-year-old resident of the Dan River region who had called and insistently requested to be interviewed suddenly became shy, wondering aloud how helpful he could be. I can only imagine the courage it takes to share painful memories of a childhood spent in segregation in a city that would rather forget than ask forgiveness. I put on my reassuring smile, and state, “That means you’ve got seventeen stories to share.”
“Seventeen years of nightmares,” Mr. Davis corrects me, and with that he’s off — recounting his childhood, his first memories of segregation, adages his mother taught him, lessons he learned both from hostile neighbors and from the kindness of strangers on Danville’s city streets. Fifty minutes of stories go by before he pauses long enough to be asked a question. He’s been waiting fifty years for someone to ask him for his story. He’s not going to let the opportunity pass.
At 8:30 in the morning I step out of my car and head up to the imposing manor house situated on a hill overlooking the quant town of Fredericksburg. While most people might be put off by it’s creaky floor boards, the cracks in the ceiling, or the delightfully surprising way the two front doors like to open by themselves; I love it. I love working at Chatham.
At Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park I, as an intern, began my summer with nearly two weeks of training. Of course, we interns wear many hats. We are the frontline historians: friendly faces behind the desk at the visitor’s center, voices over the PA system reminding visitors that the “twenty-two minute film on the Battle of Fredericksburg will be beginning momentarily.” We are the authors and guides of most of the daily tours. Thus, with all of that information- from park operations to living in quarters to the site specific facts our visitors came to learn-we need every second of that training. Yet the most difficult job we have, interpretation, using the tangible objects around us to bring the stories of the war to life, cannot really be taught. It’s learned best on-the-job.
The Innis House along Sunken Road at Fredericksburg
Shortly before midnight on June 2, 1863, three Union gunboats cautiously floated up the Combahee River, avoiding Confederate torpedoes based on information from a highly respected Union spy, a woman named “Moses.” Their destination? The rice plantations of the South Carolina low country, which contained soil so rich the crop they yielded was nicknamed “Carolina Gold.” However, this was no typical raid on Confederate property. The soldiers charged with this task were men of the 2nd South Carolina, an all black regiment, and by daybreak, over seven hundred and fifty slaves would be free.
And who was that trusted spy named Moses?
Harriet Tubman.
Harriet Tubman
Typically introduced in fifth grade classrooms as the face of the Underground Railroad, the usual image associated with Tubman is that of her clandestinely transporting slaves to freedom under the cover of darkness. Her role during the Civil War is less well known, but no less dynamic. From the outset of the war, Tubman assisted Union soldiers and freed slaves in many different ways. She gained a reputation for nursing soldiers sick with dysentery with medicines made from roots, and for teaching freed slave women how to lead independent lives. She was also a passionate advocate for freedmen’s issues, and often brought them to the attention of military authorities. However, it was her skills in guerilla warfare and espionage that earned her the respect of the both Union officers and the northern press. Continue reading ““A Woman Named Moses” – Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid”
It is almost impossible to comprehend the fact that 150 years ago today, the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was still rebuilding itself from the destruction, death, and decay that resulted from the climactic battle between the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on July 1-3, 1863. I must say that it was a tremendous honor to have worked with the National Park Service so far this summer and I look forward to the rest of it. Without a doubt, the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg was my true test of the summer, and it was an extremely rewarding and, at times, trying experience. To describe the events that took place during the anniversary, I suppose I should start from the beginning.
The anniversary officially kicked off on June 30th, when throughout the day, the NPS and Gettysburg Foundation staff began to receive the mass amounts of the visitors that were flooding the town. While most of the permanent staff members began their anniversary programs with specific key moment stations, I was still assigned to my normal schedule, which for that Sunday included giving my 10:30 a.m. Third Day Program, which is basically a walking tour of the High Water Mark at the Angle on Cemetery Ridge. I had my biggest group yet of over forty-five people and it was extremely well received by them, especially those who were visiting Gettysburg for the first time. The big climax to the 30th was the commemorative kickoff at Meade’s Headquarters in the evening, where the U.S. Army Brass Band was accompanied by a 21 gun salute from howitzers.
Part of crowd at one of the Voices programs, which concluded each day of the anniversary
