Stenton Leads Innovative History Hunters Education Program

Since 1910, Stenton' s mission has been to serve as an "historic object lesson." Over the last few years, Stenton and The NSCDA/PA have placed renewed emphasis on the educational component of its mission, including hiring an Education Coordinator in 2001. Since 2002, Stenton has also served as the lead organization on a major collaborative educational project entitled the History Hunters Youth Reporter Program. The History Hunters project has been generously funded through two grants from the Heritage Philadelphia Program, a program of the Pew Charitable Trust administered by the Independence Visitor Center Corporation, and promises to set a new standard for educational museum programming for historic sites in the Delaware Valley.

The History Hunters Youth Reporter Program is an exciting program for students in grades 4 and 5 attending public school in the Germantown area of Philadelphia. Five members of the Historic Germantown Preserved community worked together to develop the proposed History Hunters program: Cliveden of the National Trust, the Johnson House, Stenton, Wyck, and the Germantown Historical Society. It provides structured opportunities for youth in Northwest Philadelphia to gain greater exposure to, and familiarity with, the historic sites in their neighborhood.

The program dramatically weaves the individual histories of the sites and their occupants together into an historical fabric covering United States' history from colonial times through the War of Independence and the Civil War. Each of the sites focuses on that period of history that they can cover best. Thus Stenton addresses the development of early Colonial Pennsylvania with an emphasis on interactions between Native Americans and European settlers, Cliveden covers the period of the American Revolution, Wyck discusses domestic life, childhood and Quakerism in the later 18th and early 19th centuries, whilst the Johnson House concentrates on the abolition movement and the Underground Railroad.

Collaborative projects of this sort can be challenging, as one tries to bring together varying educational programs and organizations into one coherent package. History Hunters is based at Stenton with Stephen Hague serving as Project Director and Anne Burnett as Museum Educator. The project has moved in several phases. The first phase (Grant I) involved the development of lessons and curriculum material and the running of a pilot project in cooperation with three Philadelphia City Schools in the Northwest Academic area. A second grant (Grant II) awarded in January 2003 will allow for fuller implementation of History Hunters in the 2003-2004 school year.

The History Hunters planning phase developed program materials relying on advice from humanities scholars, specialists in museum interpretation and education and teachers from the City of Philadelphia. Initial meetings for the project began in April 2002. History Hunters staff coordinated with the Philadelphia School District to identify interested teachers and, given the current challenges facing the City schools, to gain support for the project at an administrative level within the system.

During the summer of 2002 the planning team met to develop the themes for the project and to exchange ideas about how the History Hunters project would work in practice. Team members reviewed Philadelphia City School Scope and Sequence information, taking advice from the teachers about which parts of the Scope and Sequence could be most effectively addressed at each site. History Hunters especially benefited from the practical perspective of experienced teachers Reginald Glover (Pickett Middle School), Mary Kwartnik (Lingelbach) and Mary Ann Robinson (J. S. Jenks). As the project progressed it raised important questions about race, ethnicity and the interpretation of historic sites, difficult and challenging issues to grapple with but ones that provoked considerable thinking and reflection on the part of project team. Humanities scholars Sandy Lloyd, Beth Twiss-Garrity, Shirley Turpin-Parham, and Stevie Wolf spent many hours pouring over the interpretive and educational information from each of the sites, as well as background material that eventually became part of a student workbook. In the end, this helped to strengthen History Hunters as all five sites, site staffs, teachers, humanities consultants and school administrators remained committed to the creation of an outstanding curriculum.

Stenton Museum Educator Anne Burnett did an excellent job of coordination and drafted the curriculum material, drawing upon the expertise of the humanities consultants and teachers. She also worked with site staffs to ensure that what was proposed for each house museum could be effectively implemented. Various drafts were reviewed by our consultants. The Museum Educator wrote workbook sections on Pennsylvania and Germantown history, coordinated with site staff to develop a range of pre-visit activities for each site, and created the post-visit writing activities that are such an important component of the project.

Throughout the spring and summer, History Hunters gained considerable momentum. Through the advice and hard work of our project team we were able to finalize the curriculum and student workbook, tailoring History Hunters to meet the Philadelphia School District's new literacy requirements. We also worked closely with designer Colleen Haley to translate the curriculum into an attractive Student Workbook that will guide students on the History Hunters project. Ms. Haley also designed a website, a tremendous resource for students and teachers in the program. The website has a web-accessible calendar that has allowed easier scheduling of tours, as well as providing the curriculum on-line and displaying examples of students' written work. The site, www.historyhunters.org, includes student material, images from History Hunters tours to each of the sites, and a range of other information.

During the 2002-2003 school year, we ran a pilot project to test some of our ideas. The pilot project included three schools and brought 8 classes to each of the sites. Beginning in November, the house museums hosted visits from three Philadelphia City Schools: Lingelbach, John Jenks and Pickett Middle. Each site had 6 to 8 pilot visits, and the Museum Educator and site staff members worked with teachers to garner comprehensive feedback about these initial visits. The visits has been both managable and instructive, with useful information generated from students and teachers.

As the project moved forward, we renewed contact with the Philadelphia School District. In May 2003, Anne Burnett, project Museum Educator, and Stephen Hague, Project Director, made a presentation to a meeting of the Northwest Academic area Principals, a critical step in gaining participation from the schools. The response from the Principals was outstanding and about 25 schools expressed an interest in participating in the project during the 2003-2004 school year. We compiled contact details for all of the teachers who might be involved and we worked closely through the end of the school year and during the summer to ensure that the project expands for the 2003-2004 academic year.

Running a program like this is neither easy nor inexpensive, and we had to give thought to how we can continue History Hunters over the long term. During the development phase of the project, we also undertook a sustainability study that looked carefully at how we can continue to run the program. All of the sites involved confirmed their long-term interest in this excellent program whilst recognizing the fund-raising challenges posed by such a large endeavor. Although it will be a challenge, all agreed that it is worth the work to see that History Hunters carries on.

So, now that we have completed the first grant, what have we accomplished? History Hunters Grant I successfully achieved its goals of:

It seems clear that History Hunters will have a significant and positive effect on the School District of Philadelphia. The project will allow Philadelphia School students to visit four Germantown historic sites during the course of a single school year. The site visits will build on one another through an integrated curriculum geared to the Philadelphia City School District’s Scope and Sequence and new Literacy requirements. The students will utilize a workbook with historical background information, exciting and interesting pre-visit activities, and suggestions for post-visit writing assignments. On their site visits, the students will play the role of Youth Reporters, collecting information to be written up later. This written work will be posted on the History Hunters website and, we hope, in a future edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer's Newspapers in an Education supplement. Teachers will also be encouraged to include a significant reading and writing component to address the Philadelphia City Schools literacy requirements. In short, the project has been successfully planned and is ready for implementation.

Thanks to an additional Level II collaborative grant, History Hunters will be implemented in the 2003-2004 school year. Through an intensive recruitment effort, approximately 15 schools, including over 30 classes and nearly 900 students generating 3600 site visits will be involved this year. We hope that this can be expanded even further in the 2004-2005 school year. The History Hunters project admirably fulfills Stenton's goal to develop further educational programs and these excellent initial results suggest that the History Hunters Youth Reporter Program can serve as a model for collaborative educational programming in the Delaware Valley and beyond. It is especially welcome as a collaborative venture that pools the resources of five outstanding Germantown historic sites and gives Philadelphia Schools one point of contact for learning opportunities. This program puts the NSCDA/PA on the cutting edge of museum educational programming in the Philadelphia region and beyond.

Garden Club Attacks Alien Vines

In early October, a group from The Planters Garden Club came to Stenton to pursue their conservation project, the elimination of invasive plants from public places. The Planters is a small club with several Dames members, including our past National President, Nancy Nimick, and myself, Garden Chairman. Before the Planters' visit, I had sprayed as much of our most pernicious invasive, our native poison ivy, as I could reach, but more was uncovered as we worked along.

The group set about with determination, cutting back and pulling out the sapphire berry vine (Akebia trifoliata) that had totally covered the native shrubs behind the big magnolia at the east end of the back lawn, and even climbed high into the magnolia itself. Then we attacked the roots with a marvelous tool, a 'Weed Wrench,' with which one can grab and lever out stems up to 1 inch. When we finished everyone could see what had been hidden for years in a blanket of green.

– Lil Chance

A New View of Stenton

During the summer, The Hamilton Family Foundation gave a much-wished-for and appreciated sum "for the immediate removal of trees beside the house." The Thursday that Hurricane Isabel was approaching, the enormous black cherry that overhung the house on the parking lot side came down; it took seven men, considerable skill, and several pieces of specialized equipment. Not everyone was working on the cherry at once, so a great deal of other tree work was done as well. After the stump-grinder was finished, the only trace was the neat mulch pile on the ground nearby our carefully preserved box bushes.

The difference in our approach to Stenton is tremendous. Instead of a nice house elegantly shadowed (and obscured) by an impressive tree in the early 20th-century style, we have a full view of the 18th-century house in all its own elegance. We look forward to continuing the work when our arborist has finished cleaning up other people's hurricane damage; we suffered none at Stenton.

New Garden Plan

The Wister Collection and Archives at La Salle University has generously donated an original plan for the Stenton garden by John Caspar Wister to the Stenton archives. Wister was a Logan descendant, and another Logan descendant, Laura Haines Bellman, gave the drawings to La Salle after Wister's wife, Gertrude McMaster Wister's, recent death. All of Wister's drawings that he had saved, about 60, were stored in the attic of his house in Swarthmore. Unfortunately, the Stenton drawing was kept close to a heating vent, which has rendered it so fragile that we have decided not to unroll it for fear of damaging it. In the long term, we hope to raise funds to have it humidified and unrolled by paper conservators at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia. We anticipate seeing a detailed rendering with specific plant varieties noted, probably a proposal drawing. It will be interesting to compare the bed layout and the varieties of plants proposed with the realized garden that Emily Cooperman wrote about in 2000 in Stenton's Cultural Landscape Inventory.

Volunteer yourself or your garden club for our Colonial Revival Garden!

New Staff

We are delighted to welcome new staff members to Stenton. Sara Carson joins us as Museum Assistant. Sara is a recent graduate of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland with a degree in Art History. While a student she worked at the Guggenheim in Venice as well as the Crawford Arts Centre in St. Andrews. We are also pleased to have as Site Manager Yakubu Kutai, a student at Westminster Seminary in Glenside. With his wife Esther and their four children, they have taken up residence in the Log House and have continued to keep Stenton in excellent order.

Furniture travels to Woodville

As part of the ongoing deaccessioning process, several other objects from Stenton's collection storage have been transferred to Woodville, the western NSCDA/PA museum property and the house of General John Neville in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh. A federal-style chest of drawers and nine rush-seated, painted fancy chairs fit well with both the furnishings needs and interpretive goals for Woodville. We are delighted that these pieces have been able to find a new home in the NSCDA/PA’s other historic property.

 

Music Stand added to Stenton Collection

This fall, the Stenton Committee realized a long outstanding collecting goal in using the remainder of the bequest from Mary Ann Bridger to purchase a music stand, which accompanies the English flute by Pietro Grassi Florio, purchased in 2000. Barbara Jones reported in her 1964 study of Deborah Logan's diaries that on "gay occasions" George and Deborah would take early tea. Afterward, Dr. Logan played his flute and Deborah Logan would be moved to recite poetry from her "well-stocked mind." (Jones, p.33) The stand is a true music stand, rather than a slant-top writing desk and is most likely English. However, because there are no secondary woods used in its construction, its origins are difficult to determine. We are delighted with this addition to Stenton's collection.

 

Collections Workshop

The "Focus on Fine Furniture" workshop with decorative arts scholar Philip Zimmerman was a great success with 20 participants. Philip and the furniture enthusiasts had so much fun that the day ran longer than expected, and we would especially like to thank Philip Zimmerman for his outstanding presentation and comprehensive look at a range of Stenton objects. We hope to schedule a similar follow-up event in the late winter or early spring. Please watch your mail for an announcement.

 

Stenton Objects to be Published

Philip Zimmerman will publish a third article on tables and other Logan objects in the Stenton collection in the May 2004 American furniture issue of The Magazine ANTIQUES. Stenton Curator, Laura Stutman, has authored another shell work article featuring the shadowbox grotto, currently displayed in the Stenton parlor, which is scheduled to appear in the January/February 2004 issue of PieceWork magazine. She is also co-authoring a brief write-up about the c. 1730-1750 redware bowl in the archeology collection depicting the Mohawk leader, Sa Ga Yean Qua Rah Tow, with David Orr, an archeologist who currently teaches at Temple University. The article is scheduled to appear in the 2004 issue of the journal Ceramics in America. By publishing images of the bowl in the journal, we hope to generate scholarly interest in the Stenton archeology collection, and further mine the collection for what it tells us about 18th-century life at Stenton. Barbara Liggett, who excavated James Logan’s privy in 1982, stated that the Stenton assemblage of artifacts was among the best she had ever seen.

 

Paint Analysis

Peggy Ann Olley, a second-year student in the Winterthur Program for Art Conservation, will conduct a finishes study for the Dining and First Floor Lodging rooms at Stenton over the course of this academic year. Samples will be taken this autumn, and the final report will be complete in June. We hope the study will shed new light not only on the colors and kinds of paint finishes used, but will also address the question of whether there may have been wallpaper at Stenton. Ms. Olley will look at finishes on hooks and hardware as well as try to understand the stripped sills and chair rail in the dining room. The spring newsletter will include an update on the progress of the study and dates for presentations of her work, both at Winterthur and at Stenton.

 

DamesLines: The lastest news from The Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania