Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park [CA]

Description

In August 1908, Colonel Allen Allensworth and four other settlers established a town founded, financed, and governed by African Americans. Their dream of developing an abundant and thriving community stemmed directly from a strong belief in programs that allowed blacks to help themselves create better lives. By 1910, Allensworth’s success was the focus of many national newspaper articles praising the town and its inhabitants. Today a collection of restored and reconstructed early 20th-century buildings—including the Colonel's house, historic schoolhouse, Baptist church, and library—once again dots this flat farm country.

The park offers a short film, exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Oysterponds Historical Society and Museum [NY]

Description

The Oysterponds Historical Society preserves and interprets the heritage of Orient and East Marion (formerly Oysterponds) by maintaining a museum that collects, preserves, and exhibits artifacts pertaining to Oysterponds history and life; by maintaining a research library of material relevant to Oysterponds history; by providing cultural opportunities through educational and public programs and activities; and by promoting an interest in the history of Oysterponds. The Society is housed in several historic structures, including the 1888 Old Point Schoolhouse, which displays exhibits, and the 1720 Webb House, which offers seasonal tours.

The society offers research library access and occasional educational and recreational events; the museum offers exhibits and tours.

Randolph County Historical Society and Museum

Description

Visitors can experience the tangible artifacts of Randolph County's history at the Society's Museum. Housed in the 1828 Blackman-Bosworth Store building in the center of Beverly, the museum has a broad-based collection including early settlement tools, Civil War artifacts, belongings of early citizens, store and business collections, and much more. Behind the museum, open by appointment or during special events, is an original subscription school rescued from a rural Randolph County location. This small schoolhouse originally housed a school "subscribed" by parents who would band together to hire a teacher before universal public education in the area. Today it features an extensive collection of one-room school artifacts and memorabilia. Under construction behind the museum is the relocated Stalnaker Cabin, an early settlement log cabin. Saved and moved by the Stalnaker Family Association, the cabin is being restored by the Society and will be a future addition to the museum holdings. The museum also features rotating special exhibits in the meeting room, as well as hosting the regular informative programs of the Society.

The museum offers exhibits.

Kaw Mission State Historic Site

Description

The Kaw Mission houses a museum that tells the story of the building that was home and school to thirty Kaw boys from 1851–1854. The Kaw lived in the Neosho Valley for less than thirty years when, despite an impassioned plea by Chief Allegawaho, the U.S. government removed the Kaw to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). At the museum, visitors can learn more about Chief Allegawaho, the Kaw Indians, and others who lived in the area.

The site offers exhibits, a short film, and tours.

Old Salem [NC]

Description

Old Salem includes four museums—the Historic Town of Salem, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), the Old Salem Children's Museum, and the Old Salem Toy Museum— which engage visitors in an educational historical experience about those who lived and worked in the early South.

The museums offer exhibits, tours, demonstrations, and other recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Prudence Crandall Museum

Description

The Museum is housed in the U.S.'s first academy for African-American women, which operated from 1833–1834. The school was run by Prudence Crandall (1803–1890), today designated as Connecticut's state heroine. The museum includes period rooms, changing exhibits, and a small research library.

The museum offers exhibits, research library access, and educational and recreational programs.

Carousel Museum of New England

Description

The Carousel Museum is proud to house one of the largest collections of antique carousel pieces in the country. Visitors can experience the "Golden Age of the Carousel" on their own, or with tour guides who will reveal the colorful history and development of the hand-carved animals that have found their place in America's rich folk art history.

The museums offers tours, exhibits, and educational and recreational programs.

Pena-Peck House

Description

The Peña-Peck House was constructed around 1750 by order of the King of Spain to be the residence of his royal Treasurer, Juan Esteban de Peña. The Peña-Peck House sits on St. George Street at the heart of the historic district. Built of native coquina stone, it is the finest surviving First Spanish Period home in the city. Today the loggias and the first floor remain little changed.

Cheney Homestead [CT]

Description

Timothy Cheney, farmer, miller and one of America's famous clock makers, built the Cheney Homestead about 1785. A brook to the south of the home afforded water for the grist mill which he operated with his son George.

On October 25, 1798, George Cheney brought his bride, Electa Woodbridge Cheney, to the Homestead to "keep house". To the couple were born eight sons and one daughter. With the exception of George Wells who had died, and Seth and John who became well-known artists, the brothers joined in establishing the Mt. Nebo Silk Company. The firm later incorporated as Cheney Brothers and became world famous as a leader in the silk industry.

Colonial Teenagers

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Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte at age 19, by Gilbert Stuart
Question

What was life in the American colonies like for teenagers?

Answer

In colonial America, there were not really any “teenagers” as we know them. Of course, children passed through the decade that we know as the “teens,” but that stage of their lives was not the carefree, exploratory period that today’s youth experience. Children grew into adulthood more quickly than they do today, and by the time a child entered their teen years, they were already on a path toward their life’s occupation. Although a youth’s path to adulthood depended on their family’s socio-economic status, regardless of wealth, young men usually learned their trade through some form of apprenticeship.

Children from poor families were often bound out to servitude at a young age, earning their keep while learning a trade. In the seventeenth century, 80% of the Chesapeake’s immigrants were indentured servants. Many of these servants were over the age of 20, but a significant number were young men and women still in their teens. In return for their passage to the Chesapeake, these servants agreed to work for a period of time, usually between four and seven years, without pay. During their service, masters provided food, clothing and shelter, and at the end of their term, servants received “freedom dues,” usually three barrels of corn and a suit of clothes. Many of these youths were orphans, but some were from indigent families who could not care for their children, and therefore sent them off to find their own fortunes. But a young person did not have to travel across the Atlantic to enter into servitude. At the age of 12, Benjamin Franklin was apprenticed to his brother, James, a Philadelphia printer. In his autobiography, Franklin recalled that his brother was “passionate” and often beat him. “Thinking my apprenticeship very tedious,” Franklin stated, he “was continually wishing for some opportunity of shortening it.” At the age of 17, Franklin ran away from his brother’s household.

Children of wealthier families also took on considerable responsibility at a young age. Children from families of middling means often learned how to read and write, especially if they lived in urban areas. By the time they were in their mid-teens, sons were at work in the family farm or business, learning the trade that they would probably practice the rest of their lives. In the wealthiest families adolescent boys were often sent to boarding school, and then when they were around 15 years of age, they entered institutions such as Harvard, William and Mary, or Yale. After finishing their formal education, many took apprenticeships as clerks in merchant offices or law offices, or they returned home to follow their fathers’ profession.

Only young men were allowed to pursue higher education. Although there were a few opportunities for girls to receive a more extensive formal education in the colonial period, most families kept their daughters at home to learn how to run a household and to be a dutiful mate for her future husband. There were rare exceptions to this convention, however. In 1738, when Eliza Lucas was 15, her father moved her and her mother from Antigua, West Indies, to a plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. Her father’s travels with the army and her mother’s ill health forced Eliza to manage the family business. In a letter to a woman friend, Eliza Lucas described her duties: “I have the business of 3 plantations to transact, which requires much writing and more business and fatigue of other sorts than you can imagine.” But, she assured her friend that “I think myself happy that I can be useful to so good a father, and by rising very early I find I can go through much business.” Lucas assumed an unusual burden as a young woman, but eventually she followed a somewhat conventional path – she married a planter and had children, yet she continued to hold considerable responsibility in the management of her husband’s plantations.

For more information

Brewer, Holly. By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Demos, John. A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Herndon, Ruth Wallis and John E. Murray, eds. Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009.

Marten, James, ed. Children in Colonial America. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

Bibliography

Eliza Lucas Pinckney. The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 1739-1762. Ed. by Elise Pinckney and Marvin R. Zahniser. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.