On a Journey Through Hallowed Ground

Date Published
Image
Photo, Of the Student, For the Student, By the Student, Chris Preperato
Article Body

How do you engage your students in history? Do you introduce them to the lives of other children and students in the past? Explore local history with them? Bring digital media and tools into the classroom? The Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership's education program combines all three techniques to support students in better understanding the past.

In 2008, Congress recognized the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Heritage Area, a strip of land encompassing 15 counties and more than 10,000 registered historic sites in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Formed to raise awareness of the area and its resources, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership focuses on encouraging not just tourism, but education and historical engagement.

What major events anchor local history in your area? How did young people participate in those events?

"Of the Student, For the Student, and By the Student"—the name of the partnership's award-winning educational program sums up its philosophy. Starting with Harpers Ferry, moving on to Monticello, and then beginning a multi-year project set on the Heritage Area's Civil War national parks, Of the Student, For the Student, By the Student gives middle school students and teachers the knowledge and tools to engage with local historic sites.

At each historic site, teachers, staff, and volunteers introduce students to the site's rich history. Armed with new knowledge and enthusiasm, small groups of students create their own mini-documentary or historical fiction scripts and film "on location" at the historic site. Working together as writers, directors, and actors, students come away from the program with a sense of ownership and a deeper connection to the history of their communities.

Do you have access to a video camera or two? What major events anchor local history in your area? How did young people participate in those events? How were they affected by them? On a smaller scale, you and your students may be able to create historical mini-movies of your own. Check out The Journey Through Hallowed Ground's YouTube channel for more than 40 "vodcasts" created by Of the Student, For the Student, and By the Student participants, or learn more about the project from Teachinghistory.org's peek into student filming at Manassas National Battlefield Park. Does anything inspire you (or your students)?

For more information

Learn more about The Journey Through Hallowed Ground on its official website. Its Education section includes more on Of the Student, For the Student, By the Student and other programs, as well as more than 13 lesson plans.

Think your students are too young for film-making? Think again! Award-winning teacher Jennifer Orr describes how she uses video cameras with her 1st-grade students.

Encyclopedia Virginia

Image
image of old sea map to Bermuda
Annotation

Encyclopedia Virginia, a publication of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities), explores the people, history, economy, government, and culture of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Users can browse nearly 6,500 entries in over 35 categories—arranged alphabetically—as well as sign up for a free My Virginia account, which allows users to bookmark specific entries, images, and videos. Each entry contains links to related topics on the site, (when available) images, timelines, and further reading. Users will also find a list of external links on the right side of the web page.

Perhaps the most interesting tool is Explore Virginia, a search engine which lets users choose categories, event types, and place types. Each category and type listing states the number of associated items. To the right of the page, "Explore Virginia" displays a Google Map of the state with markers for each entry item by search criteria. To minimize the number of entry markers displayed on the map, users can refine the search criteria using the sliding markers on the timeline tool or by selecting categories and types.

Another helpful feature for educators is the site’s blog. Updated on a regular basis, blog entries contextualize items on the site and provide images with citations, as well as helpful links, that teachers will find useful in incorporating Virginia history into the U.S. curriculum.

Overall, Encyclopedia Virginia is a helpful site for any student or teacher looking to augment the teaching of U.S. history through the lives of notable Virginians.

Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive

Image
Logo, Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive
Annotation

More than 1,700 texts written by or to Thomas Jefferson are available on this website, including correspondence, books, addresses, and public papers. While most texts are presented in transcribed, word-searchable format, 18 appear as color images of original manuscripts.

The site also includes a biography of Jefferson written in 1834, eight years after his death. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, published in 1900, organizes more than 9,000 quotes according to theme and other categories. A collection of 2,700 excerpts from Jefferson's writings present his political philosophy. A wealth of searchable bibliographic listings is provided, including two previously published volumes and thousands of additional bibliographic references.

Also available are a recent dissertation on the construction of the Jefferson-designed University of Virginia (UVA), listings from the Oxford English Dictionary that show Jefferson's influence on English-language usage, and four links to UVA exhibitions on Jefferson.

"Join or Die"

field_image
woodcut, 1754, Benjamin Franklin, Join or Die, org. pub. in Pennsylvania Gazette
Question
Why aren't Delaware and Georgia included on the body of Ben Franklin's famous "Join or Die" snake? And why did the artist combine the four northeastern colonies as one?
Answer

The "Join, or Die" snake, a cartoon image printed in numerous newspapers as the conflict between England and France over the Ohio Valley was expanding into war—"the first global war fought on every continent," as Thomas Bender recently has written—first appeared in the May 9, 1754 edition of Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette. The image displayed a snake cut up into eight pieces. The snake’s detached head was labeled "N.E." for “New England,” while the trailing seven sections were tagged with letters representing the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The exhortation "JOIN, or DIE" appeared underneath the image.

Lester C. Olson points out that Franklin might have seen images of snakes divided into two segments that had been published in Paris in 1685, 1696, and 1724 with the similar caption "Se rejoinder ou mourir." The image in the Pennsylvania Gazette followed an article reporting the recent surrender of a British frontier fort to the French army and purported plans of the French, with their Indian allies, to establish a massive frontier presence with which to terrify British settlers and traders. The article ended with the surmise that the French were confident they would be able to "take an easy Possession of such Parts of the British Territory as they find most convenient for them" due to the "present disunited State of the British Colonies" and warned that the French success "must end in the Destruction of the British interest; Trade and Plantations in America."

Franklin was opposed in his efforts to unify the colonies by representatives of some of the colonial assemblies

A longtime advocate of intercolonial union in dealings with Indians, Franklin helped make such a union an important agenda item for the Albany Congress, convened shortly after the snake image was published, on earlier orders from the Board of Trade, the British advisory council on colonial policy, with the goal of establishing one treaty between all the colonies and the Six Nations of Iroquois. As a commissioner to the congress appointed by the governor of Pennsylvania, Franklin was opposed in his efforts to unify the colonies by representatives of some of the colonial assemblies intent on maintaining control over their own affairs.

Robert C. Newbold has speculated that Georgia was probably excluded from the snake image, "because, as a defenseless frontier area, it could contribute nothing to common security." Only three laws had been passed in Georgia since its founding as a colony in 1732, prompting a historian of the colony and state to conclude, "The hope that Georgia might become a self-reliant province of soldier-farmers had not succeeded, and even the early debtor-haven dream had not come to pass." Delaware, Newbold added, "shared the same governor, albeit a different legislature, as Pennsylvania; hence the Gazette probably considered it as included with Pennsylvania."

As with the snake image, the Albany Plan, drafted during the congress, did not include Georgia and Delaware in its proposed colonial union for mutual defense and security, specifying only Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The segmented snake image was revived in a number of newspapers during the 1765 Stamp Act conflict, again without reference to Georgia and Delaware. In 1774, when the segmented snake image, along with the "Join or Die" slogan, was employed as a masthead for newspapers in York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, a pointed tail labeled "G" for Georgia had been added.

Bibliography

Thomas Bender, A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History . New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Lester C. Olson, Emblems of American Community in the Revolutionary Era: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.

Albert Matthews, "The Snake Devices, 1754-1776, and the Constitutional Courant, 1765," Publications of The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume XI: Transactions, 1906-1907.

Library of Congress. "Join or Die". Accessed February 25, 2011.

Richmond National Battlefield Park [VA]

Description

Richmond's story is not just the tale of one large Civil War battle, nor even one important campaign. Instead, the park's resources include a naval battle, a key industrial complex, the Confederacy's largest hospital, dozens of miles of elaborate original fortifications, and the evocative spots where determined soldiers stood paces apart and fought with rifles, reaping a staggering human cost.

The site offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Petersburg National Battlefield [VA]

Description

"Dear Mother, we remained in the broiling sun in little pits the size of a common grave though not half so well furnished. There we lay and everytime a man Show his head Zip would come a minnie." This pressure was central to a soldier's experience in a 292-day siege. Here, Union forces slowly cut off Petersburg from the world and brought the fall of the Confederacy.

The site offers a short film, exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Claude Moore Colonial Farm [VA]

Description

Visitors to this site can step back in time and experience life on a small farm in northern Virginia. Living history programs and demonstrations offer a glimpse of what life was like for a poor farm family, just before the Revolutionary War.

A second website for this site, maintained by the Friends of Claude Moore Colonial Farm, can be found here.

The site offers demonstrations, educational programs, workshops, and recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Piscataway Park, Accokeek Foundation, and National Colonial Farm [MD]

Description

Piscataway Park is a scenic easement to preserve the view from Mount Vernon. There are many areas open to the public. Visitors can explore the National Colonial Farm, an 18th-century farm, maintained by the Accokeek Foundation, which depicts life for an ordinary tobacco planting family in Prince George's County in the 1770s.

A second website for the park, maintained by the Accokeek Foundation, can be found here.

The park and foundation offers workshops and occasional recreational and educational events; the farm offers demonstrations, workshops, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee National Memorial [VA]

Description

Arlington House was the home of Robert E. Lee and his family for 30 years and is uniquely associated with the Washington and Custis families. George Washington Parke Custis built the house to be his home and a memorial to George Washington, his step-grandfather. It is now preserved as a memorial to General Lee, who gained the respect of Americans in both the North and the South.

The house offers exhibits, tours, and educational programs.

Manassas National Battlefield Park [VA]

Description

The Manassas National Battlefield Park is home of two pivotal early Civil War battles. The second battle was a resounding Confederate victory, which put the Confederacy at the height of their power. The battlefield can be toured individually, or with the help of a park ranger. The battlefield is also home to many interpretive events throughout the year.

The battlefield offers group tours, daily interpretive events, miles of trails, field trip programs, and presentations and exhibits in the battlefield's visitor center. The website offers visitor information, an events calendar, curriculum materials, and historical information.