Taylor Stoermer

Last week I gave a talk to Museum Studies students at my school about the perceived and actual differences between academic and public historians as a way of introducing my course in the spring, The Practice of Public History. During my talk, to a fantastic group, I covered a wide range of topics and ideas, partly driven by my impressions of the implications of recent reports that revealed history-related institutions make up more than half of all museums, yet account for less than a fifth of the total financial resources devoted to cultural and heritage organizations.  I also talked about the importance of evaluating programs and establishing a clear definition of success that included a discussion about fitting different modes of interpretation (first-person costumed, third-person, tech-driven, etc.) to one’s ostensible purpose.  That’s because when done well, first-person interpretation, complete with buckled shoes and frilly shirts, can be a powerful tool of public history, reaching and impacting more people, and shaping their understanding of the past, than might ever read the books written by Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, Pauline Maier, and Jack Greene (my own mentor), combined.  Conversely, when done poorly, when the facts aren’t straight and the persona is off, it can create enormous damage to an observer’s historical consciousness, and drive more dismissal of the tactic, even of the entire field, by “proper” historians, whether they lecture in an august classroom or muse in a comfortable armchair.

The example I used of first-person interpretation at its best was Bill Barker, who portrays one of the more difficult–because tremendously complicated–historical figures, Thomas Jefferson, at Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, and elsewhere.  As I know quite well, having once been his neighbor and chief annoyance at CW (which almost resulted in the burning down of an historic structure, but that’s a different story), Bill is not only an expert on his subject on a level at, or even greater than, many Jefferson historians of my acquaintance, he also knows what that ill-defined, undifferentiated mass we call the “public” expects from him as Jefferson, complexities and all.  And he does a tremendously good job of bridging the exceptionally problematic gap between Jeffersonian fiction and fact, which is saying quite something because there is quite a bit of the former and nowhere near enough of the latter when it comes to the tall Virginia redhead.  Bill knows his craft and the impact it has on his audience, whether they have met him for the first or hundredth time, and he takes that responsibility with the utmost seriousness.  That’s because he is fully aware of the trust he assumes whenever he takes on the persona of Jefferson; he has the power to inspire and engage, but along with that comes the potential to disappoint and derail.

I wasn’t thinking of Bill, though, when I actually got up to talk last week.  I was thinking about another interpreter of an American president, one perhaps not as well-traveled as Bill, but one just as professional and every bit as influential, and who I, sitting there in a Harvard lecture hall, had just been informed by my niece had passed away at the age of 83: James Getty.  For almost 40 years, Getty portrayed Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for much of that time at his studio on Steinwehr Avenue, “A. Lincoln’s Place.”  And it was there, on the evening of September 27, 1978, that an eight-year-old from Baltimore, who before then had spent more time on horseback than in a library, became an historian.  To avoid the risk of turning this post into a maudlin personal memoir (“too late,” you might say), I’ll just relate that my parents and grandparents, wanting to nurture my nascent interest in the past, arranged a “private audience” for me with Getty as Mr. Lincoln.  And for a time, I was enthralled by his kindness and his knowledge.  For an hour or so, 1978 turned into 1863 and there was no one else in the world but me and the 16th President of the United States, with my family playing the role of an indulgent audience to what must have seemed an odd discussion between a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy in a striped shirt and a tall man with a black beard and a stovepipe hat.  I was never the same after that evening.  I devoured works on Lincoln and the Civil War, returned countless times to Gettysburg and other battlefields, and then moved on to study the American Revolution and the ideas behind what happened “Four score and seven years” before my ostensible meeting with Mr. Lincoln.  I also continued to carry with me the tremendous gift that he had given me, of being able to suspend one’s disbelief to become, even briefly, a time traveler, and thereby, as an historian, better grasp the perspective of people I’ll never really know but can attempt to understand on their own terms, as people in their own world, one much different, in many but not all ways, from our own.

And that, in a nutshell, is the power of the first-person interpreter, and also the responsibility that accompanies it should a public history program developer or individual interpreter choose to take on such a role.  The clothes do not make the historical man or woman.  As I became more educated about Lincoln, I became more impressed over time with what I remembered about James Getty’s portrayal and how much he got right.  I also recognized what I do not remember: Whether his boots were the right cut or his buttons the right size.  What was more important, and just as Bill Barker accomplishes as Jefferson every day, James Getty created an authentic historical moment as Lincoln, even for one otherwise unremarkable little boy.

In that sense, costumed portrayals, whether as a famous or forgotten person of the past, come with a high cost in terms of education and training about both the subject and, critically, the ethics of it.  I personally tutored CW’s James Madison (the splendid Bryan Austin) for several grueling months before we let him interact with guests, because we knew what could happen when the first-person experience goes awry, in turning off guests or, worse, miseducating them about the past.  And that is perhaps more important today, when candidates and pontificators increasingly attempt to use history as a tool to further their own political or ideological causes.  The people, therefore, need to be forearmed with their own knowledge about the past, if, for no other reason, to use as a shield against those who would attempt to take advantage of ignorance to influence behavior.

And, on a much more personal note, had not James Getty accepted his calling with such alacrity and integrity, Harvard Yard would be home to one fewer historian today, which would be a shame, indeed.

This was going to be a quick post comparing two historic sites in Keene, New Hampshire, about an important building that has been turned into a Mexican restaurant (the shrimp tacos were terrific) and a well-funded, well-interpreted, and entirely forgettable building just a few blocks away that could tomorrow disappear without a trace and no one would notice.  Moreover, I strenuously try to avoid writing about Colonial Williamsburg (CW) given my intimate association with the place and ongoing relationships with the people who were and are there.  But the CW that I remember, and to which I owe so much, seems increasingly to be a part of the history of heritage tourism, so much is the place changing under its new leadership.  Whether those changes are for good or ill are impossible for me to say.  As Jefferson might put it, those matters might be best left for “the mists of time” to reveal.  I mean, one can roll one’s eyes at the introduction of pirate ghosts in new Halloween programming as wrongheaded, since Blackbeard’s pirates had little to do with Williamsburg and the city’s colonial denizens did not recognize October 31 as anything but the night before November 1 (and the nearby Mariner’s Museum, where it’s mission-appropriate, already does the pirate thing with panache).  But if the details of history are to be shaved a bit to boost short-term ticket sales, then that’s an interpretive choice with which one can politely disagree.  In any case, there’s no avoiding the fact that everything CW does now is worth watching by public and academic historians (I still don’t get the difference between the two) because, like it or not, it has become an object lesson in how to remake, or reimagine, a financially struggling historic site.  And a massive one at that.  So under a gargantuan microscope it goes.

The most important changes, in my opinion, are not really those involving the costumed interpretations on the streets or in the buildings.  As my compatriots here in Boston have learned, I have strong opinions on such things but, in the end, guests will vote with their credit and debit cards on them, regardless of how much folks like me grumble about their content, and then scholars can glean lessons from them.  It’s the decisions that are not so visible and have a greater long-term potential impact that beg for more targeted comment.  I recently wrote about CW’s decision to end its 72-year relationship with the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, a place fairly described by one of America’s finest historians as “one of the crown jewels of the American historical profession” — news that still baffles me and my colleagues in that profession.  And this morning, in a much less straightforward move, word arrived in my e-mail inbox that, if true, might deal yet another blow to CW’s mission “That the Future May Learn from the Past”: The potential departure of the Vice President in charge of the division of Productions, Publications and Learning Ventures (PPLV), the rumored end to future Electronic Field Trips, and a possible directive that PPLV–the fine folks behind CW’s most valuable education programs–wrap up all existing projects.  Merely the thought of all that leaves one with scarcely a word to say.  Well, almost.

In 1930, the Rev. W. A. R. Goodwin, the leading architect of Williamsburg’s restoration, reflected on the purpose of the place and the reasons for spending so much of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s money on it during the Great Depression.  Rockefeller, of course, had long been aware of the importance of preserving America’s past.  One could spend an entire summer visiting wonderful places across the northeast, such as Washington Irving’s Sunnyside, that would have disappeared long ago had it not been for Rockefeller largesse.  But in Williamsburg, the team of Goodwin and Rockefeller had something more active in mind — not preservation, but restoration, and not just the restoration of an entire colonial capital, but that of a state of mind.  Yes, that vision was infused with an almost nauseating, to modern sensibilities, notion of American exceptionalism, and flavored with hefty doses of hero worship for the “great men” of the founding era.  It was intended to infuse guests with a new understanding of patriotism and “a deeper love for their native land.”  But their scope also proved capacious enough to leave room for later CW leaders to also restore, along with the buildings, the experience of those mostly left out of the historical record, whom also built the American nation, women and men, free and enslaved, as part of a fascinating trajectory that one could map along with changes in American society.

Either way, the core of Rockefeller’s original goal was education and, through it, inspiration.  The team of Rockefeller and Goodwin looked to a future in which “Modern windows will open on vistas stretching through the distance into the past.”  And those vistas were opened and expanded as technology advanced, whether to the academic community through the William & Mary Quarterly, to guests through tours and programs based on firm scholarship, to schoolchildren through the terrific Electronic Field Trips, and, most recently, through the innovations of CW’s Digital History Center, which reconstructed the Revolutionary City of 1776, allowing online visitors to “walk” through a nifty Virtual Williamsburg, based on the latest architectural, archaeological, and historical research, without leaving their homes.  Generations of CW leaders and interpreters held on to that original vision of inspiration through education and have allowed ever more expansive audiences to stretch “through the distance into the past” and connect that past to their present.

But, seen in a certain light, that commitment could seem at risk.  The spin from CW will likely be that any moves involving education programs are part of a major and much-needed reorganization, which would be wrapped around just enough truth to be excusable.  And they could add that their commitment to education remains strong.  After all, haven’t they just committed to new online learning programs for teachers?  Furthermore, EFTs were expensive productions and ever tightening public school budgets meant that fewer of them could afford to participate in the program.  In short, EFTs won Emmy awards but lost money, and with belts tightening across CW, like it or not, tough decisions have to be made about what programs can be kept and what can be sacrificed.

The main concern, though, is not the reality but the perception of such changes, coming on the heels of decisions like the separation from the Omohundro Institute.  They raise legitimate questions of whether CW, or any similarly situated institution, has lost its way in favor of improving its bottom line as quickly as possible.  It’s just as likely, as a good friend of mine at CW nicely and accurately put it this morning, that the boatloads of intellect and imagination possessed by the people at PPLV can be harnessed to help guide whatever reorganization results, and leave them with a streamlined, but much more effective, mission.  That’s a worthwhile set of questions for any, even every, historic site.  I consistently argue to sites and the people who run them that fiscal stability, organizational effectiveness, community engagement, and a commitment to a relevant, clearly identified mission are not mutually exclusive.  Or at least they don’t have to be.

In any case, the issues swirling around Colonial Williamsburg could make it the highest rated reality show in public history, something the producers at the Travel Channel should scramble for, given where it is on a new story arc and the plot lines that are developing in front of observers.  Let’s just hope the resolution isn’t that of a declension narrative, especially for Rockefeller’s vision: Inspiration of the present through education about the past strikes me as a pretty good reason to get up in the morning, every morning.

America’s historical mythology is much in the news these days, causing even President Obama to call for “an honest accounting of America’s history” as a means of healing painful and persistent wounds.  But our flawed national narrative did not begin in 1861, however, or even in 1787.  It goes back even farther than that, to the very beginning, to 1775 and 1776.  I was reminded of that, the intellectual basis of much of my own work on the American Revolution, when I recently visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.  The beginning of the introductory film to the museum set a noble and important challenge for historians and citizens alike.  With audio drawn from a speech delivered by President Kennedy at Yale University’s commencement ceremony on June 11, 1962, which was drafted by distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a member of the White House staff, it humorously played with the rivalry between Yale and Harvard before launching into the much more serious business of charging Yale graduates that day to disenthrall themselves from the powerful myths of our past, so they can confront the present with a new sense of reality and, therefore, a stronger idea of our shared strength, because we have honestly acknowledged our common weaknesses.

For many reasons, such as the terrible recent events that have dominated our collective consciousness, and because in my academic work I strive, foremost, to disentangle myth from reality in the moment of America’s founding — and, perhaps, also because, 50 years later, I have followed Schlesinger as a Fellow in the History Department at Harvard, and therefore feel something of an obligation to his own memory as a historian who keenly understood our professional commitment to public service — these words struck me and remain both a powerful reminder and a stern warning.

Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. Mythology distracts us everywhere. For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, contrived, and dishonest. But the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

Many thanks to the John F. Kennedy Library & Museum for access to the original draft and notes to this speech.

That the loyalists of the American Revolution helped shape the British Empire after independence is no secret.  In particular, Maya Jasanoff highlighted the importance of the “loyalist diaspora” to the development of Canada and other parts of the British world in her terrific Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (2011).  There were also those figures who I call “legacies” of the Revolutionary loyalists, the sons and daughters of those who, but for their loyalty to the British constitution, would have finished their days in New York or Virginia or Massachusetts and therefore never have had to opportunity to act on the stage of greater British history.  As we today remember the Battle of Waterloo, the ultimate conflict of the Napoleonic Wars, an era much more transformative and costly to Britain than anything that happened on this side of the Atlantic, and much more important to early American history than is generally considered, my thoughts inevitably turn to those loyalist legacies that, if one looks closely enough, can be found almost anywhere.  And, true to form, one needs look no further than the entourage of Wellington himself 200 years ago today for a direct connection between America–in this case, New York–and a battlefield in Belgium.

Fairly well known is Sir William Howe DeLancey, who, as Wellington’s chief of staff, was the senior British casualty of the battle.  Less well known is the officer who was by his side that day, and attended DeLancey when he was first struck by enemy fire: his first cousin, DeLancey Barclay.  Like Delancey, who was born in New York City in 1778, Barclay was born in British New York to loyalist parents, on 16 June 1780 in Hell’s Gate, Long Island.  His father, Thomas Henry Barclay, was the brother of Cornelia DeLancey, William Howe DeLancey’s mother.  A former lawyer who had studied with John Jay and was related to him by marriage, Thomas Henry was then an officer in the Loyal American Regiment, commanded by his brother-in-law, the erstwhile Virginian Beverley Robinson.  Barclay, it seems, was related to a Who’s Who of American revolutionary notables, from Jay to Robert Livingston to Lord Stirling to Benjamin Franklin.  But as a result of his father’s loyalty, DeLancey Barclay started off life in British occupied New York City and then, after the British evacuation in 1783, lived in Annapolis, Nova Scotia, before possibly returning to New York City when his father was appointed British consul-general for the Eastern United States in 1799.  Not long after, however, on 11 January 1800, DeLancey Barclay followed his cousin, by then Sir William, into the British army.

For the next 15 years, Barclay steadily moved up the ranks from Cornet in the 17th Dragoons to, in 1814, Captain and Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st Foot Guards.  On the day of the battle with Napoleon, 18 June 1815, New York must have seemed a distant memory–if a memory there was at all–to the American cousins riding behind Wellington.  According to the contemporary account of Sir William’s widow, Lady Magdalen Hall DeLancey, the battle “began about eleven; near three, when Sir William was riding beside the Duke [of Wellington], a cannon ball struck him on the back, at the right shoulder, and knocked him off his horse to several yards distance.”  The Duke, having, of course, other things to attend to (like saving the free world), paused to bid goodbye to his friend and then rode on to attend to the fighting.  But Sir William was not left alone.  His cousin, Colonel DeLancey Barclay:

“…who had seen him fall, went to him instantly, and tried to prevail upon him to be removed to the rear, as he was in imminent danger of being crushed by the artillery, which was fast approaching the spot; and also there was danger of his falling into the hands of the enemy. He entreated to be left on the ground, and said it was impossible he could live; that they might be of more use to others, and he only begged to remain on the field. But as he spoke with ease, and Colonel Barclay saw that the ball had not entered, he insisted on moving him, and he took the opinion of a surgeon, who thought he might live, and got some soldiers to carry him in a blanket to a barn at the side of the road, a little to the rear.  The wound was dressed, and then Colonel Barclay had to return to the Division; but first he gave orders to have Sir William moved to the village; for that barn was in danger of being taken possession of by the enemy. Before Colonel Barclay went, Sir William begged him to come quite close to him, and continued to give him messages for me. Nothing else seemed to occupy his mind. He desired him to write to me at Antwerp; to say everything kind, and to endeavour to soften this business, and to break it to me as gently as he could. He then said he might move him, as if he fancied it was to be his last effort. He was carried to the village of Waterloo, and left in a cottage….”

Sir William died a week later, attended by his wife to the end.  The Episcopal Church of All Saints, Waterloo, now stands roughly on the site of the cottage to which DeLancey Barclay had him moved.  He was buried in Belgium and now lies with the other casualties of the battle.

But what of his cousin?  Barclay survived the battle and rose in his profession, as well as in his country’s esteem.  He married, purchased a country house in southern England, became aide-de-camp to the Duke of York, was brevetted Colonel of the 1st Foot Guards, and then advanced with the Duke when he became King George IV, who made Barclay a Companion of the Bath and aide-de-camp to the British monarch.  Barclay would not, however, enjoy such lofty emoluments for long, as he died in England in 1826.  His father, then still living in New York as a British diplomat, wrote upon hearing the news:

“On the 29 March, 1826, departed this life our beloved son DeLancey Barclay, after an illness of three days.  In addition to his being an amiable, correct man and a dutiful, affectionate son and husband, he was one of the most promising and rapidly advancing men in the British Army. … His death was universally lamented. To his aged parents and friends his loss is irreparable.”

That loss was felt in many places in New York, including a small hamlet on the Hudson River — Saugerties — where DeLancey’s brother, Henry Barclay, helped build a community, quite literally, in the new United States.  The product of the same loyalist context as his brother, Henry chose an American life, grasping the opportunities offered by the industrial revolution to build mills, homes, and several churches, including Trinity Episcopal Church, for himself, his family, and friends, and St. Mary of the Snow Roman Catholic Church, for his mainly Irish immigrant workers.  He also helped establish the village itself and served as its first president — a rather different loyalist legacy than that of his brother, DeLancey, a hero of Waterloo.

When I usually take to this blog, at least of late, it’s either to share an interesting historical tidbit or cheerlead for the Save Sweet Briar Campaign.  I do, after all, have a book to write.  Today’s post is therefore a first for me: A book endorsement.  I can hardly call it a review, as I’m in no way dispassionate or nonpartisan about the work, so enthusiastically do I endorse Dr. Joan Bines’ Words They Lived By: Colonial New England Speech, Then and Now (2013).  A fellow University of Virginia alumnus, Dr. Bines has been deep in the trenches of public history for some time as the director of a terrific and important site in Weston, Massachusetts — The Golden Ball Tavern, an 18th-century inn that is the only place I know that tells the story of the loyalists in the American Revolution and tells it well.

With her experience as an educator of students of all ages, her infectious love of language, and a keen talent for concise, even charming, description, Dr. Bines has provided a clear answer to a question with which I wrestled when I was chief historian at Colonial Williamsburg, dealing with a legion of first-person interpreters and other guides: What did men and women sound like in the 18th century?  Thankfully, there is no shortage of literary evidence from the period, but there is a somewhat frustrating paucity of sources that tell us much of anything about common speech in colonial America.  Sure, we can pull out a play by Robert Munford or a sermon by George Whitfield and refer to their vocabulary and sentence structure, but they cannot be considered representative by any stretch of the imagination.  I encouraged CW’s interpreters to read what I encourage my students to read — as many 18th-century Anglo-American sources as possible, especially the sort that were geared towards broader audiences, such as newspapers, novels, and pamphlets.  But I always hoped for a secondary source, written informatively and engagingly and with proper scholarly apparatus (e.g., accessible footnotes!) that could provide interpreters, guides, and, frankly, anyone interested in the daily lives of colonial Americans, with a firm foundation on which to build their understanding of the men and women of that time.

So imagine my surprise and pleasure in happening upon Dr. Bines’ book on my recent return to New England, which accomplishes all that I wished for CW’s interpreters and guests (the ultimate beneficiaries).  Do not let the title fool you: Although it nominally focuses on New England, and its primary sources are mainly derived from this place and its people, it is tremendously useful regardless of one’s region of interest, so nicely does it explore and explain basic assumptions of colonial American speech, including syntax, vocabulary, and the slipperiness of idiom.  As I implied above, it is based on the right sources and limited to a manageable chronological period so as to be reliably representative.  Of course, it does not reflect the speech patterns of enslaved men and women — for that, we must keep on searching — but it also does not presume to do so.  It does, however, draw so many of its sources from women, that gender is not really an issue.  Moreover, Dr. Bines has organized it quite well, in terms of its chapters, aptly illustrated it with her own photography, and included a quite helpful bibliography and index.

Is the book the be-all and end-all of the subject?  Of course not.  But it doesn’t pretend to be.  Dr. Bines’ work is, however, the best foundation I’ve encountered upon which to build one’s practical understanding of colonial American speech.  To even approach a vernacular understanding of the period, I’d combine it with Mary Miley Theobald’s Death By Petticoat: American History Myths Debunked, published a few years ago by CW (or just follow her blog), and then build on that with a heavy dose of Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum (go with the 2nd edition of 1736, which was found in more colonial libraries than any other English dictionary, including Johnson’s) and a few servings of the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  But do start with Dr. Bines’ splendid book.  By doing so, I guarantee that you’ll not only learn much about the 18th-century world, but also a great deal about our own.