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| Photo by Elizabeth Richardson. Used with permission. |
Dear Friends,
As a volunteer for an historical park, some of my favorite moments are when visitors become part of the research process. With the surge in hobby genealogy, some folks have discovered that their ancestors fought in the "Battle of the Monocacy" - or lived on the land where the battle was fought - and decide to come take a trip to visit the place they're learning about. Sometimes they'll bring a letter or diary or other some other object from that ancestor to show us. When we're very, very lucky, that artifact changes our understanding of history.
That may sound odd, because some would think it impolite to say to a complete stranger, "I noticed you talked about ______. I have a letter from my great-great-uncle who was there, and he talked about that differently." I think there's a common misconception that our understanding of history is static and will never change. After all, something happened or it didn't, right? Well, yes and no.
We can't assess history as it happens; we're too close to see it objectively. The more time passes, the more information is blurred or lost. As historians, no matter the genre, we make assessments and conclusions based on the best information we have at the time, and as we find new evidence, we need to revisit our earlier conclusions to see if they still hold. Understanding our history is sometimes less like viewing a photograph and more like a billion-piece jigsaw puzzle with a blurry picture on the cover; with that many pieces, some are going to be extremely similar. A piece may seem to fit over here, and then 100 pieces later, we realize another piece makes more sense in that spot, and that original piece really needs to go there.
When I started this blog post, I was initially going to talk about an unpublished letter that was brought to the park's attention and has contributed to the conversation around the infamous "Lost Orders," or Confederate General Lee's Special Order 191. However, Ranger Tracy Evans has already written a great article that touches on all the information about S.O. 191; you can read that here. Instead, I thought I'd give a much shorter -and everyday - example using something I found about L'Hermitage.
If you've read my post on Victoire's business acumen, the following advertisement1 from 1820 will look familiar:
A HANDSOME FARM,
FOR SALE.
THE subscriber offers for sale, her FARM, containing 500 ACRES OF PRIME LAND, the greatest part of which has been improved by clover and plaster. This Farm is beautifully situated on Monocacy River, three miles from Fredericktown, (Md.) on the George-town road, 38 miles from the latter city, and 10 from Potomac; about 60 acres of it are in fine tim[b]er.
THE improvements are -- good two story STONE HOUSE with six rooms and a Cellar; stone barn; stone stable, large enough for 15 horses; a good two story log dwelling log house; a granary, corn, pigeon, meat log houses; ice house and others; a large well, which, altho' upon a hill, has never less than 20 feet of most excellent lime stone water, even in the driest seasons; a good and well situated garden, of four acres of fruit trees, of several kinds.
Also, a tract containing 250 Acres of LAND, adjoining the above, and only two miles from Fredericktown, which will be sold with, or seperate [sic] from the first.
Also, a tract of 37 Acres of Mountain LAND, on the east bank of Monocacy, opposite the above farm. For further information apply to Mr. PETER LAFONT, Baltimore, and the Owner living in said Farm.
VICTOIRE VINCENDIERE
april 28
I found this advertisement very soon after the Monocacy Living Historians participated in the open house for this farm, so the conclusions made about it in the Monocacy National Battlefield Cultural Resources Study2 were quite fresh in my mind. On page 59, the study asserts the following:
The Vincendieres at the same time they were building the main house, probably also had constructed, or outfitted the upper log portion of the log and stone secondary dwelling, as the interior woodwork in the log portion matches that in the south wing of the main house. The Vincendieres definitely were responsible for the construction of the stone French style barn on the property. There were probably other buildings on the property, as well. If Victoire had 90 slaves by 1800, they had to live somewhere, unless she leased them out to other farmers.
The implication from the phrase “probably other outbuildings as well,” is that we don’t have any information on those other outbuildings. Does the advertisement fill in some of those gaps? Yes, at least partially! This is the exciting part of finding real estate advertisements for our properties. We can now add a stone stable, a granary, a corn house*, a pigeon house, a meat house, an ice house, a well on a hill, and we now have confirmation there were other outbuildings as well.
While we still don't know how they were constructed or exactly where they were, knowing this helps us reconstruct in our minds the scenery and rhythm of their daily lives. In fact, with the exception of the stable, all of the listed outbuildings tell us quite a bit about the kinds of foods that could have been part of their diet at L'Hermitage. The reference to the garden and 4-acre fruit orchard, while not a building, does as well. We don't have to go much further than Marie Antoinette's infamous "Let them eat cake" comment to know that diets were very different among the different classes in France (and elsewhere, but the Vincendieres were French); knowing what they ate helps us understand who they thought they were. Did they see themselves as untitled American aristocracy? As part of a wealthier middle class?
Then, too, as we work to give a voice to the voiceless - and in many cases nameless - people who worked on her plantation, every piece of information we find can be tied back to their story. For example, the advertisement above tells us her stable would hold 15 horses. Knowing about the horse power used on their farm tells us more about Victoire's expectations of her slaves. The fewer horses she had, the more she would have needed to make up the difference in labor from people in order to get a maximum yield from her land.
Now if a visitor would just walk through the doors with a diary or letter passed down in their family from someone who was there and talked about what it was like, that would be a cherry on my ice cream sundae because it would help make sure we get it right.
*There is a wood frame wagon shed + corn crib on the farm today, and it is original. However, according to the Cultural Resources Study, it dates from the mid- to late-19th century (translation: well after the Vincendiere era).
1 Vincendiere, Victoire. "A Handsome Farm [advertisement]." Baltimore Patriot, 12 June 1820, p. 1.↩
2 Reed, Paula Stoner. Monocacy National Battlefield Cultural Resources Study. Interior Department, National Park Service, 1999, pp. 58-60.↩
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