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| Photo by the National Park Service. Used with permission. |
Dear Friends,
We did it! The Monocacy National Battlefield opened the doors to the Thomas House last weekend, the conclusion of the Open House trifecta. I had a blast.
The Open House events this year were each a full weekend. For the Thomas House, Diane and I met at the battlefield on Friday night to make sure we had our bearings before we went in front of the public. Basically, we had a group meeting while hiking the Thomas Farm trail, which has to be my favorite kind of meeting. The park has opened the Thomas House a few times before, but it was restored into office space for the park's headquarters, which makes for a unique interpretation experience.
Last Saturday's weather was beautiful - sunny, warm but not crazy-hot - and we had several living historians camping outside. I never got a free minute to go talk to them, but a few came in at the end of the day and mentioned they had a non-stop stream of visitors. Yay! Most living historians I've met love talking to people about their areas of research, and I'm so glad they had a great day.
Don't think the outdoor historians were the only ones talking, however! The star of the show was the Thomas House itself: we had rangers and volunteers stationed throughout the house to talk about some of its historic features as our visitors wandered through, and Tracy had arranged to give the ranger program in the parlor. We had so many people interested in attending the ranger program that they all quickly became standing-room-only.
Since I was stationed in the entrance just outside the parlor, that gave me an opportunity to give an impromptu program each time. Ask me how happy I was to do that. C'mon, just ask me.
I was elated.
I was even happier when several people I spoke with mentioned they or others in their group grew up in either the manor house or the tenant house on the property. While we preserve the houses on the battlefield because they are witnesses of war, these houses were homes. Personally, I tend to avoid researching the modern families who lived in our historic properties because so many are still living and I want to respect their privacy. However, hearing about the Thomas House's more modern history as a home, and meeting some of the people who still consider it home even though they no longer live here, was so wonderful.
The park dates the manor house to about 1780, but acknowledges that it's possible that construction began several years earlier. James Marshall, the original owner, seems to have made Frederick County his home well before 1780, and had purchased the property even before that. He was a Scottish emigrant who made his fortune in tobacco trading and then dabbled in a few other areas like timber prospecting and land prospecting. Like my waistline, the house footprint expanded over the years and the style decor changed, but you can see from the photo above that the facade is styled to show its Federal origins. Diane's beautiful blue dress (in the picture at the top of this post) reflects the era the house was constructed. I'd love to show you the close-up photo the NPS took so you could see her dress more clearly, but the angle of that photo gave both of us double-chins - especially me - and I object to that.
My dress, on the other hand, is more appropriate for the Civil War battle that did so much damage to the house. I talked about a shell crashing into the dining room and exploding in earlier posts, but my favorite part of letting the public into the Thomas House is that I can point out some of the smaller bullet scarring in the front entryway. A woman and her sons came in about 10 minutes until closing on Saturday, and I asked if they just wanted to explore or if they'd like me to talk. Mom voted to hear me talk, but when Al gave me the 5-more-minutes-until-closing signal, Mom told the kids they could go explore very quickly while she listened to more stories. I asked them to let me tell them one quick story before they explored; naturally, I chose the story that ends with the bullet hole in the door and the scarring in the panelling. Mom, with a big grin on her face, said, "That was so the right call. They loved that."
(Shameless plug: If you're wondering what story ends with the bullet hole in the door, etc., come ask us at Museums by Candlelight. It's usually the second Saturday in December, and we like to host it in the Thomas House.)
Getting back to last weekend's event, the weather Sunday morning was less cheerful than Saturday's weather. Weather reports threatened all-day thunderstorms, and it was raining when I drove up to the Visitor Center. Fortunately, the rain stopped just before the event began so even though it was a slower start than Saturday, we still enjoyed quite a few guests.
I gave the formal programs on Sunday, and a few guests came up to me afterward to show me family photos taken at the Thomas House when it was a tenant farm. One brought a wedding photo from the 1930s; it was very obvious that it had been taken in the L at the rear of the house. She told me she would email us a copy; I haven't seen it yet but really hope she does.
After giving my last scheduled program of the day, I was cleaning up the parlor when Kelly brought in a couple who wanted to know more about the history of the house. I started talking, they found seats and settled in to enjoy themselves, and, a couple at a time, more and more people wandered in and decided to stay to listen. I'm learning that I really like being able to give off-the-cuff presentations. I would have thought I'd like the safety net of having slides, but I'm finding that I get more interaction from the audience when it's just me and them, and I like the flexibility to adjust if I'm seeing cues that something either isn't resonating or is generating more interest than I expected.
Because I was downstairs all weekend and Diane was upstairs, we didn't really get to see each other. Naturally, after the event, Diane and I had another "group meeting" over dinner where we recapped the weekend and talked about ideas for the future.
I have so many ideas I want to share with you, so please stay tuned for some exciting new posts!
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