David Young’s book interprets public history efforts of Germantown over the course of the last one hundred years, as he spans from World War I to modern day. David Young is someone who is passionate about his community, and his dedication can be seen throughout the book. His book centers on the puts practice in action, as he works with individuals in the community to understand and interpret the history of Germantown.
David Young’s microhistory of Germantown illustrates where history has gone wrong in the past, and highlights and suggests ways that historians can and should engage with the public to establish a better understanding of the topic. He does this by weaving narratives of lived experience of the people with these historic houses. He argues against insular historian practices and entrenched interests that led to preservation of Germantown and presentation of a certain way, ‘’These new public historians began to overcome tendencies to insular, self-serving narratives with openness to innovative ways of looking at the colonial period that have encompassed the difficult histories of slavery, racism, and class distinctions’’(Young 13).
The Upsala house being put on the market is something I look forward to discussing in class, but it is not something I’d like to write about here. I want to focus on the Chew house and Cliveden’s adaptation of programming. As well as Stenton’s approach.
The Chew house embraced it’s history of slavery and the issues, but not originally. A remark from Gary Nash in 2002 frames how programming was originally done, ‘’Visitors to Cliveden… will learn a lot about its builder, Benjamin Chew, attorney general and provincial councilor of Pennsylvania. But they will learn little about the dozens of slaves employed by Chew at Cliveden and on his Keny County, Delaware plantation’’(Young 52). In order to avoid suffering the same fate as the Upsala house, the Chew house changed programming to shows its history of slavery and plantation records.
The Stenton house adapted in a different way in order to avoid the same fate as the Upsala house. They work focused on outreach with neighbors to become a location that hosted Easter egg hunts, music, and yoga. (Young 53). The idea was to bring in people who may not have come to a historic site normally, but still be able to enjoy the site for something outside of history. They opened the site to bird watchers, weddings, jazz concerts in order to attract more people to the house. Some fear that this may distract from the importance of the historic site. This kind of event planning is something that is happening at other institutions now. People get married at the Museum of the American Revolution, I’ve seen people do their vows at Eastern State Penitentiary.
This shift in programming is something that I think we will discuss more the week we visit Eastern State. It’s a conversation I’m excited to have. How does programming adapt at historic sites to remain relevant?