Preservationist jobie hill has been writing about slave dwellings in the united states. Her interdisciplinary work includes photograph, interpretation, and preservation of slave history. Up next on american artifacts we travel to southern virginia near the North Carolina border to visit the former Brandon Plantation with jobie hill and learn about her saving slave houses project, joined by several archeologists and preservations and a team that came to document Brandon Plantation with a series of 3d laser scans. Were here to do laser scanning and documentation of a slave house that is here. This is part of an independent project i am doing thats called saving slave houses, which is a database of all the known slave houses in the united states. And it is staffed as a central repository of instrumentation and documentation of slave houses in the united states. I have partnered with turnbull, the company that makes the survey equipment that i use, to do kind of the highest level documentation that is available to us today, which is 3d laser scanning. Its important to do this because, one, documentation is a type of preservation. Slave houses are buildings that are disappearing from the landscape, so by documenting them, thats one way of preserving them. Documenting them and through my database is also a way to share information and get it out there and learn from them. So this is a way for people to learn about these buildings and study them. And make them available to a wider audience without having to necessarily come out to the sites because a lot of these sites are hard to get to, and also a lot of them are privately owned, so, you know, Property Owners dont necessarily want people constantly coming out to their sites to look at these structures. But the Property Owners have been very helpful wanting to work with me. At the same time, its easier to have something Available Online somewhere you can get to. In total i have done survey work at about 150 sites and 120 to 30 of those have been in virginia. Ive been focusing on virginia the last couple of years. I found this place through a coworker and mentor of mine, who has originally he worked in williamsburg and did documentation there and now hes an architectural historian and works for a private architectural firm, practice, but he knew about the site and knew it was one i would want to check out. Hes here today. Could you tell us what the two of you are going to do . Yes. His name is mark wenger. This site is special because it has a subfloor pit. A subfloor pit is a hole in the ground. You find them in enslaved some place. They are in front of the fire place or hearth. They were used both as root cellars and also storage and personal items enslaved people may have had. They range in size and shape. Theres a wide variety of them. Some are wood lined and some are brick lined. Some are holes, just dirt. This one is special because this building is raised on piers. This is stone lined and part of it is above the ground because the building is raised on piers. Today, in addition to 3d laser scanning, were also going to open the pit, to protect it, protect the pit, the floorboards were nailed closed to keep things out of it. Were going to open it to look at it and also to scan it. I think thats original. That framing is . Yeah, mmhmm. How can you tell . The fact that the saw marks on this framing go straight up and down. Thats a reciprocal waterdriven saw. That would sort of put it in the 19th century sometime. They start circular sawing lumber close to the middle of the 19th century and this was before that. So it was built at the time of construction of the probably, yes. What i find interesting is that the opening is so large. I dont know why you might necessarily need such a large opening. This one looks like it was intentional and was constructed at the same time as the building was constructed, so when they built the floor they framed out to have this hole. They knew that they wanted this hole, this opening in the floor because they provided framing for it. Underneath of it because the building is on piers and raised off the ground, when you look to the edges, there is stone so you can see its lined with stone on the outside of it. Its protected from the outside. I cant tell how deep it goes into the ground in relation to the grade outside. It looks like it goes into the ground a little bit. This is basically storage, i mean, a big hole used for storage of things. Do you know where the kitchen would have been . No. Unless they were using this space for the kitchen. So, mark, is this the original flooring . All that, all that nailing looks pretty convincing. This floor, its pine. It has texture, it has wear. Its got wear, a lot of wear up by the hearth. That has a lot more wear. Yeah. Its the same on the other side. Uhhuh. This looks like it might be the original floor, yes. What would be in there . Im guessing primarily like a root cellar. Food items. It would be a cooler space, but also maybe personal items that they would have had. Its hard to say. Hard to say without doing archeology. Thats when its important to do archeology in these spaces because then you have a much better understanding of what was in there. What kind of things had they found in these holes when they have done archeology . Well, pass it to an archeologist. Personal items, buttons, buckles, beads, fragments of ceramics. So, of course earthenwares, more refined earthenwares. Lots of evidence that theyre keeping root vegetables in these root cellars. It really helps understand the daily lives of these people when you get chance to excavate these hidden spaces. My name is crystal paycheck. I run the field work at monticello, the archeological field work. Why are you here today . Jobie invited our department to come to the spaces shes surveying and we really wanted to come to experience this space, feel what these cabinets would have been like, to walk through, live in, walk up and down the steps. We often at monticello investigate a lot of spaces once theyre not on the landscape any more, to be at one Still Standing, at a slave camp Still Standing is a different experience. We wanted to be here today for that. When you reflect on what youve seen, what are your thoughts . Its a good question. Its really humbling to be in these spaces of these people that were slaves. They were here living and working, didnt get a break. They werent paid for their services but they still eked out an existence. So to try to navigate through those spaces in the 21st century, its humbling. I think i get a better sense of what the room would have felt like. Obviously, theres nothing in it today. But to just feel this space and walk through it gives me a better idea what it was were looking for not on the landscape any more. I think its important to come to these spaces, to come to these plantations and record whats here because one day this building may not be here. Its important to record our past and know what it is that makes us who we are today as a nation and as a people. Its important to remember these people that lived here, too, to be able to document their experience in the building in which they lived, to compare this building with what we had at monticello, try to get understanding across time and across space of the slave experience. I think it really helps inform archeologists of sites like brandon can really help inform monticello across the south and east coast. Its important to document these spaces for sure. So this is the equipment i use from turnbull and this collects gps coordinates of the building. So ive requested it for the building and ive completed a digital Archaeological Survey form im interested in and it links to that gps coordinate. When i map these out where the building is, all the information ive put in, when you click on it, it comes up to that point. This project started as part of my masters thesis project. Im a licensed architect. I went back to school to get my masters degree in Historic Preservation. When i had been in the real world practicing a while the type of architecture i wanted to do was Historic Preservation and went back to school with my masters degree. When i was in school for my masters thesis i started doing research with the Historic American Building survey collection, which is a wpa program that started in 1936, to get architects back to work. A thousand architects were hired to document significant Historic Structures all across the united states. Part of that documentation was slave houses, not necessarily intentionally, but they did document slave houses and sometimes a lot of times it was just you got like one photograph or you would see that a slave house in the background of a picture behind the main house. So for my masters thesis i looked at that collection and identified all the sites that had a slave house in them. The Historic American Building survey has 485 sites that have a documented slave house. Then i also looked at the wpa slave narratives done at the same time in the 1930s hoping there would be some relationship between the two, although there was no coordination between the two projects because the slave narratives were to get them back to work and they were doing their own thing and architects were doing their own thing. In my mind, there had to be some overlap by chance. So i also did research with the slave narratives, and so there are about 3500 slave narratives. I went through all of those and identified the ones that described their house during slavery. There are 1,010 slave narratives that described their house during slavery. I went through those and of those and the 485 documented slave houses, there are five that overlapped. So you have five slave narratives that describe specific documented slave house. You have the actual words of the People Living in these spaces, describing these spaces, which is just its amazing. Thats the interpretation we should be using when we interpret these spaces. So from that, that just you know, i used the slave narratives to interpret and understand these spaces, like to guide me to what should i be looking for in these spaces and, you know, what were they how were they using them and can i see any of that in these spaces im going back to look at . My field work of going back and doing my own documentation in these buildings started when i was working on my project in school, the i was a summer intern. That helped with my research and had access to the collection and they said, how many have you seen . Im like, none. Im in archives doing research. They said, you should go out and see some of these. When i was interning for the summer with them we went out and saw some of them, they helped me get started. Once i started visiting these i didnt stop. I kept going. Knowing that, one, i really enjoyed it. Seeing these space in person is not the same as seeing the pictures, although the documentation is amazing and photographs are amazing. Its completely different to visit the structures and stand inside the space. So i kept doing the field work. Its exciting. I enjoy it and it also answers a lot of questions for me and others, how many of these buildings still exist, an open question. In order to further the preservation of these buildings we have to answer these questions, get support from others, answer how many are we looking at . How many are we dealing with . Im trying to answer that question, how many are still out there or at least provide a case study, so in 1936 there were this many in the state and now theres only this many left. Thats what im working on. To fund this, its funded by me, but i look for grants to do a lot of my survey work and things like that. Grants that go to individuals and things like that. Usually, theyre just smaller ones. I can make a small grant go a long way. 37. It would be nice to so this plan type is called a saddlebag plan or saddlebag partition wall. Theres two variations of a saddle bag. Primarily it has an essential chimney and rear one on either side, has a back to back fireplace. This is the planned type. This room that were standing in right now, because of the size of the opening of the fireplace and location to the main house and the fact that theres a subfloor pit on the other side and maybe this side, we think this might have functioned as a kitchen because of the opening of the fireplace is larger on this side. But that made us question, well, why would a root cellar be on the other side if this space was used as a kitchen. Maybe because if this was primarily where there was a lot of cooking it would have been a lot hotter. If youre going to have a root cellar, the point is to keep things cool, so they used the other space for the cooler side to have the root cellar, and this is where a lot of cooking may have taken place. How old do you think this pot is . That middle piece is a crane. Im guessing thats original. The pots are it wouldnt surprise me if theyre probably original, too. Theyre at least fairly, fairly old. The crane is because thats kind of part of the fireplace. So would people have lived in here . Absolutely. And how would that work . Where would they is the upstairs original and they would have slept up there . Yes. So the upstairs is original. There are not hearths in the upstairs. A lot of times in the loft space you find hearths, a fireplace opening, which is a definite indicator that people were living up there. This one does not have that. That doesnt mean they werent living up there. They were living up there and why there is a partition wall and door opening up there and a staircase. An enclosed staircase leading up there. That was living space upstairs. You can never really tell for sure without documentation and where people were sleeping or how many people were living in these spaces. But for kitchens, those were always living spaces, at least my understanding because kitchens were always used and kind of just the what you kind of learn or hear from things, once you lit the hearth in the kitchen it never went out, just because, you know, it took so long to light back then the fireplace and get it running, it took so long to do everything, it was always running, you always had to have hot water on hand that someone had to be there to watch that fire. Also, just from the slave narratives they always talk about, if they were the cook or their mother was the cook, they always say we lived in the kitchen, like my mother lived in the kitchen and she was the cook. Theres also evidence in the narrative that sported that, that kitchens were also living spaces. The other room over there . Without knowing exactly how many people were being fed out of this kitchen, you know, its hard to i cant say what was being cooked or how often and exactly how much you needed to be cooking at one time, im guessing that was also probably a secondary kitchen or Cooking Space for them. Without all the modern technology we have today theres no way i could do survey work on my own. Thats why im very thankful we have all this and i have access to it. Otherwise, even the digital measuring device i use, i cant hold the end of one tape measure and walk the other so i use a laser measure to measure things. So now i am taking some measurements of the room and the doors and the windows. I just finished measuring the fireplace. Ill do this for each of the different spaces in this building. I take overall dimension of the building, too. Thats parts of my Digital Survey form i have linked to the gis coordinates, so when i map it all this comes up. Im richard hassler. I work at trimble as a market manager. I have been working on the atlantic slave trade project which is a philanthropic project that trimble has been working on for three or four years now. And as part of that project, jobie has asked us to help document some slave houses in the virginia area. With this particular house were trying to capture laser scans of the entire exterior and interior of the house. When we laser scan, we run it on a tripod and replace it with a camera that can take panoramic slr images and we can map the color from those images onto the laser scan. And that provides a point cloud, a threedimensional point cloud we can use our models and sketch software and other packages to pull measurements and other kinds of useful information out of it. How did trimble get involved in doing this philanthropic project . One of the Vice President s, trent foster, is very passionate about south africa and spent many years there. Because of that he has the ability to help trimble choose which philanthropic projects to do. This was one he was very passionate about. We got together in the past with a company that documents World Heritage sites around the world digitally and we started to work with them, using our technology to document sites important to the atlantic slave trade. We hit some in mississippi, south carolina, Virgin Islands did a Sugar Factory down there. We continue to do that. Were building a relationship with educators and academics to continue the project and find cofunding with different grants working with the academic community. We have several historians tying in with this, including unesco. Were talking to them, making sure we have some ties with them to help get us into Different International locations but also to make sure the projects we choose are of historical interest. In the Boulder Valley School District in colorado weve been working with the educators there to add this information into their curriculum which theyve successfully done last year. They have as part of their curriculum the impact on education, the organization there has managed to work with Boulder Valley to get this kind of material on slave trade into their curriculum. Then you get off on back end of the suv. What kind of crops . Talking about the 19th century, probably tobacco at this point. Thats certainly what it is now. The tide water was big in tobacco in the 18th century. Im not so familiar with the agricultural history in the antebellum period. I would guess tobacco was the mainstay. Youd also have wheat and grain and corn. Those would probably be the three main crops. Is there any way to know how many slaves lived in here or how many they needed . I dont know. Im not sure how many that would be. To have a house of that substance youd have to have quite a bit of acreage under cultivation to make that possible. This was a substantial house for the period, even in the antebellum period, this was a substantial place. I actually dont know as much about this plantation as other plantations. I do know this is a brand new plantation, which is the last name of the family that owned it. Even today, the current owner, she is part of the brandon family. Her last name is also brandon. Theres other plantations with the same name. Theres an Upper Brandon and a lower Brandon Plantation that are nearby. And those plantations have been more heavily studied and documented than this one. This one has not been as heavily studied or documented. I dont know why that is the case but also another reason i think it is important to document these structures because it hasnt been as heavily studied. There isnt existing documentation out there so its important someone like myself come along and document it, it doesnt exist yet and one of the reasons im excited doing that today. I have to remind myself and others that when you come back to sites, you always have to remember youre missing a lot of the buildings. In order to paint a clear picture what life is like you have to be able to identify what buildings are missing. Here, you usually have the main house. Here we have the main house, this structure which may possibly have been used as a kitchen, also living space for enslaved people, kitchen quarter. We have a privy, a smokehouse, we have a well, a smokehouse and a wellbeing next to a building, often next to a kitchen. Certain buildings clustered together because of their functions. Smokehouses, dairy, a source of water you typically find next to a kitchen because they rely on those things. Kitchens are usually close to the main house because they service the main house. At this site, also now across the road are two tobacco barns originally part of the original plantation but look disconnected from it now. You have to in order to get a good picture, understand how people would have been moving around the site and where the farm the crop would have been, you have to know where all those kind of buildings would have been. I just dont know where that would have been for this plantation. Its been divided. This road is cutting through a lot of spaces now definitely not there historically. So its kind of hard to paint a good picture what it would have been like. I also dont know how many people were even here either both at the main house or the enslaved community. Without knowing that, its hard to say i can paint an accurate picture. One of the questions people have talking about enslaved house, how many people lived there . Thats what they want to know. A lot of times these spaces were more heavily populated than we think of today for a traditional family, mother, father, two to three children. Thats not what it was like historically for enslaved families or slave owning families. The families were larger and they had more children. Families were bigger back then. If it was a Single Family or multifamily housing, more People Living in it. Its automatically a different picture. I just dont know exactly how many people were here. Its hard to paint that picture. And the status of it now . The status of it now is its just i guess you could say its stabilized but no one is living the main house is not used on a regular basis. Its used when, i think the family comes out to do some hunting in the area. But no one is living in this structure. I dont know exactly the last time they lived in this structure. Im happy to say this is not being used for storage. A lot of places, the outbuildings are used just for storage. Storage of furniture and just big things that clutter the space. When that happens, that accelerates the deterioration of the spaces. Because when you have clutter, thats when animals and rodents nest and live in there. It invites them in and thats what starts to accelerate the deterioration. Luckily this one is nice and cleaned out. You have cobwebs and other things like that, but otherwise its in really good shape. I think thats helped preserve the building, is the fact that theres no clutter in it. This is a long days work and its hot out here. When this is all done, what would this look like, as far as your records go . Lots of photographs. There will be ill have jazz coordinates. There will be a lot of data that needs to be processed. There will be a lot of data that needs to be processed. Then it can then be exported into different types of final products, both the information i have and information trimble has compiled. That really just kind of buries, you know, what we kind of need and want. The 3d models will be generated. With those 3d models, theres different programs to accept those and get different versions. These buildings and the people that lived and work in these buildings are a very important part of our history. I think its important to tell their story truthfully. One way of doing that is through their architecture. Irrelevant architecture is, you know, part of the material culture that still survives today you can visit, you can experience and its kind of a vehicle to tell their story. Thats how im using the architecture. Its also the work is also important because when i started doing this research i found there is information both about these structures and these people. But its kind of everywhere. And theres little bits of it everywhere. I have taken a lot of time, years, to compile it and get it into one place and also to make it digital and its taken me a long time to do this. Id like to be able to share it with others. Not everyone has to do back and do the same thing im doing. It has taken me so long to do it that i want others to benefit from it and have access to it so they can then move forward and do research with it and then, you know, produce Meaningful Research studies from it and not have a spend a lot o spend a lot of time doing compiling and doing the research that im doing, although i love it, i enjoy it but it does take a lot of time and energy to do. And every sight i go to i learn something new. Ive met a lot of great people doing it. Visiting these structures and being inside of them is just a lot different than just seeing a picture of them. Im also for the private properties that im going to, recently ive always discovered interest eing things about the buildings but Property Owners have been opening up to me and sharing things they have with me. So, for example, i just went to a site and a man there has co r coverlets or blankets from an enslaved woman, two of them. And theyre in really Good Condition and theyre just amazing to see. So when i was there he showed them to me and i never would have known about them unless i went out to the site, spent the time with the Property Owner and talked to him and thats why he shared them with me. And thats amazing. So to be able to see things like that that i never would have known about or seen because theyre not in a museum, theyre not anywhere that i would have known about publicly, theyre just sitting on ones private home. So thats truly amazing is that im getting to see things that private Property Owners have and are willing to share with me. You can learn more about jobie hills project at her web site, savingslavehouses. Org and you can view this and all other American History tv programs at cspan. Org history. Governors from across the country are gathering in washington, d. C. This weekend for their annual winter meeting. Throughout the day saturday, the National Governors association will host discussions on jobs, the opioid crisis, and the future of agriculture and food availability. Our live coverage starts saturday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern right after washington journal on cspan. Sunday night on after words, author Tara Westover talks about growing up with survivalist parents in her book educated, a memoir. A lot of people seem to have really taken to heart this idea that to learn something you have to have a degree and you have to have a whole institution in place to teach it to you and im im grateful to my parents that i was not raised to think that so when i decided that i wanted to go to college when i was 16 it felt like something i could do. Not because i had formal education but just, okay, i need to learn algebra, ill buy a book and learn it and i didnt do an amazing job, i kind of barely got into the university but i kept going with that and i think, yeah, my parents took it too far. I arrived at university really underprepared. I once raised my hand in a class and asked what the holocaust was because id never heard of it. I wasnt denying it, people thought i was antisemitic, i just never heard of it before. I wouldnt say this was the ideal education. Thats on book tv on cspan 2. Located about 100 miles from washington, d. C. On the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay the a Harriet Tubman underground Railroad Visitors Center opened in the spring of 2017. Up next on american arfa
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