American history tv is featuring cspans original sundayst 8 00 eastern throughout the rest of the year. Next week, we look at lady bird johnson. This is American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Each week, american artifacts takes you to museums and Historic Places to learn what artifacts reveal about American History. Located in stanton, virginia, the Frontier Culture Museum tells the story of early american migrants from europe. We visit original houses from england, ireland, and germany relocated to the museum and hear historical interpreters describe daily life in the old world. We ask what would motivate of these europeans to migrate to america and what belongings they might have brought with them. American farm40s and seat similarities and differences with farms in europe. This is the first of the twopart is he him twopart series. I have a cultural director. We are a Living History Museum with a mission focused on education. Our objective at the Frontier Culture Museum is to teach people how a unique american folk culture was created through the blending of european, african, and indigent peoples cultures. Today, we are going to start on the old world side of the museum and see the english, irish, and german farm. We will move over to america and see a 1740s American Farm settlement. Again, they are farmers. This house comes from the West Midlands of england. The time we are showing is the 1640s to the 1660s. They have 150 to 300 acres of land. They are growing wheat, barley, and ridge. They are harvesting that and hiring people to help them. They have sheep here they are sharing those twice a year and selling the fleeces. The lady of the house and her daughters would be responsible for milking the cows, 15 to 30 of them. They will go ahead and take that milk and make cheese, selling it at market. Those will be the sources of income for the family. They are working hard and doing well. They are basically at the top of the working class. You can also refer to them as the middling sort. They are human farmers. Farmers. Re yeoman this house is based on the woodhouse family. Edward and cecelia woodhouse, there is a date that says ew, and it stands for edward woodhouse. This was his home. He and his wife had six children. This is a common style, timber framing and there was not as much wood in england at the time. Things like shipbuilding have to ed, so you deforest will have to be resourceful. But the fact that this has it wood and Wooden Furniture means they are doing well. And there is a basket weave here, with dob on one side, that is like a basket weave. You have dob on one side and the other. Dob is what you have on the farm hair, lime,animal clay and animal for. Animal manure. That is an important ingredient. The woman of the house is baking and brewing, she will be the gardener. She has a one to five acre Kitchen Garden to take care of. She is also the doctor of the family. And she is making cheese and selling that. The farmer has about 100 sheep shear and has people to help. They will sell that at market. The farmer has a grain to take care of, 36 acres of barley and barley and rye, harvesting that and hiring people to help. Could harvester half an acre a day. He is a progressive farmer. In the fall, he is thinking about having harvested. What he would be doing is putting in green fertilizer for the next year, so fields will grow and do well. Things like turnips and clover, that is something they can add to take care of the land. He has got fences to build, repair. You are thinking ahead in the winter for what you will be planting. You are either in the thick of doing it harvesting and , planting, but then you are planning and preparing for the next season, too. So things are seasonal. You are trying to be prepared. You want to do well. You have a good situation. 57 are these types of farmers. This guy is in a good position. He wants to keep it that way. The first room you encounter when you go in, the kitchen. That is where we cook and bake and make cheese. That is probably one of my favorite rooms because there is a lot of action and i enjoy baking very much. Next, we will take a step up, the room to the left is the parlor. Hat is a formal room you are seldom using that. The door would be shut much of the time. You have that room for weddings, funerals, special occasions. At times, the family would have light meals in the evenings there. The fact you have a room you are hardly using means you are doing well. Most people will be using every inch of space in their homes. Down the hall, you see a room where you will be dining. You can also be spending time knitting, sewing, playing a game. The family spends time therecting and dining primarily. Upstairs. Ve an that consists of two bedrooms, one for the children and one for the parents. Bedroom we have a loft for the service. Primogeniture is the system by which who inherits what. The oldest son will get everything, the house and the land. We are talking about 100 to 150 acres in the case of the woodhouse. Second and third sons will be left with nothing tangible. The second and third sons would be leaving to go to america to seek their fortune or they can choose the military or university. Or maybe be apprentice to another tradesman. Much like Joseph Woodhouse was. To other thing i like mention that is a Common Thread is people are wanting to have a place of their own, whether they are english, irish, or german. So if the oldest son gets everything, then the second and gord sons need to leave to to america if they want to have land. If you came to america before 1700, paying your passage on a ship to virginia, you had a right to receive 50 acres of land for free. That was enticement for many of these second and third sons. My name is Jerry Koester and i am a costumed interpreter on the scotch irish farm. The time between 1720 and 1740. The farm comes from the Northern Province of ireland. This is the home of a farmer as well as a weaver. Is when people start leaving ireland to come to america because they want a better life. Part of the reason they are leaving is there has been a big depression and the london market because there has been a series of droughts. You are also having Food Shortages and famines. The quality of living is bad. Theres a big depression in the market. When the lease runs out, the landlord doubles and triples the rent. Economically, you could not afford to live there anymore. If you want a better life, you sell everything you have and off you go to america. Daily life, you get up early. The women and girls start milking the cows, could exist, dishes, cook breakfast, do dishes, take care of the kids and sew. The most important job they have to do is spin. It takes three spinners to keep up with one weaver. They will probably stop working late in the day, get up early in the morning and do it again. The men and boys will be outside working. Soon, it will be time to harvest. Job is a very important because if you do not get this harvested, he will not have anything to eat or make a living with. Very important jobs. Everybody will help with that. In the meantime, you have other farm jobs, taking care of animals, maintenance, taking care of the stone walls. Quite a busy life, full of busy days. This farm, this is the first farm at the museum and it is laid out exactly the way it was in county tyrone. Behind me is the pigpen and the Chicken House below. The house itself. Scottish for barn. These first two are for storage and the others for livestock. Basically, this is a two room house. This is classic irish architecture. Classic is one room deep with a chimney on the end. When you first come in the front door, you are in the kitchen. This is the main room of the house. That is where all the activities place because it is the only warm room in the house. You have a fire burning yearround. That is where everyone is. Behind it is the shop. That is also the boys bedroom. They would have a mattress on the room where they sleep. The loom is there as well, because they need to be close to their work. The weaving process, i am sure that they were following the agricultural year. If it was a good year for the linen trades, they might have hired irish laborers in the fields. Then you could concentrate on the weaving. A lot of this would take place in the wintertime. For the laborers, that was the only way they could make money in the wintertime so they can have a yearround inme. Of course, Northern Ireland you have lots of rain, so you are not inside weaving with all of this farm work to do. Ave at nightly we after supper. Economically, the farmer of this farmer was middleclass. Not the wealthiest, but not the poorest. In the early years of the trade, everybody was making money. Life is good. But then with the depression, things started going bad quickly. The linen industry goes to Northern Ireland with the french huguenots. They start teaching everyone how things are done. They set up the linen board to govern the production of linen. The girls would go there to learn how to spin for them and start when they were small because they had tiny fingers so they could spin a finer thread. Part of the graduation present is they would get there on Spinning Wheel. The early years of the linen trade, if you planted a certain amount, they would give you a loom. By now, they are not getting you anything. You have to rent your loom. Im not sure how much that would have been, but there goes another piece of your income. All you have to do is step on the pedals and throw the shuttle back and forth. The hard part is setting it up. You could hire a professional so you have less downtime and more production going on. Everyonewas convinced was short. And how shorteds they are and are totally convinced by then. But the reason the door is so low, structurally, that holds up the weight of the roof. The reason the beds are so short is it is smoky. It is easier to breathe if you are propped up. Space, theyarn probably did not have more than t depicts, five or six cows, probably one horse. Ducks, geese, and chickens. These animals, Something Like the pigs, they would go to the butcher to help pay the rent. We would buy them back by the slice. We could only afford the cheap cuts from the butcher. The cows, we get note from them make butter to sell at market. Sometimes you could get a steer. When that starts to go bad, you pay the rent with that. And chickens, you would take them to market days. The only time you would eat a chicken is when they stop laying eggs. You would have to make soup out of them because they are old and tough. Education wise, it is more than likely they were homeschooled. This farm, the closest village is about five miles down the road and that is far for the kids to walk and come back on. Once you come to america, that is one thing they take with them, the belief and education. Wherever they go, they would set up schools and academies. The minister is also the teacher. He will run pretty much a boarding school. The kids, the smarter ones, will go and stay. Everybody else will stay home and learn. They learn how to read the bible. The girls would work on samplers and learn how to read and write as well. The presbyterians are one of the few groups that believes in educating girls. And you hear all sorts of stories about people, the ancestors, what they brought. You hear about the personal things, bringing a spoon, a cup. You definitely would bring the family bible because religion was important to them. That is one of the things you would absolutely bring. Furniture wise, maybe a few odds and ends. You had to pay for more storage on the ship more you brought. Pretty much, you would just bring yourself. Many people landed in philadelphia, because pennsylvania had strong ties with the linen trade. A lot of the ships are taking seats there in the spring. That is what you would come back on. You would arrive in the fall. You would either arrive in the Delaware Valley or philadelphia. Being farmers, you look for cheap land so you would come a little south. There is a place called the Shenandoah Valley and once you get there, from stanton to lexington was called the irish track. That is where everyone would have settled. If you go to that area, talk to your county surveyor and he would tell you where the land was. You would go look and come back and say what you liked and eventually he would go to williamsburg and get it registered. You would then have your land. And the American Dream is begun. Once the ulster scots get to america, because they believe in education, they become the dominant culture. Because they believe in education and build churches and schools, they are pretty much predominant leaders of the community, especially when elections come, because they are educated and a lot of them are elected as officials. They also were early supporters of the decoration of declaration of independence. Thank you for coming. Come back and see us again. I am an interpreter on our german farm site in virginia. Daily life was hard work, you are always working the farm. There is always work, no matter what time of year. There is gardening to begun, fieldwork, animal care, cooking, food preservation cleaning. ,there is always something to do. A very busy life not a lot of , leisure time. Spinning is pretty much twisting. This is flax fiber, this comes from flax plants. It is the type of fiber that makes linen. All of the clothing i am wearing is linen, this is nothing more than the fiber. When you spin it, if even into the Spinning Wheel and let the wheel twist it. You smooth it with water. Go across the hooks onto the school. Made, thehreat is weaver will use it to make fabric. That can be made into clothing. Spinning wheel just makes the thread. They probably did more in the wintertime, when they had the chance. This time of year, you are out in the fields. Everybody is working. If you can work, you are doing it. Doing something. Someou possibly could give thread you made to a weaving family and make extra money. But this familys primary Revenue Source is the grain. Heat, they grew an old variety called spelt which has become popular again today. Rye, barley and oats. We have a large barn out there, so you could store grain before threshing. Our family would have kept a couple of cows, milking them, making cheese and butter. Pigs, pork was a primary meat. That was what a lot of peasant families would use in their cooking. This family is doing pretty good. They are still peasants, technically serfs. They have ties to the land, to the landlord, to the local ruler of the region and they must pay fees in money as well as perform work on certain days of the year to their local lord. So, basically this house is a decent home, that this family is not rich. But they are also not paupers. The house is a building Frontier Museum acquired from germany. It was dismantled, numbered, and brought here. It is not a replica. Region we are discussing is the rhineland province in southwestern germany. Back then, it was known as the holy roman empire. That region had a tough time with a series of wars in the 1600s and early 1700s. The region did take hard hits in some areas. So now is a time where families have been working to recover, to fix the land, the town, without s orries of warfare terrible issues going on, the population has grown. They have been raising reasonably sized families. There is not enough land for everybody to farm comfortably. There is not enough jobs and opportunities in businesses and trades. Somese they are serfs, local rulers levied fees that must be paid in order to immigrate legally. They are exit fees. Sometimes it was more expensive for women to immigrate legally than men. But local rulers do not want to lose too many people. Also it is also costly. , you basically have to come up with the money to pay for the trip. You are living in a region that is landlocked. You have to get to a seaport. You will have to sell off as many belongings as you can manage to raise additional money for the boat ride that will take you down the rhine river paying tolls along the river that you come to. Also, you need money for passage. The hall kitchen house. You walk in and you have your hallway and then the kitchen. The kitchen is relatively small. This is where you cook and do the dirty work. The families are using kindling wood, whatever they could collect on the floor of the forest. You can burn small fires on top of the hearth. To the side, the family would bring the food into the stove room. The stove is mainly for heat. It is radiant heat. Families would take meals in the stove room, they would do textile work, spend some family time. This is the heart of the home where you stay warm in winter. Small bedroom in the back which gets some heat as well. This is usually where the oldest couple would sleep, or whoever had the greatest need. If you had grandparents in the home, there is a good chance they are in there. If you dont have grandparents in the home, usually it is mom and dad. Children a lot of times slept upstairs. There was not a lot of heat in those areas of the house. Of one a is an example family immigrated with in the early 1700s. If you were thinking about emigrating, that is the type of chest you might pack with extra clothing, blankets, food seeds , perhaps so you can plant a garden in the british colonies wherever youre going to settle. You also want to put a lot of tools in there because you will possibly have to build yourself a new home replace things you , had to sell and leave be home the last behind. And anything that you think might be desirable in the british colonies where people , want to pay good money, where there is a market for it, you might want to pack those because you can sell or barter them in the new world. Germans did go to new york state. A lot of them took the path to pennsylvania. And a number of them, once they got there, they were looking for cheap land. A lot of them leave pennsylvania eventually and moved to other areas, spreading out. The pennsylvania germans are still very well known today. I am sarah gant. I am a costumed interpreter at the Frontier Culture Museum in stanton, virginia. We are at the 1740s american settlement, also known as the back country of the american colonies or the colonial frontier is what we also call it. This would have been west of the blue ridge mountains, so people had already settled in this area about a decade or so before the 1740s. People had already started to move west. And settle that area. There were land grants given, families would be recruited to settle the virginia area. Occasionally it would be one man settling the area, but most of the time it would be families. On average, 49 people and they would have established themselves in the pennsylvania area first, so they would be familiar with living here and they would have had the means to purchase land down here. Getting about 300 to 800 acres. They were pretty well off in terms of being able to buy the land. To begin with, they would need to clear the land. That was a big change for them, because the environment was very wooded. Clearing the land was a big deal. And then getting fields ready for crops. They were given a lot more land than they were used to, so it took a lot of work. Keeping up with crops was a big thing and eventually building the house, and chopping wood. That sort of thing. It was difficult here, especially in comparison to the old world. The climate is very different, harsher summers and winters. Very hot all the time. So, hot weather, which would affect crops, it is also different in that it is very wooded, which is very different, especially coming from ireland where they do not have as many trees. They would have been making homes out of stones as opposed to logs. So using material available. Another big thing would be the Kitchen Garden we have. That would include crops that would have come from europe and the Kitchen Garden would have been a style that wouldve been used in europe as well. We have carrots in the garden, turnips, lettuce, spinach. We also are going to grow, we had rye growing at one point. They would also grow wheat and hemp, also tobacco as well. And then we also have in the fields, we have corn, beans, and squash. That was not an influence from the old world. That was an influence from the American Indians. They were grown in all the same area. The American Indians taught them how to do that. Often times, because they were so isolated and there were not a lot of people to help, really whoever was Strong Enough to do the work, did the work. Sometimes men would do more building or woodworking and maybe women would tend to the garden and housework. Often times, even kids would have been expected to do work, starting at maybe seven years old. Basically as soon as they were Strong Enough to pick up a tool and use it. The childrens education, if they would have gotten a formal education, they would have needed to go back to an older settlement to learn. Oftentimes there really was no , formal education. It was whatever the parents had learned before coming to this area they would then teach their , children. But the skills, reading, writing, math, all were very basic. They would have brought maybe a pack horse or a cow, maybe chickens or sheep. Especially because they were easy to take care of. They were released into the defend fory owned to themselves, so they did not have to provide for them and keep up with them as much. In fact, they were able to feed andselves better on nuts mushrooms, that sort of thing. Pigs were a great animal to have here. I like talking about the chimney that we have, because it surprises a lot of people. You will see a third of the way up, it is made with stone. And then the rest of it, wood. That surprises people. We talk about that because a lot of people ask if the house would have caught on fire. It was. It would. You can see that the chimney is built away from the house to begin with and it would have had a way in which if they knew that the chimney had caught fire, they could pull it away and hopefully it would smother the fire and get it away from the house so you can save the house. You would have to rebuild the chimney, but you wouldnt have to start from scratch. So that really intrigues a lot of people. It is pretty bare inside. Not a whole lot. We have a bed inside, where the parents slept, or the most senior couple. We have a dirt floor where everybody else would have slept. We also have a fireplace inside. Often times it would be used for warmth in winter and light at night, but most cooking took place outside. During the summer, you would want the house to stay as cool as possible. As we were talking about with the chimney, you would not want to potentially have your chimney catch on fire, so majority of the time the cooking was done outside. Ts, oneo see some ches filled with tools and other odds and inns. The cross saw would have been an essential tool to have. Logs set up are to demonstrate how someone would split wood by using an iron wedge or a big wooden wedge and they would have made it would have looked like a giant wooden hammer. They are pretty hefty. Beatles, which means to strike or hit. You would drive it into the iron wedge which would eventually split the logs by length. You could continue splitting it and splitting it to where you could get sizes big enough for a split rail fence or the shingles on the house. So it was an easier way of splitting wood. We have chininking in between. I believe it is also called daubing. The outside is a mixture of mud and straw, grass sometimes. If you have horse here, you would use horsehair. You have to mix it up using your feet to do that and put it on, probably in cool weather like the fall or early spring because the mud mixture would need to drive pretty slowly. Otherwise, it would crack and you would have to continue to repair it. You would want to do it in cooler weather. Thanks for visiting the Frontier Culture Museum, we are open 365 days a year. We would love to see you. Please come and visit us in stanton, virginia. This is the first of a twopart series on the Frontier Culture Museum. Part two explores life on the early american frontier. You can watch this and other american artifacts programs anytime by visiting our website, www. Cspan. Org. You are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook. On American History tv, author Edward Odonnell talks about the growing inequality of the late 19th century, also known as the gilded age. He