Find my article in Chesapeake Family Magazine, now out!

"Digging into Maryland's Past" by Erika Franz

I am pleased to announce that the April issue of Chesapeake Family Magazine is out!  In it is my article “Digging into Maryland’s Past,” featuring opportunities in Maryland to get families into history by getting their hands dirty.  There are multiple programs in the area for kids and families to give archaeology a try and get to know a little bit more about the local and regional history.  (Talk about experiential learning!)

Check it out!  The magazines are located at numerous sites where families typically go: libraries, ice rinks, youth centers, waiting rooms, grocery stores, etc.  Lots of great family stuff inside–including my article!  (Archived issues are available on the website in .PDF format.  Visit http://www.chesapeakefamily.com/.)

The discovery of mom and daughter volunteer archaeologists

The discovery we made

This is clearly one of the advantages of homeschooling: field trips whenever and however you please.  Today, we visited London Town in Edgewater, MD.  This town is being excavated by Anne Arundel County’s (MD) Lost Towns Project, an archaeological project to uncover the lost towns of MD.  London Town was a town thrown together over night as an official weighing station and quality control for colonial Maryland’s tobacco exportation.  Politics would eventually intervene and transplant the operation to Annapolis, leaving the city to evaporate after only a couple of decades.  The only structure to survive was a brick mansion built to be an inn.  It was inexplicably and foolishly built after the town had clearly lost the purpose for existence; this would become an almshouse and orphanage operating from the 1820s through the 1960s.  The rest of the town, built from wood, decomposed and was lost to time’s forward march.

We went as volunteers, today.  Such opportunities exist Monday through Friday and are announced through a weekly e-mail.  Our visit coincided with an elementary school group, so there was only one sifter available–but what a gold mine it was!  If you have ever visited an archaeological dig in this country, than you have witnessed the carefully laid out grid over the site that is labeled and numbered.  From this, dirt is taken with careful attention being paid to the stratigraphy (layers in the earth) and grid square so the provenance is known (giving us physical location and an earthen layer for chronology–the stratigraphy).  We were sifting through the last batch of dirt from a unit–literally sifting it using a wooden box with a wire-grid bottom hanging from a tripod of plastic piping.  Beneath it, a soft, fine mountain of moist dirt gradually grew.

Our bag of still-dirty treasures

Often this process yields dirt, roots, grubs and stone or clay.  Boring, yes.  We (one of the Lost Town archaeologists, who actually made the discovery, my daughter and I) were far more lucky!  We found glass, ceramic, a large corner of brick or building block, a nail and a small, thin silver disc!  This last was the coolest!  As the students were breaking for lunch, we took our find into the lab located onsite nearby.  Once there, we showed it to the archaeologists and interns.  Everyone was puzzled, but interested.  We continued our volunteer work in the lab.  My daughter began cleaning artifacts, starting with the little disc.

As seen above, we could already make out a “C” with the Roman numeral III on one side, while on the other was a six-pointed star, which I initially thought was a Star of David.  It was exceptionally thin, so our initial hypothesis was that it might be a token of some kind.  After my daughter washed the disc.  She was able to discern thirteen stars around the C III.  The disc was viewed in angled light and a high resolution picture was taken of it to attempt to identify more, eventually yielding “United States of America” around the six-pointed star and a US shield in the star.  It was so thin that none of us present at the time could imagine it being a coin–indeed our example was slightly bent at the bottom.  Operating under the idea that it was some type of token–although, why did it say “United States of America”?–I began searching through an index of American tokens.  A few hundred pages later we were no closer.  On to the internet, where my first set of search terms brought up the answer to our questions: it was a ¢3 coin!

An 1851 Type 1, silver ¢3 coin

We found it through http://www.coinlink.com which told us that the ¢3 coin was introduced because the postal service was reducing postal rates from ¢5 to ¢3.  ¢1 coins were not considered legal tender and so could not be used to purchase postage.  Thus, the ¢3 coin was adopted.  Type 1 ¢3 coins, like the one we found, were only minted from 1851 to 1853, remaining in circulation until 1861, when gold and silver coins were hoarded.  It was designed by James Barton Longacre, had a metal content 0f 75% silver and 25% copper, and is the smallest US coin ever issued in weight and thickness.  In some Treasury records it is referred to as a “trime”.  For the first year, the coins were minted in both Philadelphia and New Orleans–those from the New Orleans mint had an “O” to the right of the III.  After 1851, they were only minted in Philadelphia.  (www.coinlink.com)

A total of 35,510,900 of the Type 1 were minted in Philadelphia–as was our sample–and another 720,000 came out of the New Orleans mint.  Subsequently, Types 2 and 3 were minted from 1853 through 1873.  As of 1865, they shared currency space with the ¢3 Nickel (1865-1889).  They were quickly tarnished and often referred to as a “fishscale,” especially as Type 2 and 3 coins were made of 90% silver to 10% copper (the weight also dropped from .80 grams to .75 grams).  The coin was worth less than the medal it was made of once the gold mines in the west depressed gold and raised the price of silver!  These later Types are also identified by added decorations to the coin, including a laurel leaf and bundle of arrows above and below the III, respectively.  (www.coin-collecting-guide-for-beginners.com)

It was a very cool learning experience!

Washing the artifacts, Xan then grouped them by type

Meanwhile, my daughter Xan became a minor expert on quartz, quartzite and “quartz conglomerate” as she washed and grouped artifacts, identifying bone, ceramics, and other artifact shards.  She got really into her work and enjoyed interacting with the staff.  While this wasn’t her first time at a dig, she found more artifacts and did more activities than in her previous experience.  She’s now asking for a homeschooling internship with the Lost Towns Project!  She could have incredible access to colonial Maryland and gain a really unique knowledge of Anne Arundel County, Maryland.  I love it!  Even if she does not grow up to be an archaeologist, she gets the experience and develops her curiosity for new things and for the past.  In other words, it goes down in my mind as a huge success!  It is a success for experiential learning and a success for homeschooling.

These sorts of opportunities are ubiquitous, though you may not know where to look for them, regardless of whether or not you are homeschooling.  My recommendation would be to check with your local and state governments–Maryland has a lot of useful resources about volunteering with archaeology on its government websites, including the state-sponsored Archaeology Month–and check local historical preservation groups and your local historical societies.  As mentioned, the Lost Towns Project is an Anne Arundel County project.  The other obvious resources are colleges and universities which frequently have classes, field digs and other projects, some of which they open to the public.  It’s a tight community based on shared knowledge acquired from similar means with common goals, so once you find one opportunity, a dozen more will reveal themselves!

Experiential learning and curiosity stimulating--homeschooling at its best!

Local History in our Cities’ Museums

In the U.S., our cities have certain stories of their past to tell:

1. Life before the European–the story, told mostly through archaeology and treaties, of the American Indian in a particular region
2. Settlement–a story that often includes conflict, with the previous inhabitants, the landscape or both; sometimes this is a story of innovations, sometimes a story conquest and often it includes stories of tremendous will and perseverance; this is also told through archaeology and occasionally federal and legal documents–under more fortunate circumstances, it includes first person accounts
3. Growth–a story that explains how a settlement of a few pioneers became a town and then a city; this is usually a story that builds through multiple phases: first as infrastructure improves and again as local industry develops; occasionally these stories include periods of economic and population regression–sometimes it is how they culminate
4. Local industry–this story features the prominent (usually) men about town that created jobs and economic growth through commercial means and typically effected politics and society, such as Heinz in Pittsburgh, the race track in Saratoga or the ship yards in Baltimore
5. Local events/catastrophes/individuals–these are uniques stories and major events unique to the region, from cataclysmic natural disasters to military battles to political show-downs or epic instances of courage; they provide much of the local color and show up in any phase along the way
6. Prejudice and civil rights–these are stories that recognize the local region’s particular participation in our country’s greater history of having failed to live up to our own ideals, tempered with the stories of courage and risk in which those shortcomings were overcome–most of these stories appear in the past tense, often around slavery, Jim Crow or urban renewal, and with the sense that we have overcome those periods and issues
7. Sports–these stories can also encompass a wide range of periods and are part of the local lore, trial and triumph; these often include a discussion of prejudice at some point, usually looking at the Negro Leagues or desegregation in sports and the impact on society

These cases are often the focus and model for local museums.  As with historical textbook authors and documentary directors, curators are often knowledgeable about either one particular facet of the museum’s exhibits or are specifically gifted in their field and happen to be at a history museum (as opposed to art, for example).  Thus, it is frequently the case that museums, as with textbooks and documentaries, do not always deal with the method behind the displayed knowledge, nor thus the disagreement that often exists regarding historical interpretations.  So, in the same sense there is often the perception of the provided information as being HISTORICAL FACT as opposed to an interpretation of evidence–often the result of hard research, I am sure–but not reflective of historical method, which is itself an end in one’s historical education.

So, the question arises: how do we use this as curious human beings and as educators?

For the curious:

Whenever we visit these museums, we have two options in our approach: we can simply take in and enjoy–a passive edutainment approach–or we can consider what is missing, what evidence is provided for the assertions, what implications arise, what other interpretations exist or other questions–an active thinking approach.  This is all really dependent on one’s own interests.  While visiting the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh I was really intrigued by a small exhibit that acknowledged the various religious women orders that had been active in Pittsburgh despite a prevalent suspicion for foreign-born Catholics.  The exhibit explained that the nuns earned respect by providing health services for orphans and poor factory workers in the growing steel industry.  An example of each habit was provided and a brief blurb about the order, but little other information or evidence about their accomplishments and relationships in the city.  I was particularly interested because few of the orders had an education–mission which is the stereotypical role, today.

In the sense that the exhibit brought the subject to my awareness it was positive, but that I left with more questions than answers is an outcome for which the merits must be judged by each individual.

For the educator:

These same challenges can be turned into opportunities by educators.  In fact, tapping into the local industry or sports lore may be a really useful way to engage students in challenging concepts surrounding both historical method and content.  Relationships can be fostered between local institutions encouraging students to engage and research the content in the exhibits and learn more about how historians know what they claim to know.  There are, thus, many opportunities not only to engage students with the physical objects of the past, but to engage their attention to the construction of the content.  Local histories are often exhibited in a predominantly positive way, with the darker points of history usually (but not always) relegated to the more distant past, and this also creates opportunities to prompt thought about other perspectives and more balanced understandings of human past and human nature.  (Incidentally, I think it is often the threat of the darker side of history that makes the accompanying sports history that much more appealing and triumphant!  That is unless, of course, there is something inherently unavoidable about the loss, such as the Baltimore Colts packing up and leaving town, or the utter racism that left the Washington Redskins as the last team to desegregate.)

In short, there is opportunity in our local field trip availability that can trigger really useful active thinking–historical thinking, as Sam Wineburg would call it–that we can tap into as educators at all levels.