Mount Vernon's historical status was secured by George Washington's ownership, but its full history cannot be told without examining the other people who lived here. Sarah Johnson, first living enslaved at Mount Vernon and later emancipated, saw the change in Mount Vernon from family home to national treasure. We discuss this story with Scott E. Casper, author of Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine. And we also discuss Scott Casper's favorite place, the American Antiquarian Society and its amazing collections and programs.
Mount Vernon's historical status was secured by George Washington's ownership, but its full history cannot be told without examining the other people who lived here. Sarah Johnson, first living enslaved at Mount Vernon and later emancipated, saw the change in Mount Vernon from family home to national treasure. We discuss this story with Scott E. Casper, author of Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine. And we also discuss Scott Casper's favorite place, the American Antiquarian Society and its amazing collections and programs.
WEBVTT
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Hello, everyone,
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and welcome to the
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Revolution 250 podcast.
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Rev 250 is a consortium of
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70 organizations in
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Massachusetts planning ways
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to commemorate the
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beginnings of American independence.
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And one of our partner
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organizations from the very
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beginning has been the
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American Antiquarian
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Society in Worcester.
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I'm really happy to have
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with us Scott E. Casper,
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who is the president of the AAS,
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been president since 2020.
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AAS was in 1990 when you
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were a fellow with the
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American Antiquarian Society.
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So why don't we start off
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just talking a little bit
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about the American Antiquarian Society,
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what you do and how the
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treasures you have to tell
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the story of the American Revolution.
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Well, thanks so much, Bob.
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I'm delighted to be here,
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and AAS is delighted to be
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a partner of REV250.
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The American Antiquarian Society was,
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in fact,
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founded in some ways out of the
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American Revolution by Isaiah Thomas,
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who was a patriot printer
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during the 1770s, and in 1775,
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he moved his press to Worcester
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because he was being
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threatened with potential
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dismantling of his press or
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closing of his press by the
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British authorities.
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So he moves to Worcester in 1775,
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continues publishing his newspaper,
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The Massachusetts Spy,
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becomes really the largest
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publisher in America in the
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1780s and 1790s.
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And then in the early 19th century,
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turns his attention to
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preserving the materials of
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the American past,
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especially the printed material.
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And that collection, his collection,
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becomes the founding basis
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of the American Antiquarian Society,
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which was incorporated by
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the Commonwealth in 1812.
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So for more than for more than 200 years,
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we've been sharing the
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stories of America's past.
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Our collection
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includes the largest
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collection of American
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printed materials before 1820 anywhere.
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By our estimate,
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we have in our collections
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roughly two thirds of what
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was printed in what's now
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the United States before 1820,
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as well as major
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collections from the rest
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of the 19th century.
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The largest collection of
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American newspapers before 1876,
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the actual printed copies, books,
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pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera,
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you name it.
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And this goes back to Isaiah
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Thomas's vision,
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which was to collect everything.
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Not just the highlights,
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but the stuff of ordinary life.
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Those pamphlets that
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circulated all over the colonies.
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The broadsides announcing this or that.
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So we have all of that as
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well as graphic arts
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materials and manuscript collections.
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Four and a half million
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objects in our collections at this point.
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And who's allowed to use it?
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anyone.
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And we emphasize that.
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We give a certain number of
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fellowships each year,
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which are funded
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opportunities for people to do research.
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But beyond that,
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anybody can come and use
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our collections if they
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have a research project
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that seems to suggest the
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advantage of using them.
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We have scholars from all
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over the country and all over the world,
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as well as right here in Worcester.
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We also have artists who use
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our collections.
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several of our fellowships
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each year are earmarked for
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creative and performing
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performing artists we have
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young people we have
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college students
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occasionally high school
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students who come in
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working on projects a lot
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of people over the years
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have come here to work on
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genealogy projects now that
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ancestry.com and
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familysearch.org are out there
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You're a genealogist,
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but those websites actually
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digitized a lot of our collections.
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If you're using familysearch.org,
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you're actually using KS collections.
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But anybody's welcome.
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And that's important to us,
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that this is a resource for
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anyone's research to do
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research into the histories
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that we might not even have
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imagined could be told.
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Right.
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Right, right.
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And you also do seminars.
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You have seminar series and programs,
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teacher programs.
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We do.
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So this summer, we have three seminars.
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We've already completed our
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seminar in American visual culture,
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which was on disability in
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visual culture.
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Next month is our seminar in
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American print culture,
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which is about narrative
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migration and multilingual print culture.
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And then at the beginning of August,
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we have a seminar,
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a K-12 teacher institute
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connected to our NEH funded
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program called Historic
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Children's Voices.
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We have cataloged and
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digitized roughly 15,000
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pages of material
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created by 19th century American children,
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not for but by children,
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which includes manuscripts, diaries,
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as well as handwritten amateur newspapers,
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printed books printed on
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young people's press is
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wonderful material,
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which is now available, open access,
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thanks to the age grant and
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a lot of hard work by a lot of our staff.
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So 25 teachers from around
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the country will be coming
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here to Worcester
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to work with that material
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to think about how it might
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be incorporated into their
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classrooms so that young
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people today can listen to
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the voices of young people 150 years ago.
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That is great.
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What a great idea.
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What a great collection to
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have or material to have.
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Now,
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a lot of your work as a scholar has
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been on the history of the
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book and the history of print culture.
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It feels that way to me.
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This is where I first
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learned about American
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print culture in many ways.
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I came here as a research
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fellow when I was a
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graduate student in 1990
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and was introduced both to the field of
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print culture and the
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history of the book and to
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the community of people who work on that.
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I think when I think about this place,
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the American Antiquarian Society,
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I think about both the
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collections and the community.
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And that community includes our amazing,
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extraordinary staff,
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as well as the other
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researchers who've worked
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here over the years.
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And this really has been for
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decades a hub for the study
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of American print culture.
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So I indeed have worked on that
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for much of my career,
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and this is where it started.
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It's a wonderful place, too, to be in.
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The building itself is terrific,
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and the grounds are wonderful, so it's
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I'm sure you can't either.
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I can't.
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As you can tell,
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our campus is about 110 years old.
00:07:06.545 --> 00:07:08.444
The society is about 210 years old.
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And it's a wonderful
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collection of buildings,
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including the library itself,
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which is marvelous,
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and several houses that are
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available for researchers
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to rent rooms so that they
00:07:20.127 --> 00:07:21.749
can basically roll out of
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bed and into the library,
00:07:23.769 --> 00:07:24.689
as well as administrative
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offices and so on.
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We're talking with Scott E. Casper,
00:07:28.898 --> 00:07:30.139
who is the president of the
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American Antiquarian Society,
00:07:32.742 --> 00:07:36.386
and tremendous archive of materials.
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And let's talk a little bit
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about other work that you have done,
00:07:40.309 --> 00:07:41.050
because as I said,
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you do a history of the book.
00:07:42.692 --> 00:07:44.213
A lot of your scholarly work
00:07:44.913 --> 00:07:46.394
seems to look at history,
00:07:46.454 --> 00:07:47.737
but not simply looking at history,
00:07:47.776 --> 00:07:49.038
but how we remember it or
00:07:49.117 --> 00:07:50.119
how it's recorded.
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You know,
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you have a terrific book on 19th
00:07:52.904 --> 00:07:54.586
century biographies and how
00:07:54.646 --> 00:07:55.665
Americans in the 19th
00:07:55.706 --> 00:07:56.867
century were creating a
00:07:58.288 --> 00:07:59.269
sense of themselves through
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biographies of other Americans.
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Exactly, Bob.
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I think that's the through
00:08:04.132 --> 00:08:06.454
line of my entire scholarly
00:08:06.514 --> 00:08:09.055
career is I think about how
00:08:09.196 --> 00:08:10.536
Americans in the past
00:08:11.057 --> 00:08:12.158
thought about the past.
00:08:13.038 --> 00:08:15.600
So beginning with my work on biography,
00:08:15.839 --> 00:08:17.521
which really tried to...
00:08:18.461 --> 00:08:20.182
Imagine what Americans in
00:08:20.202 --> 00:08:22.283
the 19th century thought
00:08:22.524 --> 00:08:25.165
biographies ought to be or ought to do.
00:08:25.826 --> 00:08:26.286
Today,
00:08:26.466 --> 00:08:28.346
we think about biographies in
00:08:28.406 --> 00:08:29.028
several ways.
00:08:29.288 --> 00:08:31.569
Some of it is biography is a
00:08:31.588 --> 00:08:32.669
way to learn about history
00:08:33.009 --> 00:08:35.230
or biography is a way to
00:08:35.311 --> 00:08:37.392
learn about the psychology
00:08:37.491 --> 00:08:38.173
of the person whose
00:08:38.212 --> 00:08:39.373
biography you're reading.
00:08:40.514 --> 00:08:41.674
In the 19th century,
00:08:41.754 --> 00:08:42.495
particularly at the
00:08:42.534 --> 00:08:44.135
beginning of the 19th century,
00:08:44.735 --> 00:08:47.638
biography was predominantly thought
00:08:48.317 --> 00:08:49.198
in the United States,
00:08:49.639 --> 00:08:53.962
thought to be a tool of instruction,
00:08:54.322 --> 00:08:56.485
whether it was instruction for character,
00:08:56.644 --> 00:08:58.225
instruction for patriotism,
00:08:58.527 --> 00:08:59.807
instruction for history.
00:09:00.307 --> 00:09:01.528
And it's over the course of
00:09:01.548 --> 00:09:03.471
the 19th century that we
00:09:03.571 --> 00:09:05.392
see the emergence and
00:09:05.611 --> 00:09:07.193
ultimately the dominance of
00:09:07.254 --> 00:09:09.075
the idea that the
00:09:09.696 --> 00:09:10.917
biographer's major
00:09:10.976 --> 00:09:14.298
responsibility is to their subject,
00:09:14.458 --> 00:09:15.980
to understand what made
00:09:16.041 --> 00:09:17.201
their subject tick.
00:09:17.903 --> 00:09:19.046
Earlier on,
00:09:19.105 --> 00:09:21.552
I think that the responsibility
00:09:21.592 --> 00:09:22.936
of the biographer was
00:09:22.956 --> 00:09:25.423
thought to be primarily to the reader.
00:09:27.614 --> 00:09:29.355
So what I trace in that book
00:09:29.895 --> 00:09:31.037
is the emergence of these
00:09:31.096 --> 00:09:33.219
different strands as we see
00:09:33.259 --> 00:09:35.321
them in biographies themselves,
00:09:35.801 --> 00:09:37.722
in criticism of biographies
00:09:37.783 --> 00:09:39.063
that appeared in newspapers
00:09:39.124 --> 00:09:41.145
and magazines and also in
00:09:41.706 --> 00:09:42.827
readers experiences.
00:09:42.908 --> 00:09:44.188
So I spent a lot of time
00:09:44.229 --> 00:09:46.370
with readers diaries and
00:09:46.551 --> 00:09:47.912
other material from readers
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to figure out what.
00:09:50.554 --> 00:09:52.700
ordinary Americans imagined
00:09:53.041 --> 00:09:54.605
when they were reading biographies.
00:09:55.547 --> 00:09:57.171
And that was work that the
00:09:57.191 --> 00:09:59.355
American Antiquarian Society inspired.
00:10:02.346 --> 00:10:05.148
So I worked on that for about 10 years.
00:10:06.349 --> 00:10:07.249
And then I turned my
00:10:07.328 --> 00:10:10.211
interest to how historic
00:10:10.350 --> 00:10:12.633
sites and the people at
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historic sites imagined the
00:10:14.734 --> 00:10:16.274
past and presented the past,
00:10:16.335 --> 00:10:17.515
really with a focus on
00:10:17.895 --> 00:10:19.317
George Washington's Mount Vernon,
00:10:20.136 --> 00:10:21.437
which I ultimately came to
00:10:21.518 --> 00:10:23.259
see as other people's Mount
00:10:23.278 --> 00:10:23.980
Vernon as well.
00:10:24.620 --> 00:10:24.820
Right.
00:10:25.100 --> 00:10:25.240
Yeah.
00:10:25.500 --> 00:10:26.561
And you had spent a lot of
00:10:26.600 --> 00:10:27.501
time at Mount Vernon
00:10:27.542 --> 00:10:28.722
leading teacher workshops
00:10:28.783 --> 00:10:30.063
and being engaged with it.
00:10:30.224 --> 00:10:31.424
And your book,
00:10:32.365 --> 00:10:33.905
Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon,
00:10:33.946 --> 00:10:34.947
The Forgotten History of an
00:10:34.986 --> 00:10:35.767
American Shrine,
00:10:35.807 --> 00:10:36.687
really looks at it as a
00:10:37.307 --> 00:10:38.769
19th century site whose
00:10:38.808 --> 00:10:40.330
history is being shaped by
00:10:40.370 --> 00:10:42.110
these people working there
00:10:42.150 --> 00:10:43.932
telling the stories of Mount Vernon,
00:10:43.972 --> 00:10:45.653
a place people came to see
00:10:45.693 --> 00:10:46.774
because of its connection
00:10:46.835 --> 00:10:48.195
with one person who had
00:10:48.235 --> 00:10:49.416
lived there and who created it,
00:10:49.796 --> 00:10:50.517
George Washington.
00:10:52.037 --> 00:10:52.639
Exactly.
00:10:52.981 --> 00:10:55.072
And I really pick up the story
00:10:56.477 --> 00:10:58.679
at Washington's death and
00:10:58.899 --> 00:11:00.942
look at the enslaved and
00:11:00.981 --> 00:11:02.602
then free community of
00:11:02.763 --> 00:11:04.904
African-Americans who over
00:11:04.965 --> 00:11:05.926
the course of the 19th
00:11:05.966 --> 00:11:08.187
century played as much of a
00:11:08.248 --> 00:11:10.188
role as anyone else in
00:11:10.328 --> 00:11:11.750
shaping the Mount Vernon
00:11:12.211 --> 00:11:14.893
that visitors came to see.
00:11:15.714 --> 00:11:17.575
And I was able to piece
00:11:17.634 --> 00:11:20.076
together the story of that
00:11:20.256 --> 00:11:21.759
African-American community
00:11:23.145 --> 00:11:24.067
from, I hope,
00:11:24.667 --> 00:11:26.528
some degree their own perspective,
00:11:26.607 --> 00:11:28.950
not perspective of white
00:11:29.049 --> 00:11:30.390
visitors or of the white
00:11:30.431 --> 00:11:32.331
people who owned the property,
00:11:33.172 --> 00:11:34.653
trying to figure out what
00:11:34.692 --> 00:11:37.014
the experience of Black
00:11:37.235 --> 00:11:38.535
families and a Black
00:11:38.596 --> 00:11:40.456
community were in this space.
00:11:41.096 --> 00:11:42.798
I've come over the years to
00:11:42.977 --> 00:11:46.500
see Mount Vernon as a Black community
00:11:47.461 --> 00:11:48.801
where the property happened
00:11:48.841 --> 00:11:50.881
to be owned by a fairly
00:11:50.942 --> 00:11:52.241
small number of white people.
00:11:52.542 --> 00:11:53.202
But even in George
00:11:53.243 --> 00:11:54.623
Washington's own lifetime,
00:11:54.923 --> 00:11:56.283
the number of Washingtons
00:11:56.503 --> 00:11:57.764
and white employees and
00:11:57.803 --> 00:11:59.344
servants on that site was
00:11:59.403 --> 00:12:00.624
dwarfed by the number of
00:12:00.683 --> 00:12:02.264
enslaved African-Americans.
00:12:02.664 --> 00:12:03.684
And that continued to be the
00:12:03.725 --> 00:12:05.865
case through the 19th century,
00:12:06.405 --> 00:12:07.865
both in slavery and then
00:12:08.145 --> 00:12:09.907
after the Civil War in freedom.
00:12:10.687 --> 00:12:12.909
So I really was trying to
00:12:13.090 --> 00:12:16.193
find a community whose
00:12:16.774 --> 00:12:18.115
story had not been told.
00:12:18.135 --> 00:12:19.898
These were not the
00:12:19.937 --> 00:12:21.038
descendants of George
00:12:21.078 --> 00:12:22.421
Washington's enslaved people.
00:12:22.721 --> 00:12:23.361
They were not the
00:12:23.402 --> 00:12:24.302
descendants of Martha
00:12:24.342 --> 00:12:25.504
Washington's enslaved people.
00:12:25.924 --> 00:12:27.466
They were people who were
00:12:27.506 --> 00:12:29.750
brought to Mount Vernon
00:12:29.970 --> 00:12:32.293
first by Bushrod Washington,
00:12:32.653 --> 00:12:35.256
who was George's nephew,
00:12:35.376 --> 00:12:36.597
Justice of the Supreme Court,
00:12:36.818 --> 00:12:38.340
and who inherited what we
00:12:38.400 --> 00:12:39.361
think of as the core of
00:12:39.422 --> 00:12:41.303
Mount Vernon because George
00:12:41.344 --> 00:12:43.206
Washington's will, through his will,
00:12:44.787 --> 00:12:46.107
manumitted the enslaved
00:12:46.128 --> 00:12:47.208
people who belonged to him.
00:12:47.229 --> 00:12:49.171
The enslaved people who had
00:12:49.191 --> 00:12:50.672
been enslaved to Martha
00:12:50.711 --> 00:12:52.373
Washington continued to be
00:12:52.433 --> 00:12:54.254
enslaved to her grandchildren.
00:12:54.654 --> 00:12:56.157
So the subsequent Washington
00:12:56.177 --> 00:12:58.798
owners brought a new community,
00:12:59.919 --> 00:13:01.301
even though the visitors to
00:13:01.341 --> 00:13:02.942
Mount Vernon often thought
00:13:03.001 --> 00:13:04.644
they were looking at George
00:13:04.683 --> 00:13:05.845
Washington's enslaved people.
00:13:05.865 --> 00:13:07.086
So that was the story I
00:13:07.125 --> 00:13:08.767
wanted to tell in Sarah
00:13:08.807 --> 00:13:09.707
Johnson's Mount Vernon.
00:13:11.048 --> 00:13:12.009
And you have these two
00:13:16.715 --> 00:13:18.716
meeting this woman and who
00:13:18.756 --> 00:13:19.937
tells her story at
00:13:20.298 --> 00:13:21.359
different points in her life.
00:13:21.399 --> 00:13:22.900
And you were able to discern
00:13:22.921 --> 00:13:24.261
that this was Sarah Johnson,
00:13:24.282 --> 00:13:26.624
the same person by doing
00:13:26.683 --> 00:13:28.905
census research and looking
00:13:28.946 --> 00:13:29.687
in other places.
00:13:30.408 --> 00:13:30.947
Exactly.
00:13:31.087 --> 00:13:34.650
So I first encountered Sarah,
00:13:34.751 --> 00:13:35.852
although I didn't know it,
00:13:36.332 --> 00:13:37.813
in a book written by
00:13:38.794 --> 00:13:43.999
a northern tourist in 1865
00:13:43.999 --> 00:13:45.019
who was going around the
00:13:45.078 --> 00:13:46.940
South basically to document
00:13:46.961 --> 00:13:47.880
the defeated South.
00:13:49.162 --> 00:13:50.243
And he stopped at Mount
00:13:50.263 --> 00:13:51.383
Vernon and he talked about
00:13:51.964 --> 00:13:52.803
at Mount Vernon,
00:13:53.565 --> 00:13:55.446
his name is John Townsend Trowbridge.
00:13:55.466 --> 00:13:56.667
He's a northern abolitionist
00:13:56.726 --> 00:13:57.668
writer and novelist.
00:13:58.028 --> 00:13:59.548
He writes in his book about
00:13:59.609 --> 00:14:02.071
the South about meeting a
00:14:02.091 --> 00:14:04.131
20-year-old young woman at
00:14:04.192 --> 00:14:05.932
Mount Vernon who talks with
00:14:05.952 --> 00:14:08.095
him about her experience.
00:14:08.855 --> 00:14:10.255
And he has quotes from her.
00:14:10.895 --> 00:14:12.897
And I realized a few years later,
00:14:12.996 --> 00:14:15.437
working with the US Census for 1870,
00:14:15.437 --> 00:14:16.918
that that was Sarah.
00:14:17.379 --> 00:14:18.379
And then if you go back,
00:14:18.639 --> 00:14:20.240
you can find Sarah's birth
00:14:20.600 --> 00:14:21.801
in the diary of the
00:14:21.860 --> 00:14:23.120
Washington who owned the place.
00:14:23.621 --> 00:14:25.142
You go all the way to her death,
00:14:25.322 --> 00:14:27.143
which is in the letters of
00:14:27.322 --> 00:14:29.423
the superintendent who
00:14:29.464 --> 00:14:30.183
works for the Mount Vernon
00:14:30.224 --> 00:14:31.225
Ladies Association.
00:14:31.705 --> 00:14:33.385
In between, you can trace
00:14:33.846 --> 00:14:35.187
her and her family's and her
00:14:35.227 --> 00:14:37.071
community's story over the
00:14:37.071 --> 00:14:38.592
75 years of her life.
00:14:38.613 --> 00:14:39.715
I actually start a little
00:14:39.794 --> 00:14:41.697
earlier with her family and
00:14:42.217 --> 00:14:43.821
go into the 20th century.
00:14:43.941 --> 00:14:45.702
It's an extraordinary story
00:14:46.745 --> 00:14:47.986
of people who...
00:14:48.927 --> 00:14:50.729
didn't just maintain Mount Vernon,
00:14:50.928 --> 00:14:52.070
they built their own
00:14:52.149 --> 00:14:54.812
community in slavery and in freedom.
00:14:55.272 --> 00:14:56.452
And that, to me,
00:14:56.913 --> 00:14:57.874
is the more fascinating
00:14:57.913 --> 00:14:59.355
story of Mount Vernon as
00:14:59.394 --> 00:15:01.176
really a microcosm of the
00:15:01.297 --> 00:15:03.638
changes in African-American
00:15:03.697 --> 00:15:05.639
life across the 19th century.
00:15:05.960 --> 00:15:08.160
So I see Mount Vernon not
00:15:08.181 --> 00:15:09.721
just as an 18th century place,
00:15:10.062 --> 00:15:11.583
but also as a 19th century one.
00:15:11.943 --> 00:15:12.104
Yeah.
00:15:12.984 --> 00:15:14.365
We're talking with Scott Casper,
00:15:14.404 --> 00:15:15.666
who is the president of the
00:15:15.706 --> 00:15:16.625
American Antiquarian
00:15:16.667 --> 00:15:18.246
Society and the author of,
00:15:18.307 --> 00:15:19.048
among other books,
00:15:19.447 --> 00:15:21.028
Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon,
00:15:21.048 --> 00:15:22.610
The Forgotten History of an
00:15:22.669 --> 00:15:23.750
American Shrine,
00:15:24.591 --> 00:15:26.331
which tells us it's interesting.
00:15:26.611 --> 00:15:28.533
We all are looking for those
00:15:28.653 --> 00:15:30.533
voices and how to recover them.
00:15:31.075 --> 00:15:32.294
And you've managed to do it.
00:15:32.455 --> 00:15:34.115
And it's striking looking at
00:15:34.176 --> 00:15:36.498
this African-American community.
00:15:36.738 --> 00:15:37.857
And it partly is because it
00:15:37.958 --> 00:15:39.019
is Mount Vernon that we're
00:15:39.078 --> 00:15:40.460
able to get so much information.
00:15:44.101 --> 00:15:44.682
a lot else.
00:15:44.741 --> 00:15:46.582
And then so she starts off
00:15:46.682 --> 00:15:49.585
enslaved to John Augustine Washington,
00:15:50.044 --> 00:15:52.187
who owns owns the place.
00:15:52.626 --> 00:15:53.927
Civil War disrupts that.
00:15:53.947 --> 00:15:54.707
But then she becomes an
00:15:54.748 --> 00:15:55.908
employee of the Mount
00:15:55.928 --> 00:15:57.789
Vernon Ladies Memorial Association.
00:15:58.309 --> 00:15:58.750
Exactly.
00:15:58.830 --> 00:15:59.990
She comes back after the
00:16:00.030 --> 00:16:01.451
Civil War with her husband,
00:16:01.851 --> 00:16:04.452
who had been the butler before the war.
00:16:05.114 --> 00:16:08.174
And my best my best guess,
00:16:08.515 --> 00:16:09.635
because we don't have the records,
00:16:10.176 --> 00:16:10.557
is that
00:16:11.778 --> 00:16:12.119
She,
00:16:12.519 --> 00:16:15.120
who was just a teenager when the war
00:16:15.160 --> 00:16:17.423
breaks out, and he, the butler,
00:16:17.803 --> 00:16:19.586
somehow reconnect either
00:16:19.625 --> 00:16:21.226
during the war or right after the war,
00:16:21.307 --> 00:16:22.028
and they marry.
00:16:22.609 --> 00:16:24.009
And they come back to Mount
00:16:24.049 --> 00:16:25.971
Vernon as employees of the
00:16:26.011 --> 00:16:29.495
Ladies Association in 1865.
00:16:29.495 --> 00:16:31.317
She remains there through
00:16:31.557 --> 00:16:32.658
her first husband's death.
00:16:32.918 --> 00:16:33.778
She remarries.
00:16:33.879 --> 00:16:36.241
She remains an employee until 1892.
00:16:36.961 --> 00:16:39.585
So for 27 years, you know,
00:16:39.605 --> 00:16:41.726
she had been born there in 1844.
00:16:41.726 --> 00:16:44.830
So really for 48 years of her life,
00:16:45.931 --> 00:16:47.152
except for those years of the Civil War,
00:16:47.673 --> 00:16:49.014
she's at Mount Vernon.
00:16:49.855 --> 00:16:50.235
That's
00:16:51.111 --> 00:16:53.893
That's longer than George
00:16:53.972 --> 00:16:56.533
Washington was at Vernon.
00:16:57.494 --> 00:16:58.674
So you think about these
00:16:58.875 --> 00:17:00.195
African-American employees
00:17:00.554 --> 00:17:01.676
who spend their lives there.
00:17:01.975 --> 00:17:03.035
But the next part of her
00:17:03.096 --> 00:17:05.237
story is that she purchases
00:17:05.336 --> 00:17:06.297
land of her own.
00:17:07.377 --> 00:17:08.637
Second husband is a
00:17:08.678 --> 00:17:10.179
landowner in the neighborhood.
00:17:10.878 --> 00:17:13.000
And in 1892,
00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:15.779
she retires or resigns from Mount Vernon,
00:17:16.260 --> 00:17:17.480
which is a good reminder
00:17:17.800 --> 00:17:20.781
that she was not attached
00:17:20.862 --> 00:17:23.083
to the place in the way
00:17:23.103 --> 00:17:24.603
that visitors might have assumed.
00:17:25.123 --> 00:17:26.123
To the extent that she was
00:17:26.182 --> 00:17:28.403
attached to the place as a free woman,
00:17:28.804 --> 00:17:30.924
that was by her choice and
00:17:31.125 --> 00:17:32.605
on her timetable.
00:17:33.244 --> 00:17:34.385
And then when she
00:17:35.781 --> 00:17:37.781
chose to move on, she did.
00:17:37.882 --> 00:17:40.542
And she lived 28 more years after that,
00:17:40.883 --> 00:17:42.883
remaining in contact with
00:17:43.083 --> 00:17:45.084
Mount Vernon and its community,
00:17:45.723 --> 00:17:47.884
but not employed full-time there.
00:17:49.064 --> 00:17:49.984
That's amazing.
00:17:50.065 --> 00:17:52.005
And you found other people too.
00:17:52.125 --> 00:17:54.244
And there's Edmund Parker, Andrew Ford,
00:17:54.265 --> 00:17:55.865
these other people you
00:17:55.945 --> 00:17:57.385
found at Mount Vernon who
00:17:57.425 --> 00:17:58.865
were actually part of it.
00:17:58.885 --> 00:18:00.267
And there's the photograph
00:18:00.287 --> 00:18:01.866
of Edmund Parker at the gate.
00:18:02.027 --> 00:18:02.507
It was kind of a
00:18:05.384 --> 00:18:07.204
As they're visiting the place,
00:18:07.244 --> 00:18:08.984
you want to get some authenticity.
00:18:09.144 --> 00:18:10.846
And he, as Sarah Johnson,
00:18:10.885 --> 00:18:13.286
also offered this connection.
00:18:14.307 --> 00:18:14.707
Yeah.
00:18:14.846 --> 00:18:16.406
And the connection of the
00:18:16.606 --> 00:18:18.688
African-American man who is
00:18:18.748 --> 00:18:20.228
the guard at Washington's
00:18:20.347 --> 00:18:23.588
tomb begins with Edmund
00:18:23.648 --> 00:18:25.430
Parker in the 1870s.
00:18:25.490 --> 00:18:27.589
The Ladies Association hires him.
00:18:27.829 --> 00:18:29.471
He's Sarah's uncle.
00:18:30.171 --> 00:18:31.691
So he's born in the late 1820s.
00:18:33.892 --> 00:18:35.452
And before the Civil War,
00:18:35.752 --> 00:18:36.794
there certainly had been
00:18:36.933 --> 00:18:38.513
African-American men who
00:18:38.554 --> 00:18:39.474
worked on the property,
00:18:39.535 --> 00:18:40.775
some of whom had met
00:18:40.836 --> 00:18:41.756
visitors to the tomb.
00:18:42.276 --> 00:18:44.057
The Ladies Association hires
00:18:44.156 --> 00:18:46.798
Edmund Parker to do just that.
00:18:47.499 --> 00:18:49.460
And that becomes a symbol
00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:52.901
and a job that continues
00:18:53.101 --> 00:18:54.842
into the mid 1960s.
00:18:55.001 --> 00:18:56.962
A series of black men,
00:18:57.403 --> 00:18:59.044
typically older black men,
00:18:59.664 --> 00:19:01.586
are hired by the Ladies Association
00:19:02.445 --> 00:19:05.429
to play what I think of as a role.
00:19:05.449 --> 00:19:09.913
And that role exemplifies a
00:19:09.993 --> 00:19:13.537
kind of ongoing loyalty to
00:19:13.616 --> 00:19:15.078
Washington and his memory.
00:19:15.479 --> 00:19:17.361
That's a message the Ladies Association,
00:19:17.842 --> 00:19:19.723
I think, is seeking to send.
00:19:19.743 --> 00:19:22.547
They're careful about whom
00:19:22.586 --> 00:19:23.708
they hire for that role.
00:19:24.619 --> 00:19:25.119
Typically,
00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:27.721
typically men who have some
00:19:27.840 --> 00:19:29.601
family connection to people
00:19:29.641 --> 00:19:30.901
who had been enslaved at
00:19:30.941 --> 00:19:32.340
Mount Vernon before the war,
00:19:32.942 --> 00:19:34.682
typically men who are older.
00:19:35.622 --> 00:19:37.701
And then in 1965,
00:19:37.701 --> 00:19:39.643
when the last of those men retires,
00:19:39.663 --> 00:19:41.663
the Ladies Association does
00:19:41.762 --> 00:19:43.804
not replace him with another black man.
00:19:43.824 --> 00:19:45.243
And I think that also tells
00:19:45.324 --> 00:19:46.943
part of the story about
00:19:47.624 --> 00:19:50.904
changing ideas about the past.
00:19:51.365 --> 00:19:52.105
Right, right.
00:19:52.757 --> 00:19:54.419
And we're talking with Scott Casper,
00:19:54.459 --> 00:19:55.499
president of the American
00:19:55.538 --> 00:19:57.800
Antiquarian Society and author of,
00:19:57.861 --> 00:19:58.541
among other books,
00:19:58.582 --> 00:20:00.022
Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon,
00:20:00.042 --> 00:20:01.443
The Forgotten History of an
00:20:01.483 --> 00:20:02.265
American Shrine.
00:20:03.105 --> 00:20:04.707
And we'll back up just a bit
00:20:04.807 --> 00:20:06.167
because you make the point
00:20:06.228 --> 00:20:07.449
that around the time Sarah
00:20:07.489 --> 00:20:08.769
Johnson is retiring,
00:20:08.890 --> 00:20:10.510
things are changing at
00:20:11.011 --> 00:20:12.212
Mount Vernon in the country.
00:20:12.232 --> 00:20:13.874
You know, with the arrival of trolleys,
00:20:13.894 --> 00:20:14.494
they think they're going to
00:20:14.515 --> 00:20:16.155
get a different class of people.
00:20:16.715 --> 00:20:17.676
But also there's a change in
00:20:17.717 --> 00:20:19.858
racial attitudes happening in this period,
00:20:19.878 --> 00:20:22.280
the rise of Jim Crow and segregation.
00:20:27.142 --> 00:20:28.253
late 19th, early 20th century.
00:20:29.980 --> 00:20:31.500
that's absolutely the case.
00:20:32.741 --> 00:20:35.323
When Sarah Johnson retires,
00:20:35.383 --> 00:20:37.203
or by now she's remarried
00:20:37.265 --> 00:20:38.384
and her last name is Robinson.
00:20:38.424 --> 00:20:39.766
When Sarah retires,
00:20:41.146 --> 00:20:43.028
the superintendent of Mount Vernon,
00:20:43.307 --> 00:20:45.108
whose name was Harrison Howell Dodge,
00:20:45.789 --> 00:20:47.250
writes a letter describing
00:20:47.490 --> 00:20:49.011
what he wants in her replacement.
00:20:49.711 --> 00:20:51.732
And above the words,
00:20:52.233 --> 00:20:54.595
something like a woman to do X, Y, and Z,
00:20:54.894 --> 00:20:57.017
he writes with a little carrot,
00:20:57.277 --> 00:20:58.076
the word white.
00:20:58.637 --> 00:20:58.938
So he's
00:20:59.498 --> 00:21:02.321
for a white housekeeper to
00:21:02.362 --> 00:21:03.743
replace this black
00:21:03.784 --> 00:21:04.625
housekeeper who's been
00:21:04.644 --> 00:21:05.886
there for seven years.
00:21:06.646 --> 00:21:09.691
Over those next several decades,
00:21:10.092 --> 00:21:11.594
what you might describe as
00:21:12.134 --> 00:21:14.657
the physical workforce at Mount Vernon,
00:21:14.978 --> 00:21:16.138
the people who are doing the
00:21:18.048 --> 00:21:19.108
physical labor of
00:21:19.189 --> 00:21:21.830
maintaining the farm remain
00:21:21.971 --> 00:21:22.830
African-American,
00:21:22.851 --> 00:21:24.632
while the people who are
00:21:25.392 --> 00:21:29.253
most connecting with visitors are white,
00:21:29.673 --> 00:21:31.413
except for the black man
00:21:31.453 --> 00:21:34.355
who's the guard at Washington's Trolley.
00:21:34.695 --> 00:21:36.175
So you see, in a sense,
00:21:36.516 --> 00:21:38.317
Jim Crow coming to Mount
00:21:38.376 --> 00:21:40.817
Vernon in the early decade,
00:21:41.018 --> 00:21:42.259
the end of the 19th century,
00:21:42.558 --> 00:21:43.898
the early decades of the Trolley.
00:21:44.420 --> 00:21:45.059
As you mentioned,
00:21:45.079 --> 00:21:47.540
the Trolley is the other big change.
00:21:48.700 --> 00:21:52.806
Before 1892, between 1850 and 1892,
00:21:52.806 --> 00:21:53.707
the largest number of
00:21:53.767 --> 00:21:54.909
visitors to Mount Vernon
00:21:55.449 --> 00:21:56.871
came by steamboat.
00:21:58.113 --> 00:21:59.074
And to do that,
00:21:59.755 --> 00:22:02.097
you had to set aside the bulk of a day
00:22:03.528 --> 00:22:05.189
And the visitors were really
00:22:05.388 --> 00:22:07.371
on site at Mount Vernon
00:22:07.830 --> 00:22:08.932
only for a few hours,
00:22:08.971 --> 00:22:10.553
from about mid-morning
00:22:10.613 --> 00:22:11.854
until about 2.15 in the
00:22:11.933 --> 00:22:12.894
afternoon when the
00:22:12.914 --> 00:22:14.055
steamboat came to take them back.
00:22:14.736 --> 00:22:16.176
Once the trolley comes,
00:22:16.257 --> 00:22:18.097
and the trolley service
00:22:18.157 --> 00:22:18.999
from Washington and
00:22:19.098 --> 00:22:20.440
Alexandria to Mount Vernon
00:22:20.980 --> 00:22:23.101
launches in September 1892,
00:22:23.101 --> 00:22:25.782
it's possible for visitors
00:22:26.263 --> 00:22:27.364
to take the trolley and
00:22:27.443 --> 00:22:29.425
come at all hours of the day.
00:22:31.028 --> 00:22:32.191
basically from nine in the
00:22:32.230 --> 00:22:34.175
morning until five in the afternoon.
00:22:34.896 --> 00:22:36.781
That means that for the employees,
00:22:37.624 --> 00:22:39.326
they will be under visitors eyes
00:22:40.483 --> 00:22:42.585
many more hours there'll be
00:22:42.785 --> 00:22:43.905
fewer hours to get other
00:22:43.965 --> 00:22:45.487
work done I don't think
00:22:45.547 --> 00:22:47.748
it's a coincidence that the
00:22:47.887 --> 00:22:50.690
same week in september that
00:22:50.710 --> 00:22:52.049
the trolley comes to mount
00:22:52.109 --> 00:22:54.592
vernon is when sarah gives
00:22:54.711 --> 00:22:56.893
notice that she tends to
00:22:56.952 --> 00:22:58.213
leave because at this point
00:22:58.673 --> 00:22:59.473
her life is going to be
00:22:59.534 --> 00:23:01.955
changed by just that many
00:23:02.016 --> 00:23:03.276
more visitors and the
00:23:03.316 --> 00:23:04.636
trolley the trolley is
00:23:04.696 --> 00:23:05.317
really the main
00:23:06.018 --> 00:23:06.837
thoroughfare to mount
00:23:06.877 --> 00:23:08.239
vernon from 1892 until the 1930s
00:23:10.289 --> 00:23:11.911
when the George Washington
00:23:11.971 --> 00:23:14.511
Parkway is built on
00:23:14.612 --> 00:23:16.192
essentially the same route
00:23:16.313 --> 00:23:18.213
as the trolley route.
00:23:18.814 --> 00:23:20.335
Since then, it's been automobile traffic.
00:23:20.795 --> 00:23:21.576
Right, right.
00:23:22.756 --> 00:23:26.458
And so Sarah leaves and things do change.
00:23:26.498 --> 00:23:28.599
And then you mentioned in 1965,
00:23:28.599 --> 00:23:30.701
there's another change
00:23:30.760 --> 00:23:33.281
happening with the staff.
00:23:34.311 --> 00:23:35.252
Yeah,
00:23:35.292 --> 00:23:36.394
that's the point at which Mount
00:23:36.413 --> 00:23:39.316
Vernon does not replace its
00:23:39.395 --> 00:23:41.096
last African-American guard
00:23:41.196 --> 00:23:43.318
at the tomb with somebody
00:23:43.598 --> 00:23:45.180
to play quite that same role.
00:23:46.441 --> 00:23:47.701
I don't have evidence.
00:23:47.741 --> 00:23:48.623
I never was able to find
00:23:48.682 --> 00:23:50.943
evidence about why that was the case.
00:23:51.984 --> 00:23:52.905
I think it probably has
00:23:52.925 --> 00:23:55.688
something to do with people
00:23:55.827 --> 00:23:57.608
recognizing that kind of
00:23:57.669 --> 00:23:59.590
racial portrayal as something...
00:24:01.231 --> 00:24:01.893
out of the past,
00:24:02.012 --> 00:24:03.973
not really as relevant to a
00:24:04.035 --> 00:24:05.375
world of the civil rights
00:24:05.435 --> 00:24:06.517
movement and so on.
00:24:07.237 --> 00:24:09.459
It takes several decades, I think,
00:24:09.499 --> 00:24:10.900
for Mount Vernon to
00:24:11.161 --> 00:24:13.402
incorporate Black history
00:24:13.623 --> 00:24:15.663
into its presentation to
00:24:15.683 --> 00:24:17.506
the extent now it's part of
00:24:17.625 --> 00:24:19.887
almost everything that Mount Vernon does.
00:24:20.367 --> 00:24:22.170
I believe the first tour,
00:24:22.190 --> 00:24:23.290
I think it was called at
00:24:23.330 --> 00:24:24.832
the time that the Slave
00:24:24.912 --> 00:24:26.053
Life Tour or something like
00:24:26.093 --> 00:24:29.894
that was started in the 19...
00:24:29.894 --> 00:24:34.837
70s by a Black woman who was an employee,
00:24:34.877 --> 00:24:36.038
a guide at Mount Vernon.
00:24:36.078 --> 00:24:37.680
So Mount Vernon had hired
00:24:37.720 --> 00:24:39.862
somebody who was part of
00:24:39.961 --> 00:24:40.882
the longtime
00:24:41.163 --> 00:24:42.604
African-American community in
00:24:42.644 --> 00:24:43.443
the neighborhood.
00:24:44.065 --> 00:24:45.826
Some of her descendants, I'm sorry,
00:24:45.846 --> 00:24:47.267
some of her ancestors had
00:24:47.287 --> 00:24:49.268
been people freed by the
00:24:49.307 --> 00:24:50.788
terms of Washington's will.
00:24:51.308 --> 00:24:54.391
And so that tour begins in the 70s.
00:24:54.811 --> 00:24:56.593
It's really in the last 15
00:24:56.593 --> 00:24:59.194
years that Mount Vernon has worked to
00:25:00.214 --> 00:25:03.538
incorporate the lives of enslaved people,
00:25:03.557 --> 00:25:05.859
specific enslaved people,
00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:07.240
not just generic ones,
00:25:07.721 --> 00:25:10.263
into its entire presentation.
00:25:10.324 --> 00:25:12.746
And certainly you can see that now.
00:25:13.185 --> 00:25:14.626
And you mentioned something earlier, Bob,
00:25:14.666 --> 00:25:15.827
that I think is really important.
00:25:16.469 --> 00:25:17.088
Mount Vernon
00:25:18.170 --> 00:25:20.070
may be the best documented
00:25:20.191 --> 00:25:21.571
American 18th century
00:25:21.632 --> 00:25:23.432
plantation that exists
00:25:23.692 --> 00:25:24.834
because George Washington
00:25:25.653 --> 00:25:26.734
kept all the records.
00:25:27.795 --> 00:25:28.935
We know people's names.
00:25:31.637 --> 00:25:34.378
Mount Vernon today has an
00:25:34.459 --> 00:25:36.099
open access database of the
00:25:36.140 --> 00:25:37.201
enslaved people who were
00:25:37.221 --> 00:25:39.761
there in Washington's time.
00:25:40.142 --> 00:25:41.823
We can do that kind of work.
00:25:43.913 --> 00:25:44.993
lots of scholars are trying
00:25:45.013 --> 00:25:45.953
to do that work for many
00:25:46.013 --> 00:25:46.934
other sites as well.
00:25:47.115 --> 00:25:47.775
Right.
00:25:48.335 --> 00:25:49.894
We're talking with Scott Casper,
00:25:49.934 --> 00:25:51.036
President of the American
00:25:51.076 --> 00:25:53.195
Antiquarian Society and
00:25:53.395 --> 00:25:55.516
author of Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon,
00:25:55.557 --> 00:25:58.076
Forgotten History of an American Shrine.
00:25:59.497 --> 00:26:00.136
It is fascinating.
00:26:00.218 --> 00:26:02.238
Washington was a great record keeper,
00:26:02.258 --> 00:26:05.419
also a very demanding owner
00:26:05.679 --> 00:26:06.999
as well as a demanding general.
00:26:07.118 --> 00:26:08.479
It's one reason he knew what
00:26:08.558 --> 00:26:09.740
everyone should be doing
00:26:10.259 --> 00:26:11.559
all the time on his farm.
00:26:12.835 --> 00:26:13.655
So it benefits us.
00:26:13.675 --> 00:26:14.435
It might not have been such
00:26:14.476 --> 00:26:16.298
a benefit to the enslaved
00:26:16.337 --> 00:26:17.638
people or the soldiers,
00:26:17.898 --> 00:26:21.181
but Washington was, yeah.
00:26:21.540 --> 00:26:24.022
Now, you mentioned that Trowbridge,
00:26:24.063 --> 00:26:24.883
the abolitionist,
00:26:24.923 --> 00:26:26.364
writes an account of
00:26:26.523 --> 00:26:27.704
meeting Sarah Johnson.
00:26:28.085 --> 00:26:29.026
But you also say that the
00:26:29.105 --> 00:26:30.426
story that the African
00:26:30.446 --> 00:26:32.248
Americans would tell would
00:26:32.387 --> 00:26:34.690
also satisfy kind of an
00:26:34.750 --> 00:26:36.371
idea of the Old South.
00:26:36.510 --> 00:26:38.271
What kind of a master was Washington?
00:26:39.992 --> 00:26:42.594
a story that can appeal to
00:26:42.653 --> 00:26:44.454
people with very different
00:26:44.615 --> 00:26:46.435
sensibilities or ideologies?
00:26:48.176 --> 00:26:48.836
Absolutely.
00:26:49.616 --> 00:26:51.478
I think that the African
00:26:51.518 --> 00:26:54.118
Americans who talked with
00:26:54.479 --> 00:26:56.019
white visitors in the 19th
00:26:56.059 --> 00:26:59.162
century were experts in
00:26:59.362 --> 00:27:01.021
calibrating their stories
00:27:01.623 --> 00:27:04.943
to what the visitors came to hear.
00:27:06.204 --> 00:27:07.305
So, for example, in the 1830s,
00:27:10.656 --> 00:27:11.398
Oliver Smith,
00:27:12.040 --> 00:27:13.023
who had been brought there by
00:27:13.064 --> 00:27:15.999
Bushrod Washington in 1802,
00:27:15.999 --> 00:27:17.559
is talking with somebody he
00:27:17.640 --> 00:27:20.261
must have recognized as an abolitionist.
00:27:20.801 --> 00:27:22.242
And this is somebody who's
00:27:22.323 --> 00:27:25.085
writing a piece for the Liberator,
00:27:25.125 --> 00:27:27.366
the famous abolitionist
00:27:27.406 --> 00:27:28.708
newspaper of the 1830s.
00:27:29.347 --> 00:27:30.509
And to that visitor,
00:27:31.249 --> 00:27:32.710
Oliver Smith talks about
00:27:33.371 --> 00:27:34.872
members of his family and
00:27:34.932 --> 00:27:37.093
community having been sold away.
00:27:37.394 --> 00:27:41.776
He talks about what a horrific thing
00:27:42.636 --> 00:27:44.038
enslavement was.
00:27:44.678 --> 00:27:45.878
With other visitors,
00:27:46.578 --> 00:27:48.220
he does not disabuse them
00:27:48.579 --> 00:27:50.760
of their notion that he had
00:27:50.800 --> 00:27:54.102
been there when Washington died.
00:27:54.201 --> 00:27:56.323
He was mourning Washington.
00:27:56.344 --> 00:27:58.845
So we see this throughout
00:27:58.964 --> 00:28:00.244
the 19th century.
00:28:01.665 --> 00:28:03.166
Edmund Parker is another great case.
00:28:03.326 --> 00:28:06.468
Day after day after day at the tomb for
00:28:06.468 --> 00:28:09.887
30 plus years,
00:28:10.587 --> 00:28:13.650
he tells the story of Washington's death.
00:28:13.710 --> 00:28:16.090
He tells the story of the
00:28:16.171 --> 00:28:17.832
tomb and the family,
00:28:18.031 --> 00:28:18.932
the Washington family
00:28:18.972 --> 00:28:20.272
members who've been at that tomb.
00:28:20.833 --> 00:28:22.094
And he, as far as we know,
00:28:22.473 --> 00:28:24.234
barely ever says a word
00:28:24.654 --> 00:28:26.977
about his own experience as
00:28:27.237 --> 00:28:29.458
the father of more than 10 children,
00:28:29.917 --> 00:28:30.898
as somebody who had
00:28:30.999 --> 00:28:32.359
actually run away from
00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:34.240
Mount Vernon to work for
00:28:34.259 --> 00:28:35.621
the Union Army during the Civil War.
00:28:35.760 --> 00:28:36.761
He doesn't tell that story.
00:28:37.221 --> 00:28:38.922
as far as we know, to tourists.
00:28:39.202 --> 00:28:41.423
But on his deathbed in 1898,
00:28:41.423 --> 00:28:43.644
a Washington Post reporter
00:28:43.743 --> 00:28:44.923
comes to visit him,
00:28:45.544 --> 00:28:47.444
and he tells the whole thing.
00:28:47.944 --> 00:28:50.586
He tells about how slavery
00:28:51.066 --> 00:28:53.226
was a terrifying institution.
00:28:53.686 --> 00:28:56.666
Your mind was terrified all the time,
00:28:56.767 --> 00:28:58.028
and it robbed you of the
00:28:58.087 --> 00:28:59.367
opportunity for education.
00:29:00.107 --> 00:29:00.709
All of that.
00:29:00.729 --> 00:29:03.969
So they know whom they're talking to.
00:29:06.993 --> 00:29:11.919
what is okay to say given
00:29:13.299 --> 00:29:14.621
the person to whom they're
00:29:14.661 --> 00:29:17.462
speaking and given the role
00:29:17.502 --> 00:29:19.045
they have and the job they have.
00:29:19.065 --> 00:29:21.727
Because they're receiving monthly pay.
00:29:21.826 --> 00:29:23.067
This is their work site.
00:29:23.749 --> 00:29:25.851
And I think they are mindful
00:29:26.211 --> 00:29:28.133
of staying in their
00:29:28.192 --> 00:29:29.973
employer's good graces.
00:29:31.009 --> 00:29:32.191
At the same time,
00:29:32.570 --> 00:29:33.550
they have lives of their own.
00:29:34.112 --> 00:29:34.311
Right.
00:29:34.632 --> 00:29:37.693
It's amazing to think about Frederick,
00:29:38.013 --> 00:29:39.095
Ralph Ellison or someone
00:29:39.154 --> 00:29:40.935
else making that same point
00:29:41.036 --> 00:29:44.096
about this way we talk or
00:29:44.156 --> 00:29:45.198
the way we present.
00:29:45.817 --> 00:29:46.219
That's right.
00:29:46.558 --> 00:29:46.719
Yeah.
00:29:46.778 --> 00:29:47.419
I mean,
00:29:47.459 --> 00:29:49.661
you could describe it in today's
00:29:49.820 --> 00:29:51.981
parlance as versions of code switching.
00:29:53.323 --> 00:29:55.144
This is what's going on all
00:29:55.203 --> 00:29:57.724
the time at Mount Vernon in
00:29:57.744 --> 00:29:58.645
the 19th century.
00:29:59.006 --> 00:29:59.185
Right.
00:30:00.090 --> 00:30:00.851
And you also tell the story
00:30:00.871 --> 00:30:02.011
about during the Civil War
00:30:02.112 --> 00:30:02.971
when Mount Vernon is
00:30:03.032 --> 00:30:04.593
visited both by Union
00:30:04.653 --> 00:30:06.453
soldiers and Confederate soldiers,
00:30:06.574 --> 00:30:07.634
and there's a way the
00:30:07.755 --> 00:30:09.256
ladies make sure they're
00:30:09.296 --> 00:30:10.556
not taking sides.
00:30:11.336 --> 00:30:11.817
Exactly.
00:30:11.896 --> 00:30:13.837
They require the Ladies Association,
00:30:14.077 --> 00:30:15.239
which has just taken over
00:30:15.298 --> 00:30:16.278
the property from John
00:30:16.318 --> 00:30:17.220
Augustine Washington III,
00:30:18.220 --> 00:30:20.201
They require that soldiers
00:30:20.300 --> 00:30:21.721
who come onto the property
00:30:22.281 --> 00:30:23.903
leave their weapons on the
00:30:23.962 --> 00:30:25.544
outside of the property and
00:30:25.584 --> 00:30:27.085
that if they're wearing uniforms,
00:30:27.345 --> 00:30:28.826
they cover those uniforms
00:30:29.185 --> 00:30:31.027
with a shawl or a cape or
00:30:31.067 --> 00:30:33.348
something else so that the
00:30:33.429 --> 00:30:34.650
Ladies Association and
00:30:34.690 --> 00:30:36.651
Mount Vernon can remain a
00:30:37.250 --> 00:30:39.011
kind of neutral and sacred
00:30:39.071 --> 00:30:41.493
ground to Americans on both
00:30:41.594 --> 00:30:43.194
sides because both the
00:30:43.295 --> 00:30:44.394
Union and the Confederacy
00:30:44.434 --> 00:30:44.996
thought of George
00:30:45.036 --> 00:30:47.277
Washington as their founding father.
00:30:47.676 --> 00:30:48.038
That's right.
00:30:48.498 --> 00:30:50.019
And the ladies who were made
00:30:50.119 --> 00:30:52.202
up of elite women from both
00:30:52.282 --> 00:30:53.163
northern and southern
00:30:53.243 --> 00:30:56.288
states had a real stake in
00:30:56.548 --> 00:30:58.230
maintaining Mount Vernon's
00:30:59.092 --> 00:31:02.215
national image and reputation.
00:31:05.594 --> 00:31:06.996
And you tell the story about
00:31:07.036 --> 00:31:09.317
when Sarah Johnson remarries,
00:31:09.498 --> 00:31:10.619
that her dress,
00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:11.820
there's a connection with
00:31:11.840 --> 00:31:13.142
the Illinois Society,
00:31:13.323 --> 00:31:14.703
and you have the wedding
00:31:14.743 --> 00:31:16.046
invitation that was sent.
00:31:16.546 --> 00:31:19.328
It's an amazing story in her scrapbook.
00:31:20.250 --> 00:31:20.611
I would...
00:31:22.054 --> 00:31:23.715
That wedding invitation may
00:31:23.776 --> 00:31:26.439
have been the most moving
00:31:26.578 --> 00:31:29.143
thing I found in doing the research.
00:31:29.222 --> 00:31:31.566
So Sarah is a widow at this point.
00:31:31.625 --> 00:31:32.126
It's 1888.
00:31:33.508 --> 00:31:36.412
And she has met the man, William Robinson,
00:31:36.432 --> 00:31:37.854
who will become her second husband.
00:31:38.535 --> 00:31:39.876
And they're planning the wedding.
00:31:40.436 --> 00:31:42.898
And clearly the Mount Vernon ladies,
00:31:42.959 --> 00:31:43.999
that is the elite white
00:31:44.019 --> 00:31:46.500
women who own and manage Mount Vernon,
00:31:47.280 --> 00:31:48.321
know about her wedding.
00:31:48.662 --> 00:31:49.883
They write letters to one
00:31:49.942 --> 00:31:52.865
another and to the superintendent, Dodge,
00:31:52.984 --> 00:31:54.045
about this wedding.
00:31:54.705 --> 00:31:56.787
One of the ladies provides
00:31:56.826 --> 00:31:58.387
the material for the dress,
00:31:58.428 --> 00:32:00.249
the yellow fabric for her dress.
00:32:00.888 --> 00:32:02.650
And then in one of the other
00:32:02.690 --> 00:32:04.050
ladies' scrapbooks,
00:32:04.191 --> 00:32:06.292
Mrs. Margaret Sweet of Maine,
00:32:07.212 --> 00:32:08.594
In her scrapbook about Mount
00:32:08.634 --> 00:32:10.415
Vernon is preserved the
00:32:10.476 --> 00:32:13.919
engraved invitation to Sarah's wedding.
00:32:14.859 --> 00:32:17.602
And in Mrs. Sweet's handwriting,
00:32:17.942 --> 00:32:19.544
there is the handwritten note,
00:32:19.923 --> 00:32:21.905
longtime housekeeper at Mount Vernon.
00:32:22.366 --> 00:32:25.028
So we get a sense that this
00:32:25.670 --> 00:32:27.550
black woman who had been
00:32:27.711 --> 00:32:28.932
connected with the ladies
00:32:28.992 --> 00:32:30.473
for more than 20 years by now,
00:32:31.193 --> 00:32:34.557
had invited them to her wedding.
00:32:35.478 --> 00:32:37.599
They had a relationship that
00:32:37.619 --> 00:32:39.261
I would describe as more
00:32:39.321 --> 00:32:41.423
than just employer and employee.
00:32:42.365 --> 00:32:44.185
She was the one who served
00:32:44.246 --> 00:32:45.287
them most directly when
00:32:45.307 --> 00:32:47.628
they came for their council
00:32:47.648 --> 00:32:48.789
meetings twice a year.
00:32:50.022 --> 00:32:52.864
they think of her as somebody,
00:32:53.064 --> 00:32:55.125
a valued member of this community.
00:32:55.846 --> 00:32:57.866
They go to her for advice
00:32:58.146 --> 00:32:59.867
about what this place,
00:32:59.928 --> 00:33:00.988
what this room looked like
00:33:01.248 --> 00:33:02.348
before the Civil War,
00:33:02.409 --> 00:33:05.190
because she was there before and so on.
00:33:05.529 --> 00:33:07.111
So the story of her wedding
00:33:07.290 --> 00:33:08.471
really gives you a sense of
00:33:08.511 --> 00:33:09.451
this whole community,
00:33:09.811 --> 00:33:12.814
including the fact that Sarah's
00:33:13.473 --> 00:33:13.794
neighbors,
00:33:13.834 --> 00:33:15.234
her African-American neighbors
00:33:15.335 --> 00:33:16.115
from the surrounding
00:33:16.134 --> 00:33:17.976
community came to celebrate with her,
00:33:18.215 --> 00:33:19.537
which reminds us that Mount
00:33:19.557 --> 00:33:22.137
Vernon is not just a national site,
00:33:22.458 --> 00:33:23.798
but also very much part of
00:33:23.838 --> 00:33:25.160
a local landscape,
00:33:25.259 --> 00:33:26.759
a local black landscape
00:33:27.119 --> 00:33:29.422
that most visitors never saw.
00:33:30.942 --> 00:33:31.742
It's an amazing story.
00:33:31.782 --> 00:33:33.143
We're talking with Scott Casper,
00:33:33.282 --> 00:33:35.324
author of Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon,
00:33:35.364 --> 00:33:37.704
Forgotten History of an American Shrine,
00:33:38.526 --> 00:33:40.467
which is a great book, as well as,
00:33:40.626 --> 00:33:41.007
you know,
00:33:41.027 --> 00:33:42.087
you've also wrote a great book
00:33:42.107 --> 00:33:42.867
called Constructing
00:33:45.439 --> 00:33:47.359
in 19th century America and
00:33:47.380 --> 00:33:48.740
have co-edited a number of
00:33:48.861 --> 00:33:50.903
books on the history of the
00:33:50.942 --> 00:33:52.644
book and the history of print culture.
00:33:52.663 --> 00:33:54.404
And so I'm wondering now
00:33:54.444 --> 00:33:55.605
that you're at one of the
00:33:55.645 --> 00:33:56.925
real centers for the study
00:33:56.945 --> 00:33:57.686
of print culture,
00:33:57.727 --> 00:33:58.507
if you have some new
00:33:58.567 --> 00:33:59.807
project or if simply
00:33:59.887 --> 00:34:01.409
running the AAS is enough
00:34:01.449 --> 00:34:02.589
to keep anyone busy.
00:34:03.848 --> 00:34:05.490
My project is making sure
00:34:05.509 --> 00:34:06.170
that the American
00:34:06.210 --> 00:34:07.349
Antiquarian Society
00:34:07.690 --> 00:34:09.610
continues to do for
00:34:10.570 --> 00:34:11.911
generations of scholarship
00:34:12.012 --> 00:34:13.172
now and into the future
00:34:13.791 --> 00:34:15.313
what it has done for me
00:34:15.693 --> 00:34:16.932
over my career and has done
00:34:16.952 --> 00:34:19.233
for so many other people, which is to be-
00:34:20.134 --> 00:34:21.914
a vital collection that's
00:34:21.994 --> 00:34:23.635
accessible to more and more
00:34:23.675 --> 00:34:25.275
people access is really
00:34:25.315 --> 00:34:26.416
important to us thinking
00:34:26.476 --> 00:34:28.336
about digitization projects
00:34:28.478 --> 00:34:29.797
as well as as physical
00:34:30.077 --> 00:34:32.119
access to the materials and
00:34:32.179 --> 00:34:33.980
that these materials be
00:34:34.039 --> 00:34:36.300
available to generations of
00:34:36.380 --> 00:34:38.702
researchers to come from as
00:34:38.722 --> 00:34:40.501
wide a variety of
00:34:40.623 --> 00:34:42.242
backgrounds as possible I
00:34:42.262 --> 00:34:43.143
mean that to me is
00:34:44.503 --> 00:34:46.045
the project right now.
00:34:46.927 --> 00:34:48.590
I have small things I work on.
00:34:49.431 --> 00:34:51.313
I'm still teaching K-12
00:34:51.353 --> 00:34:53.114
teachers every summer at Mount Vernon.
00:34:53.235 --> 00:34:54.757
I teach at Bear Book School
00:34:54.836 --> 00:34:55.557
every other year.
00:34:55.577 --> 00:34:57.521
I have little essay projects,
00:34:57.621 --> 00:35:00.264
but really my focus is
00:35:01.306 --> 00:35:02.387
ensuring that this place
00:35:03.307 --> 00:35:05.329
remains what it has been and
00:35:05.389 --> 00:35:06.969
remains and becomes that
00:35:07.650 --> 00:35:09.090
for more and more people
00:35:09.451 --> 00:35:11.472
who might over its first
00:35:11.512 --> 00:35:13.353
two centuries not have felt
00:35:13.413 --> 00:35:14.672
as though this was the place for them,
00:35:14.974 --> 00:35:16.813
might not have known about
00:35:16.873 --> 00:35:18.414
the breadth of our collections.
00:35:18.755 --> 00:35:20.195
The fact that we have the
00:35:20.335 --> 00:35:22.336
deepest collection of material,
00:35:22.597 --> 00:35:23.858
early Hawaiian printed
00:35:23.898 --> 00:35:25.898
materials anywhere outside
00:35:25.918 --> 00:35:26.878
the Hawaiian islands.
00:35:27.800 --> 00:35:28.519
People don't know that.
00:35:28.860 --> 00:35:29.880
We have extraordinary
00:35:29.940 --> 00:35:30.860
collections for
00:35:31.001 --> 00:35:33.762
African-American history and scholarship.
00:35:33.782 --> 00:35:35.083
A lot of people don't know that.
00:35:35.423 --> 00:35:37.244
So getting the word out
00:35:37.385 --> 00:35:38.326
about our collections,
00:35:38.786 --> 00:35:40.246
making the connection with
00:35:40.606 --> 00:35:42.307
communities that might be interested,
00:35:42.789 --> 00:35:44.750
that's our work and that's really
00:35:45.764 --> 00:35:46.445
That's my project.
00:35:46.826 --> 00:35:47.467
That's terrific.
00:35:47.967 --> 00:35:49.869
You also have the Cherokee Phoenix,
00:35:49.889 --> 00:35:52.112
the newspaper of the... We do.
00:35:52.211 --> 00:35:54.675
We have perhaps the best run
00:35:54.695 --> 00:35:56.257
of the Cherokee Phoenix anywhere,
00:35:56.777 --> 00:35:57.878
which was the newspaper
00:35:58.960 --> 00:35:59.900
created in the late 1820s
00:35:59.920 --> 00:36:00.382
that really helped...
00:36:03.385 --> 00:36:05.106
assert Cherokee national
00:36:05.166 --> 00:36:06.146
sovereignty in the late
00:36:06.867 --> 00:36:08.628
1820s and that continued
00:36:08.668 --> 00:36:10.208
publication after the
00:36:10.650 --> 00:36:11.929
Cherokee Nation moved to
00:36:12.190 --> 00:36:13.891
what was then called Indian Territory.
00:36:14.931 --> 00:36:15.552
So yes,
00:36:15.592 --> 00:36:17.813
we have newspapers published in
00:36:17.914 --> 00:36:20.436
Cherokee language, in German, French.
00:36:20.976 --> 00:36:22.476
We acquired a newspaper
00:36:22.516 --> 00:36:24.418
published in Welsh last year.
00:36:24.878 --> 00:36:26.460
It's a remarkable collection,
00:36:26.559 --> 00:36:27.739
two and a half million
00:36:28.701 --> 00:36:31.583
American newspapers before
00:36:31.583 --> 00:36:34.125
1900 from every part of
00:36:34.184 --> 00:36:35.565
what's now the United States,
00:36:35.987 --> 00:36:38.407
as well as the Caribbean,
00:36:39.688 --> 00:36:40.369
another part of our
00:36:40.409 --> 00:36:41.371
collection that people may
00:36:41.411 --> 00:36:42.150
not know about.
00:36:42.170 --> 00:36:44.432
So if you're if you're
00:36:44.532 --> 00:36:46.213
interested in the printed
00:36:46.253 --> 00:36:48.076
material of the pre 20th
00:36:48.115 --> 00:36:49.416
century American past,
00:36:50.456 --> 00:36:51.557
you could do no better than
00:36:51.617 --> 00:36:52.599
to to come here.
00:36:54.126 --> 00:36:54.387
Thank you.
00:36:54.427 --> 00:36:55.806
We've been talking with Scott Casper,
00:36:55.847 --> 00:36:57.068
who is the president of the
00:36:57.188 --> 00:37:00.371
American Antiquarian Society in Worcester,
00:37:00.411 --> 00:37:01.811
Massachusetts, one of the great,
00:37:02.492 --> 00:37:04.492
great treasures in North
00:37:04.532 --> 00:37:05.974
America for the study of history.
00:37:06.014 --> 00:37:06.875
So thank you, Scott,
00:37:06.954 --> 00:37:08.556
both for doing this and for
00:37:09.076 --> 00:37:09.936
talking to us today.
00:37:10.536 --> 00:37:11.498
Bob, thank you so much.
00:37:11.538 --> 00:37:12.378
It's been a real pleasure.
00:37:13.920 --> 00:37:14.940
And so thank you.
00:37:14.981 --> 00:37:16.681
And I want to thank Jonathan Lane,
00:37:16.742 --> 00:37:18.563
our producer, the man behind the curtain.
00:37:19.164 --> 00:37:20.186
And our listeners.
00:37:20.246 --> 00:37:21.889
We have listeners all over the world.
00:37:21.909 --> 00:37:23.451
We do a lot in Massachusetts,
00:37:23.510 --> 00:37:24.932
but in far-flung places.
00:37:25.012 --> 00:37:25.793
So today,
00:37:25.813 --> 00:37:27.275
if you're one of these places and
00:37:27.295 --> 00:37:28.617
want some of our Revolution 250 swag,
00:37:30.170 --> 00:37:31.652
send Jonathan Lane an email,
00:37:31.711 --> 00:37:33.974
jlane at revolution250.org.
00:37:34.835 --> 00:37:35.795
And let's see.
00:37:35.835 --> 00:37:36.396
So this week,
00:37:36.476 --> 00:37:37.956
I want to thank folks in Frankfurt,
00:37:38.117 --> 00:37:39.157
on Maine, in Hess,
00:37:39.297 --> 00:37:41.900
and here in Massachusetts, in Foxborough,
00:37:42.001 --> 00:37:44.643
Lynn, and Brighton, and in Coolidge,
00:37:44.702 --> 00:37:47.304
Arizona, High Springs, Florida, Louisburg,
00:37:47.405 --> 00:37:48.306
North Carolina,
00:37:48.766 --> 00:37:50.467
and all places between and beyond.
00:37:50.507 --> 00:37:51.387
Thanks for joining us.
00:37:51.467 --> 00:37:52.588
And now we'll be piped out
00:37:52.768 --> 00:37:53.469
on the road to Boston.