Upcoming Talk on Women’s Education at the Joel Lane House.
One of my areas of interest and research is education in the Colonial and Early Federal periods in North Carolina. Specifically, I study women’s education. Women’s education was more than needlework and learning to dance. Young ladies were learning Grammar, Mathematics, Languages, and in some Academies and Female Seminaries the rudiments of Astronomy. Needlework and dancing were taught as an additional tuition charge! I am going to give a talk on Thursday, October 20th, 2022, at the Joel Lane House Museum in Raleigh about a group of planter class young ladies who traveled from North Carolina to the Moravian Female Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Visit the Joel Lane House Museum’s website for more details and ticket prices.
https://www.joellane.org/
Back To Events
I participated in my first living history event since February 2020, over the 4th of July weekend, at the Joel Lane House in Raleigh, NC. I have to confess I was a little nervous. I have given a talk at the site, but never done an event there. Joel Lane (1739-1795) is considered the “Father of Raleigh.” In 1771 Lane introduced legislation to form Wake County (name for Margaret Wake Tryon, wife of the Royal Governor, William Tryon). As a follow up to that act, in 1792 he sold 1,000 acres of land to the State of North Carolina for the City of Raleigh. The Joel Lane House was built in 1769 and is the oldest extant house in Raleigh (it is not the oldest house on its original site, which was on Boylan Avenue, as the house was moved in 1914 to keep it from being demolished). The site has done an amazing job with the restoration of the house and other buildings (the 1790 kitchen was moved to the site in 1979 and was originally a single-family dwelling located in rural Wake County). Some of the most important work that the staff at the Joel Lane House has done involves the enslaved population that worked for the Lane family. The site recently dedicated a plaque naming the enslaved peoples listed in Joel Lane’s will and in the inventory of the sale of his property. The website presents all of the research, so I am not going to steal any of their thunder.
Back to the event. A friend asked if I would join her, working at the welcome table and then at one of the activity stations. I have been hesitant about returning to live events, but doing things via Zoom and video has gotten a little too comfortable, and old. There is something about doing events outside and in person in the heat that you cannot replicate via Zoom. The site required masks in the house and gift shop/visitor’s center, and I was comfortable with that. I very much enjoyed being at the front table on the gift shop/visitor’s center porch greeting people and getting them to sign the guest book and thanking them for their donations (a couple of people put in $20s!, thank you all so much). When it came time to change, Lanie Hubbard, the site director, asked me if I wanted to be in the house itself, since a volunteer had had to drop out. Sure! Why not? The one drawback is that I have no clue about the house, since I have never done an event there. Lanie walked me through some basics, and we ended up tag-teaming it. And it was great! We had the chance to talk to a young man and his mother who had a deep interest in living history! I love working with young people, it makes me so happy to see a young person who has been bitten by the history bug. I remind interpreters that the groups of students with which we work hold the future us and the future of the history profession! We talked about the enslaved peoples who worked at the Joel Lane House and Lanie talked about Lunsford Lane, the author of an early slave narrative, who is going to be the subject of a book by an NCSU professor.
I had fun. I learned about a house that has a connection to a man whose life I have spent the past decade studying. I was out in public and in kit! The length of time for the event was well within my comfort zone. I got to see friends AND give them hugs (we have all been fully vaccinated, so it is good). I am looking forward to my next event! I will let you know when and where, so come out and see me!
Come visit the Joel Lane House! https://www.joellane.org/