Saturday, May 11, 2013

Rose Hill Manor Field Trip, Pt. 1

Early in April our home school group went to Rose Hill Manor in Frederick. What a great field trip! The kids had a blast, and I also enjoyed it thoroughly, as you'll be able to tell from the number of pictures I took.

Rose Hill was the property of Thomas Johnson, the first governor of Maryland. He lived on the estate, and when his daughter Anna married, he gave it to her as a wedding present. It was she and her husband who built the manor house.

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Our tour began in the parlor. (By the way: parlors? SUCH a good idea. A room where no one [ahem, children] ever goes, unless your family is entertaining guests, and therefore a room which always stays clean. It's brilliant, I tell you. Sign me up.) Our docent, Miss Peggy, was great. We went with the younger half of our group that day, so she was speaking mostly to 3-5 year olds, and she succeeded in keeping them engaged for well over an hour.

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This is a portrait of the Johnson family. Governor Johnson is at the top left; Ann, future heiress of Rose Hill, is directly below him in pink.

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We proceeded upstairs, where we viewed the master bedroom and learned about bed warmers and chamber pots. Then we went into a sort of Textiles Room, where we learned how our pre-industrialized ancestors made their clothes and bed coverings. For starters, each of the kids had a little bundle of wool to card.

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Then Miss Peggy demonstrated spinning the carded wool into yarn. It was the first time I've ever seen anyone actually use a spinning wheel!

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We learned about the different substances used to dye wool.

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And some of the kids got to help weave a few strands using this loom.

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Next we took a look at the children's bedroom and their nursery (play room). I didn't get any pictures of the nursery, but the kids had a lot of fun there, playing with the kinds of toys 19th century children might have enjoyed.

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After we finished upstairs, we passed through the enormous and stately dining room and into the kitchen. There Miss Peggy got busy preparing some authentic popcorn for the kids' snack--over the open fire in the enormous kitchen fireplace!

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Here's our group of hungry little historians waiting for their popcorn and herbal tea:

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(This made me chuckle: many of the kids [and at least one of the moms] were turned off by the old-fashioned, cold spearmint tea they received along with the popcorn, but my kids, steeped (yuk-yuk) in the ways of tea since they were toddlers thanks to their tea-loving Nana, gulped theirs down without thinking twice.)

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Storage and preparation areas in the kitchen:

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And Meg taking a turn at the butter churn:
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This concluded our tour of the mansion itself. I'm going to do a second post for the grounds and outbuildings, as this one is already much too long!

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