Showing posts with label Indiana history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indiana history. Show all posts

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Homeschool AP US History: A Family Field Trip to the Levi and Catharine Coffin House

 

Can I still call it a homeschool field trip if there's only one homeschooler in attendance?

Sadder question: will I still be able to call it a homeschool field trip when there are NO more homeschoolers in attendance? SOB!

For the moment, though, it's eyes forward, because I have one homeschooler in attendance, and that homeschooler is taking a deep dive into the Underground Railroad.

The worst thing about the AP history courses is they absolutely FLY through the material. The older kid's AP European History study crammed information into her so quickly that we had very little time to build context and make real-world connections, and to be honest, it shows in her middling retention of the material five years later.

I've addressed that problem with my younger kid by, in the case of her World History course, abandoning AP altogether and instead creating our own study, laser-focused on Ancient History, from the recommended college textbooks, and in the case of this AP US History course, focusing very little on exam prep and using that extra time to enjoy more immersive studies of select topics.

Such as the Underground Railroad! The kid has long been interested in the experiences of the freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad (thank you, Addy Walker!), and thankfully, located as we are in southern Indiana, we're within driving distance of several locations important to freedom seekers and relevant to the history of enslavement on American soil. 

But somehow, until Winter Break, we'd never been to the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad itself, the Levi and Catharine Coffin House!

Possibly because it's low-key in the middle of nowhere, but oh, well--that's why we bought a car with excellent fuel efficiency!

Catharine and Levi Coffin were Quakers, who moved to the Quaker community of Newport (it's now called Fountain City, but I didn't get around to asking why) in 1826. From then until they moved to Cincinnati in 1847, their work assisting freedom seekers on the journey north was an open secret. They evaded bounty hunters who knew there was something going on but could never catch them, and just in case they were caught, they never knew more than one other connection of the Underground Railroad in either direction.

The museum next to the house is just one gallery, but it has some really thoughtful exhibits. I really liked this recreation of the box that Henry Brown shipped himself within:

And we have a pair of shoes from William Bush, handed down through generations of descendants. I LOVE personal artifacts like these, and I think this is an example of why these smaller museums are so important. The bigger museums of the world, the Smithsonians and the American Museums of Natural History and the British Museums, have millions more objects than they know what to do with, so the only stuff that gets displayed is the canonical stuff, the stuff most vital to the understanding of the most people.

But smaller museums can show items that are not so much exemplars of the type, but are more personal, intimate, and meaningful to the local community that the museum serves. I might not give this pair of shoes a second glance if I was looking at them in a Smithsonian museum, nor would they probably be placed on display there, competing, as they would be, with thousands of other similar artifacts in better condition or belonging to better-known people. But knowing that these shoes came from a person involved in the history of this exact place, who worked here, was buried here, and whose descendants still partly live here, is always just the absolute most awesome feeling.


One thing that I didn't love about this museum was the noise level. While I was trying to read the sign below, there were at least two--maybe even three?--other audio things going on in the same gallery, all talking over each other. It might not even be noticeable if the gallery was full of people, but it was just the four of us rattling around in there, and I found the noise level nearly unbearable, yikes!

This map is interesting, though, because these paths to freedom look like they make a point of dodging around that entire south-central area where I live:


It would have been all forests and caves and small towns and pioneer settlements, so I don't get it. Must do more research!

Here's another cool map, this one of the town of Newport. I thought it was interesting that Levi Coffin actually owns a few pieces of property on this map. One is a store that sold only goods manufactured using free labor, but I forgot to ask what that really big piece of property on the far left of the map was. Dang it!


Our guided tour of the actual house was super interesting, and I didn't take more than a couple of photos only because I was too busy stumbling all over myself to pepper the tour guide with question after question. She wasn't prepared to speak about the artifacts in the house, all of which were of the correct era and had been donated by locals (inspiring SO MANY QUESTIONS in my heart!), or really much about the building and architecture of the house itself, but she was very game to answer all of my other questions about local law enforcement, the professions and later lives of the Coffin children and further descendants, the chain of ownership of the home after the Coffins and how it became a museum site, the possible education/literacy level of Catharine Coffin, speculation about what it would look like to make this historic house ADA compliant, what the neighbors might have known about what the Coffins were doing, the general information structure of an Underground Railroad chain, where the kitchen garden might have been located, the actual division of labor regarding caring for freedom seekers (mostly relating to my theory that Catharine did far more hands-on work than Levi did), etc.


This awesome little door, below, looks like it would lead to a little closet, and could easily be hidden by just stacking a couple of boxes or a bed against it, but it leads to a storage area that extends the entire length of that room. People could hide in it if the Coffins thought they were about to be raided. All four of us got a turn to crawl inside and look around:


I also really love this spring-fed cistern. There was no reference to it in any of Coffin's papers, and no physical evidence of it when the house came into the custody of the Indiana State Museum. Excavations uncovered it by surprise. 


It's theorized that the Coffins could use this cistern to collect part of the household water, in addition to the creek that they also used just a few yards from the house. That way, no matter how many people were inside the house, anyone spying on them from the outside would only see people going to the creek to fetch a perfectly normal amount of water perfectly suited to the number of official residents inside the Coffin house:


This was a really great museum and house tour, really interesting and really accessible to a wide range of interests and abilities. We were all completely engaged and fascinated, and afterwards, we spent a very late lunch at the Big Boy and a very dull two-hour car ride back home gossiping about it. I've not also got the Reminiscences of Levi Coffin on my bookshelf, and you know I cannot keep what I'm reading to myself AT ALL so I'm sure we'll all spend even more time gossiping about it in the next few weeks!

Here are a few other things that my teenager and I have done in support of her Underground Railroad study:

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, handmade homeschool high school studies, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

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Wednesday, September 27, 2023

I'm Too Old for Junior Rangers, So Now I Collect Passport Stamps

Disclaimer: you're actually never too old for Junior Rangers; I'm pretty sure every national park will let you complete the workbook, take the oath, and pin the badge onto your T-shirt at any age!

HOWEVER, for my teenager's nineteenth birthday, I wanted to give her something that might recreate, for her, that enthusiasm that she always seemed to feel as a child for earning Junior Ranger badges. She has a huge collection of them, and I think took a lot of pleasure in earning new ones. Exploring new national park sites was something we've always loved doing together, and we have taken MANY a detour or special trip just to hit a new park so she could earn a new Junior Ranger badge.

So what might incorporate the same kind of fun?

The National Park Passport Book, I hope!

To that end, these were a couple of her summer birthday gifts from me:

And, because sending this kid away to college has made me realize how precious (and how ever more preciously few) are the activities that she and I love to do together... I bought myself the National Park Passport Book, too. Now we can collect passport stamps for every single national park site TOGETHER!!!

First up: a day trip to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, sneaked in just a couple of weeks before she went back to college for the semester.

It's been several years since our last trip to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, so I was able to tell Matt and the teenager all the same Lincoln gossip that I'd told them the last time, and they were able to pretend like I haven't also been telling this same gossip continually even when we're not visiting the memorial.


Fun fact: this area used to be a major breeding ground for the passenger pigeon. Sigh...


My favorite thing here, though, is always the living history farm!



The teenager was HORRIFIED to see me pull a couple of weeds in this garden. But hello, I would love it if some stranger would wander by *my* garden and pull a few weeds!




Here's the well where the family drew their water, now at the very edge of the national park site and bordering a residential street:


It was SO muggy when we hiked this trail that all we talked about was how on earth people managed without air conditioning back then. Did you know that until his dying day, William Faulkner refused to have air conditioning in his Mississippi home? Putting a window air conditioning unit in their bedroom was just about the first thing his widow did after his funeral...


Because I bought us the bougiest passport books, they also have spaces for national park stickers, which is apparently also a thing. Every year they publish a new set of ten stickers, each featuring a different national park site from a different region. Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial had several sticker sets in their gift shop, including the 2009 set that includes a sticker for the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, so I bought us both that one and then spent part of the car ride home busily sticking my new stickers in their correct spots.

I dunno if I'm sold on the stickers, though... They'd be objectively awesome if the images were good, but they weren't always. If I had to guess, I'd say that every national park site has to submit its own photo, and the small sites with limited staff maybe don't always have someone on staff to take a beautiful photo? 

Stay tuned to see if I end up buying more of the stickers, and DEFINITELY stay tuned for the teenager's next big college break, when she and I are going to knock some passport stamps off our to-do list!
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Thursday, July 6, 2023

Here's Every National Park Junior Ranger Badge Kids Can Earn On-Site or By Mail (Updated July 2023)


July 2023: This is an update of my original Junior Ranger badges post, first written WAY back in 2018! I crossed out several Junior Ranger badges that are no longer available to earn by mail, but fortunately I also added a few new ones, too, and I updated my map with new Junior Ranger badges that kids can earn on-site.

It's been years since the kids first discovered the Junior Ranger program at Badlands National Park, and thus began their obsession. I'm never one to let an educational experience go, so since that first thrilling day, I have deliberately organized ALL of our US vacations to include as many Junior Ranger programs as possible, and I've included all of the Junior Ranger programs that it's possible to earn by mail into our homeschool plans.

"How did you figure out where all of the Junior Ranger programs are?" you ask.

Friends, I made a giant freaking map:



Yes, that is EVERY SINGLE NATIONAL PARK SITE WITH A JUNIOR RANGER PROGRAM. I put them all in by hand. I went to every single national park's website, searched for its Junior Ranger program, and if it had one I put it on my map.

When I plan road trips, I check my map for all the national park sites with Junior Ranger programs that we could detour to, and then we detour to them. During our upcoming road trip, for instance, we're visiting Saint Croix Island and Acadia National Park, primarily for their Junior Ranger programs.

But the kids' enthusiasm for earning Junior Ranger badges is unceasing, and yet we cannot spend our entire year traveling to various national parks. If only!

So I went back through every one of those websites, and I noted every park that permits children to earn their Junior Ranger badge by mail. Most of these parks provide the badge book as a downloadable pdf for kids to complete using internet or book research (often the park's own website, but we've also found useful park videos on YouTube). They mail their completed badge books to the park, and in return, the park rangers mail them back their badges and certificates.

It's always, eternally thrilling.

The kids have been doing this for years now, and still have tons of Junior Ranger badges left to earn by mail. They've learned geography, history, and several sciences in the process, experienced the breadth and depth of the national experience in ways they haven't had the opportunity to do in person, and have an intense appreciation for the variety of cultural, historical, and geographic artifacts and monuments that must be explored, preserved, and protected.

Not every national park, or even most national parks, allow their Junior Ranger badges to be earned by mail, mind you. You'll know if one does, because it will say so on its website or on the book, and it will have the book available as a downloadable pdf and include a mailing address for the completed book to be sent to. Many parks will state, kind of pissily in my opinion, that they do NOT allow badges to be earned by mail, and that's their right, but I think everyone loses when they do that--why stifle a kid's desire to learn? Why refuse an opportunity to grow someone's knowledge and love of your national park?

Before you get your kid all revved up on earning these badges by mail, you should know that since you've got to mail the completed badge books to each park, you'll be paying a few bucks for postage and manila envelopes each time. If you're conserving resources, check out the online badges that I've noted in my list--those let kids either do or submit their work online, so you don't have to pay for either supplies or postage.

Fortunately, MANY national parks are happy to have more kids interested in them and working to learn more about them! Here are all the national park Junior Ranger badges that you can earn by mail:

NOTE: I do NOT include Junior Ranger badges in which the badge book is offered as a pdf from the national park site, but kids cannot mail them in or submit them online to earn the badge without a visit to the site. Lots of national park sites offer their badge books as pdfs so that kids can get a head start on the book (which is a great idea!), and some sites even allow kids to mail in their badge books later if they didn't have time to complete them at the park, but this is is solely for badges that kids can earn entirely from home.

 I'm also not including any of the newer "virtual Junior Ranger programs," which let kids complete some web activities and then print an image of the Junior Ranger badge. Those can be fun, but this list is solely for physical badges that kid can earn from home.

This is one of my absolute favorite activities that we do in our homeschool, but it's partly so wonderful because it's so adaptable. Sure, it can be your entire geography curriculum, or just an enrichment to another spine. You can include it in your history studies, or in the natural or earth sciences. Even if you don't homeschool, these Junior Ranger books are so fun that kids can simply DO them for fun. My kids do, and they think it's a nifty trick that I also let them count them for school!

If your kids love earning Junior Ranger badges, then they'd likely be interested in learning about the national park system as a whole--there's so much to explore there, from history and culture to geology and the sciences. Here are some of our favorite resources for learning about and exploring the national park system:


P.S. Want more obsessively-compiled lists of resources and activities for kiddos and the people who want to keep them happy and engaged? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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Saturday, November 5, 2022

I Found Another Old Cemetery with the Weirdest Headstone Yet

I have been carefully honing what Matt calls my "old lady hobby" of poking around old cemeteries by, well, poking around old cemeteries!

But. I mean. They're interesting!

You get to drive around old country roads and take in the scenery while you look for them, and sometimes there are herds of deer or massive brambles of wild black raspberries. Then when you find one, you get to wander around and read all the stones and be all, "Huh, Thelma. You don't see a name like Thelma anymore!" Or "Awww, sixteen children and they all died from something penicillin could have cured in one dose. The 1800s were so sad!"

Okay, it IS an old lady hobby. Whatever, it's fun.

It's especially fun in autumn. Look at how lovely Mount Salem Cemetery is, tucked into the woods up on a little hill by the highway. You'd never know it was there if you didn't know it was there:


As far as I can tell, this cemetery was lost sometime after 1937, then rediscovered in the early 2010s, after which it was fenced and maintained and some headstones repaired--


Consort, eh? I can't tell if they're being rude or not.

--but I can't find any evidence from the past few years that the cemetery is still on the must-visit list of more than a handful of people.


I found a list of tombstone inscriptions from Mount Salem Cemetery that was sent into the Indiana Magazine of History's June 1937 edition, and I think it would be interesting to go back to the cemetery to compare the list to what's still visible. 

You can also use that list of inscriptions to identify tombstones. Here, for example, must be Richard Perry!


This tombstone is the strangest one I've seen yet:


Look closer at it. William Ross lived to be 116 years old!


Surely not, right?

But people living in his own lifetime believed it of him. Here's an article written about him when he was 115 years old.

William Ross' stone is proof that the cemetery is still being maintained in some fashion, because when this photograph was taken in 2020, his headstone was still broken.


I hate seeing headstones leaned up against trees. You'll likely never figure out exactly where they go back to, so now all that precious local history is context-less. 




I also thought it was strange that there wasn't any yucca growing anywhere. Yucca is THE plant that you'll find in local cemeteries here. It's not native, though--I've heard stories that it might have been brought up from Florida?--so is it possible that this cemetery predates the yucca fad?


I must make a mental note to go back in the spring and look for daffodils.

P.S. Here are my other favorite old cemeteries so far:
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