HISTORICALLY SPEAKING by Susan Swanton
I once asked a friend of mine who is a history buff [and the most distant member of the Gates Historical Society as he lives in Alaska!] how he developed his love of history.
‘My mother told me that History is a Mystery.’ He said and it stuck.
Recently the Gates Historical Society hosted several classes of local 4th graders as they toured both inside and outside the Hinchey Homestead.
So, I posed this question to them: ‘How many of you like to be detectives?’ Up went their hands!
I continued: ‘History is a mystery. We don’t really know how folks spent their free time in a world without television. Where were the many barns that used to be at the Hinchey Homestead?’ I showed them a copy of the glass plate photograph with a view of Hinchey Road as a dirt road and with many barns and outbuildings behind the much longer white fence of the Hinchey Homestead.
‘Okay, history detectives, can you find some old building thresholds behind the Hinchey Homestead?’ and off they went and bingo, they found many flat stones in the back yard.
We lined up a 1950’s picture of the original 1810’s frame house, the first frame house built in Gates!
‘Look at the present Hinchey Homestead in the background. Do you think this might be part of the foundation of this 1810 home?’ Excitedly, they all agreed the stone in the ground lined up with the view in the picture.
Part of being a tour docent is teaching visual literacy so people of all ages can use the clues left behind from previous generations to interpret their historical landscape. [This story is continued in ‘Teaching Visual Literacy’]