principles through which they and their advocates could combat their own exclusion. the continuing challenge of the american revolution for us today is to interpret those principles of equality and natural rights for our own time. thank you. [ applause ] the strong support we have in our region of the country by wince this movement originated gives us an excellent base to go forward on the day of november the 5th with, and we in my judgment will go forth in the beginning with at least a 107-7 electoral vote that comprises the states of the south and more. when you couple that with just a few other states in the union,

then you have the 270-odd electoral vote necessary to win the presidency. >> as candidates campaign for president this year, we look back at 14 men who ran for the office and lost. go to our website, c-span.org/thecontenders to see video of the contenders who had a lasting impact on american politics. >> there's been honest contention, spirited disagreements, and, i believe, considerable hot arguments. but don't let anybody be misled by that. you have given here in this hall a moving and dramatic proof of how americans who honestly differ pose ranks and move forward with the nation's well being, shoulder to shoulder. >> c-span.org/thecontenders. in the fall of 2011, american history tv visited old

sturbridge village, massachusetts. a living history museum that depicts early new england life from 1790 to 1840. now on american artifacts, we hear from costumed historians who present what it was like to live and work in 19th century new england. curator thomas kellerer serves as our guide. >> old sturbridge village is not some little town caught in a time warp or anything. what it is is a recreation, in new england at the time when society was really transforming from the old order to the modern world we live in today. we're showing you the decade of the 1830s. so the american revolution was a couple generations ago. it's as far away from them as world war ii is to us. the civil war is still a generation in the future. there's also the rumblings about slavery, but they don't know what's going to happen in 20 or 30 years any more than you or i

do. that's the time period to keep in mind. 1838 push comes to shove. that's our default year. there's 26 states in the union, michigan being the most recent. the population of the united states is probably around 17 million or so people. of course, they do a census every ten years so we don't quite know yet. but it's probably about that. it was 13.5 million back in 1830. so it's a time when the railroad is coming in. our county seat of worcester is connected to boston in 1835. they start making regular transatlantic steam ship service from england to boston in 1838. it's not quite as old fashioned as some people might think. the telegraph is patented in 1837. just to give you some kind of things to hang your hat on. the industrial revolution is well under way. a lot of the cloth we're wearing is factory made. still sewn by ladies at home. but made in the textile mills of new england. there's over 700 of those. but most people are still living

on farms, following agriculture and the land, growing things like corn over here. and living in fairly modest homes. the home behind me is on the smaller end. it's one of the few we actually built here. that's about 600 square feet which represents about a quarter or so of the -- of the housing stock of rural new england. so america was not only a younger nation, but a poorer nation than it is now. most of our buildings, though, are antiques that we've moved here from the six new england states. we've opened to the public in 1946, been open ever since, as a private, not for profit educational corporation. so we try to show people bits and pieces of everyday life from the decade of the 1830s. new england as you may or may not be aware was initially settled by english people after the native people who came here for religious reasons. they wanted to purify christianity and have a purer

form in their minds of worshipping god. when they settled in the upland towns away from the coast, they settle on disbursed farm steads in the 1700s. near the geographic centers of the towns they tend to build a meeting house. the worships are meetings and the place is called a meeting house. this particular one like most of the buildings was moved here. this was built in sturbridge in 1832 and you have settlements growing up near the geographic center of town and a lot of new england towns, most of, in fact, end up developing a commons. they usually when they lay out the towns leave a little bit of land in the center of the town for town business, training the militia, unpaid, ununiformed predecessors of the national guard. that sort of central, commonly owned area sort of becomes a park eventually in a lot of towns. some towns it just gets gobbled up. in a lot of towns it still remains today in the new england country side with houses and

craft shops and stores around it. the tin shop we put here in 1985. this building actually had a family history of being used by a metal worker. in the 19th century. we demonstrate the trade of tinning. which was one of the things that central new england, where we are, was known for in the 19th century. not every town had a tinner, but a lot of towns did. >> the smaller holes are made with this punch and the longer holes are made with this one. we have done this before. we have a pattern. i scratched guidelines on here to go by.

a person of my age in 1838 would have started out as an apprentice. we would sign apprenticeship papers. when we reached our 21st birthday, usually, we would become a journeyman tinner and start getting paid. thank you for stopping by. >> the tinners had long been making things for distant markets. for people they're not going to meet. they're making 16 lanterns in a day or making little things like spice graters. he might make a gross of them. 144 of them in a day. or if he's making pint measures, he might have to make 96 of them in a day. but he's relying on a network of peddlers, door to door salesmen, that fan out sometimes hundreds of miles from his shop selling these things to people he doesn't know. your neighborhood blacksmith is by and large operating like a dry cleaners in the 21st century. in other words, serving a

neighborhood. people living within a couple of miles at most of his shop are stopping by to have their horses shod, to have their wagons repaired, to have an old ax rebuilt so they can use it longer. that's the kind of thing that most blacksmiths are doing. >> when it's orange, it's soft. when it's yellow, it's softer. all right. now i need to make it narrower again and a little bit longer. then i need to make it match this one. >> blacksmiths are certainly a common trade you'll find in every new england community. most towns around here might have anywhere from half a dozen to over a dozen blacksmiths because every neighborhood really needs one. because what a blacksmith is

doing is working the black metal. iron. the most common element in the earth. but it's the most common material for the farmers' tools around here, the tradesmen's tools. you're needing the neighborhood blacksmith to keep you working. fix your plow, mend your chain. blacksmiths are repairmen. back in the 1600 and 1700s they're doing more of the making of those implements. by the 1800 you have people specializing with the industrial revolution. specializing in making things like axes and tools. then your blacksmith is more the repairman that keeps you in business by repairing those tools. >> the blue flames indicate it's

a cleaner claim than the yellow flame. coke is refined form of pit coal. just like the refined form of wood is charcoal. if i can get my metal hot enough to be soft enough to hammer on. and i don't have to hit it hard when it's hot because it's softer. it's basically just a matter of dropping my hammer on to the metal. >> carding mills are the last waterpowered mills to come along at the very end of the 1700s. and they're the first to disappear. in this area the carding mills started going out of business in the 1820s.

because when people are going to a store and buying factory made cloths they don't need one step done for them anymore. somebody they don't have to think about is doing all the steps. if you're raising sheep, making some of your own cloth having this one tedious step done for you is a time saver. this is about as old to them as television is to you and me. back in the 1730s, about 100 years before this, the first efforts at mechanizing the carding. by the 1770s, 1773, they've pretty much perfected that design machine. some carding mills especially in the late 1700s, early 1800s were quite busy and ran almost year round. but by the 1820s around here, the demand for the very limited number of waterpower sites or manufacturing is forcing carding mills whose business is declining out of business. so by 1850 they're pretty much gone from here. this one happened to survive in south waterford, maine. it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. the people who owned it lived

across the street so it wasn't vandalized. the machines are fairly low impact. so with maintenance, not too much maintenance, you can keep them going. so the family that owned this mill was running it commercially. part time now and then into the 1950s. at that point old sturbridge village and other museums enter into negotiations to procure the mill. we moved it here in 1963. when the founders of the museum were looking for a place to build their recreated new england village, they realized they could move barns and blacksmith shops and houses pretty much on any piece of land. but they knew that all these new england communities had waterpowered saw mills, gristmills, carding mills. for that you not only need water but water that can be dammed up in drops five or ten or 20 feet to generate energy. and the family that founded the museum lived just in the next town. and they knew that there had been mills here in their

boyhoods. even though those mills were long gone by the 1930s when they brought this property. the river was still here and the dam was still here. so they bought the property for this reason. in fact, when they bought the property for the first ten years they called the place old quinnebog village after the river instead of old sturbridge village for the town. the problem is people would show up in quinnebog, connecticut, saying where is this museum? up in sturbridge, massachusetts. why don't they call it -- we changed the name and opened it to the public and have been here ever since. >> this wheel is called the tug wheel. basically a big impeller. there's blades coming off the bottom of that wooden shaft.

water drops about seven feet or so, picks up speed, hits the blades just like rolling on a pin wheel spins the shaft around. putting a wooden tub around it keeps the water hitting the blades of the water wheel more. there's no bottom to the tub though so the energy expended goes out underneath and goes downstream. this wheel is probably using 50 gallons of water a second. the saw mills generate -- use about 300 gallons a second. so that's over a ton of water dropping eight feet every second. in the 19th century, people realized that these dams were stopping fish migration. when the pilgrims showed up, for example, in plymouth, five were migrating upstream. the new england salmon was getting up into vermont from

long island sound. but they knew that once they started damming up rivers that the fish can't jump up the dams and they say, well, we're not getting the fish that grandpa used to get. but they're saying we need to power. it's kind of like you are driving an automobile. you know you're polluting the planet. you know you're putting nye tris oxide and other things in the air and the ground and using plastics. it's kind of like, well, we all make compromises. >> the first of the several david whites settled this land in the 1770s. and dammed up the -- dammed up the quinnebog river at first to run a saw mill. then in the 1800s one of his successors, i think the third or fourth david white had a gristmill built where our gristmill sits. so this was the white family farm. in the 1700s and 1800s that the

founders of the museum have sort of turned into a recreated 19th century settlement. some of the buildings like the carding mill have come hundreds of miles. some came from here in sturbridge like the meeting house, big church in the center town or the farmhouse up here. the plinny freeman farm. we call it the plinmy freeman house because a farler named plinty freeman lived in it from the 1820s into the 1840s. we're showing the time right in the middle of that. we figured we'd put it back to his time. >> it's interesting. this family, this house came from sturbridge just about a mile and a half from here. pliny freeman, the farmer who owned the house, his wife was very ill. suffering from a form of tu burk ewe low sis. at times he didn't have anybody

living in the house besides he and his wife. he had two adults, son and daughter living with him from time to time. the rest of his children were all grown up and moved out of the house, all seven of them. so from time to time we know through historic records from the tavern keeper in town that he was taking some of his meems there once in a while. but for the most part you have most of your meals at home. or if you're going visiting, the time to go visiting is after all of the heavy work is done. dinner is at noon. that was the big meal of the day. so right now we're just cleaning up from having some salt cod and potatoes and we baked our beats in ashes. so we took some beats and layered some ash and hot coals and put the beats on top. more hot coals and ash around them. just let them sit there for about three hours. baking beats is a great way to make them nice and sweet. >> apple pudding? >> we have bird's nest pudding which is essentially just apples that have been peeled and cored.

then a custard of milk, eggs, a little cinnamon and sugar poured over that. a very simple dish but something we would eat right along with our meal as part of our meal. that includes the apple pie next to it. apple pie is not generally a dessert. often it's eaten along with our meal whether it be breakfast or dinner at noon or tea in the evening. >> what's in the spider on the hearth? >> we have some parsnips. first boiled in milk. we pat them dry a little bit, fry them in butter. we add the milk back in with a little bit of mace and a touch of nutmeg. that's a wonderful sauce to have over your lovely parsnips. >> the flavor of the parsnips? >> it's probably better to eat them in the spring. they're one of the few vegetables we can actually just leave out in the ground and they'll keep frozen over the winter. but they won't be damaged when they thaw in the spring. in fact, they'll start to grow again and they convert all of

those starchiness -- that starchiness into sugars and make it a very sweet vegetable. so not very many people these days get to experience that because mostly when you buy parsnips, they're harvested right away during their growing season so they're pretty starchy. >> what do you do with the dried apples? >> these are way to preserve them. what we'll do once these are fully dried we'll store them away in cloth or paper sacks or the lovely chest of drawers on the wall there. when i want to make an apple pie in the season when i don't have fresh apples anymore, usually spring and summer, i can soak these in water overnight and they'll rehydrate. >> oh, really? >> yep. we can even stew them down to sauce if i wanted to. >> even if there are flies all over it? >> there are some flies. when we live on a farm like this, there's a lot of animals. so the flies really like animals. they come in. they also like warmth and good food. who doesn't?

>> then this other part there, that's where the quill stays. so they stay dry and even more importantly, the points are protected. pop up that part. then i'm going to close it at the top. so it's going to be one piece, but it's still going to be hollow in both sections. i'll just take off that extra clay that i pushed over to close it. i want it to be a little thicker at the top edge so i'm going to just turn it inside out at the top. roll it right over. almost done. there's some -- this is a hollow space here. this is another hollow space there. i've got to let the air out of that one so i can finish the

shape. then i'll punch some holes in the other part so that's where the quills can rest. what do you like to make your ink out of? do you use berries or do you use the soot from your chimney? you don't use either of those? >> we originally built the kiln in 1979. back in the '80s we were firing it three, four times a year. lately we have been doing it about once or twice a year. jugs and pots and pans and mugs and such, every time you fire the kiln, you destroy some of the kiln. so we also make bricks so we can keep rebuilding the kiln. if it heats up or cools down too quickly, you'll get cracking on the pieces. once the kiln is about 1,000 degrees it sort of steams the kiln and the pots give up whatever moisture is left in them. then you can start stoking in ernest after about a day.

>> your mark, get set, go! >> for constructing our shoes, we are using wooden pegs. they're called shoe pegs. this was a fairly new method in the early 1800s for shoe construction. these pegs go through the layers of the leather. there's a pair that i just finished, and these are the pegs that hold together the bottoms to the uppers, the tops of the shoes. one of the very important last steps of constructing a shoe for us is to take a special tool called a float, a kind of special file. that is designed to reach into the shoe and if any of those pegs are sticking into the shoe, we will simply file them smooth and it's a very important last step. you would know it if we forgot to do this because otherwise those pegs would be sticking into your foot which you would probably not like very much. so we file the peg smooth. this will get a pair of leather laces. and that will be a finished pair of shoes. and so in this shop, we're making an everyday leather work

shoe. it's nothing too fancy. in the 1830s the work shoes, at least, were still made what we call straight. what that meant was there was no left shoe or right shoe. they actually could go on either foot. which is something that might seem unusual today. that's how shoes were made for hundreds of years and makes my job a little bit easier. that's the kind of shoes that were made in this shop. these are some i'm just finishing up. and in the 1830s in a shop like this, all we would have been doing here would have been actually just attaching the bottoms of the shoes. the soles and the heels. at this time we would be getting the uppers already finished. the uppers were sewn by ladies and girls in their homes, in their houses. they were doing that paid by the piece to sew the uppers. they're sent here. young men like myself are doing the rest. doing the bottoming. so that was the system that had developed here. actually, a shop this size probably would have had up to maybe eight, nine people working in here. this would have been a very busy place. believe it or not, this was a

very large shoe shop. most of them were much, much smaller than this. it would have been young men like myself. we all had a shoe maker's bench, a set of tools, and we'd all be working bottoming shoes. it was a very big business. one of our biggest industries in new england at this time was shoe making. we were making something around 15 million pair a year just in massachusetts alone. just in this one state. and that was actually more shoes than there were people in the entire country at the time. so as you can imagine most of the shoes made around here were not being sold around here. a lot of them were going down to the southern states, western states and territories. even the caribbean. so i as a shoe maker working here, i would have no idea who was going to wear the shoes i make. frankly as long as i get paid i don't really care. this shop was really like a small factory, is really the best way to think about it. so this wasn't a place where you would have bought shoes. this was really a place where they're just being mass produced in standard sizes. >> how much do you get paid an hour? >> some people ask how sturbridge village came to be.

it really got its start in 1926 when a man named albert b. wels, an executive with the american optical corporation, and some friends and family went up to vermont to go golfing for a weekend. problem was it poured rain. they couldn't go golfing. somebody suggested they go antiquing instead. mr. welles said i don't want to waste my weekend at a bunch of old junk shops. they prevailed on him to go anyway. he had an e pifs now moment. he fell in love with mouse traps, wooden bowls, rolling pins. the things most people had rel kate e gated to attics and barns. that very first weekend mr. welles bought two wagon loads of antiques. it became an all consuming mania after that. he ended up having to move his family out of his mansion because there wasn't room for them and all the antiques. he had two large barns moved to

the property. filled them literally to the rafters with antiques and still didn't have enough room and started to at that point realize he wasn't going to live forever and then when he died his children would probably sell dad's junk and it would all come to naught. so what he did which a lot of people of his class did at the time was corporated as a private not for profit educational corporation and started a museum. the welles historical museum. he hired an architect to design a series of galleries to display all the antiques. with great pride and fanfare he unveiled this plan that he was quite hot for, as he said, to his family and friends. and they were underwhelmed. his only son, george welles said, these are his words, not mine. museums are dead institutions. only old people like you go to them. your collection is important, but if you want to get children today and the children yet to come to be interested in it, you need to have a village. you need to put it in context in a living village with waterpower

for running saw mills and gristmills and the shops where people will carry on these old trades that if we don't preserve them will die out. and that's how old sturbridge village came to be. they bought the farm we are standing on within a week of that fateful statement. and started moving in old buildings from all six new england states. by 1946, despite the great depression, a few hurricanes, world war ii, a near fatal heart attack that mr. welles suffered, by 1946 we opened to the public as old sturbridge village and have been welcoming people ever since. for more information about sturbridge village, visit their website. you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on

c-span 3. throughout the weekend here on american history tv on c-span 3, watch internal interviews about historic events on oral histories. our history bookshelf features some of the best known history writers. revisit key figures, battles and events during the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms across the country during lectures in history. go behind the scenes at museums and historic sites on american artifacts. and the presidency looks at the policies and legacies of past american presidents. view are complete schedule at c-span.org/history and sign up to have it e ma-mailed to you b pressing the c-span alert button. >> in a city whose public eye is dominated by statesmen, this bronze rendition of mathematician and scientist albert einstein stands out. perhaps because there's little of the monumental about this

washington monument. even if it does stand 12 feet tall and weigh approximately four tons. here robert berks whose distingtsive style led some critics to label him the bubble gum sculptor gives us a genial, almost playful einstein. sitting atop a bench of north carolina granite. holding a document of some of his most significant theories. the same bench contains quotes testifying to einstein's unwavering belief in human tolerance, equality before the law and the duty of any truth seeker to reveal his findings no matter where they lead. the circular for the memorial features an astronomical map showing much of the universe as it appeared on the date of its dedication in april 1979 which also coincided with einstein's 100th birthday. 30 years later visitors of all ages are drawn to the iconic figure on the grounds of t