style, congress actually thought the president was being rather wasteful and especially by buying in france and not buying in america and he had to justify that the furniture was of such good quality that it would last for 20 years. in fact, it lasted at the white house in its first use until 1860 so they got 43 years of use out this have wonderful suite of furniture and then unfortunately like so many other things it was sold at auction. mrs. kennedy was given back this chair, this was the first one returned to the white house in 1961 by people who lived here in washington who had attended some of the white house sales, whose ancestors had attended some of the white house sales. so this chair became the model for reproductions that were placed in the blue room to try to recreate the monroe era. when these chairs arrived at the white house in 1970 they were up holstered in crimson, that's how the room looked. since 1837 it has been blue and

that's why the name is now the blue room. it's a very high style french chair. this is the one that we discovered had the most original material still a part of its guilding and its surface features and so it has been restored to look like it probably would have looked in the monroe administration with some very beautifully burnished smooth surfaces to simulate metal. in fact, that is fwilded wood. and then the red upholstery fabrics were put on to recreate its original appearance so that this became, then, the specimen chair we could use at the visitor's center while we still have other chairs in the suite up holstered in blue that are in the blue room. since the arrival of this chair in 1961 the white house has upped its total to ten original pieces from the suite that was made by pierre belogge. it represents some of the grandeur of white house interiors, how the public rooms

were meant to be impressive to foreign diplomats and american citizens who came to the white house for political persuasion activities that would encourage people to support the president's

stanton, virginia. we are a living history museum with a mission focused on education. >> our objective here is the frontier culture museum is to team people how a unique american folk culture was created through the blending of european, and african and indigenous people cultures. told we'll start on the old world side and see the english and the irish and the german farm. and lastly move over to america

and see the 1740s american farm settlement. >> my fame is sally landis. i'm a historic interpreter at the museum in stanton, virginia. right now we're on the english farm and this house comes from worcestershire in the midlands and the time we're showing is 1620s to 1640s. they have 150 to 300 acres of land. they are growing wheat, barley and rye and harvesting that and hiring people to help them. they have about 100 sheep, and they are shearing those twice a year and selling the fleeces. and then the lady of the house and her daughters would be responsible for milking the cows, say 15 to 30 of them and then go ahead and make -- take the milk and make cheese and selling that at market. those would be the sources of income for this family. so they are working hard, they are doing well.

and they have -- they are basically the top of the working class. could you refer to them as the midland sort. and again they are farmers. this is based on the woodhouse family. they have edward and cecilia and on one stone is says e.w. and that stands for edward wood house and this is his home and he and his wife cecilia has six children. you can see it is timber framing and there was not as much wood in england at the time. things like ship building and tanning have deforested so you're going to need to be resourceful. but the fact that this person can afford wood and have wood and wooden furniture in his home shows he is doing well. and we have in the square panels we have quadle and daub. that is like a basket weave, and

one plain, with one plain and you would have daub on one side and daub on the other. it consists of what you have on the farm, like straw, animal hair, lime, clay and manure. that is an important ingredient. we do know that lady of the house is cooking of course. she is going to be baking. she's going to be brewing. she's going to be the gardener and she has a 1-15 acre kitchen and she's the doctor for the family and making cheese and selling that. the yo man farmer has about 100 sheep to shear twice a year and have people help and they are selling those at market. he also has the grain to take care of. he's growing grain. we know he had 36 acres in wheat, barley and rye and he would be harvesting that and hiring people to help with the harvest. a good harvester could harvest half an acre of grain in a day. the only thing is interesting

about the farmer, he is a progressive farmer in the sense that in the fall he's thinking about at his fields, you've harvested and everything, but what he's going to do is putting in like green fertilizer, if you will, for the next year so that your fields will grow and do well. so things like turnups and in time clover is something that he can add so you are taking care of your land. and he's got fences to build. fences to repair. and then you are thinking ahead in the winter like what you are planting. so they really were kind of either in the thick of doing it, and i'm saying harvesting or planting, harvesting, but then you are planning and preparing for the next season too. so things are seasonal, very much. and you are just trying to be prepared. and you want to do well. you have a good situation, this yeoman farmer, there is 5-7% of the population are farmers and

this guy is in a good position and he wants to keep it that way. the first room you encounter if we go in this way is you're going to be encountering the kitchen. that is where we cook of course and bake. and that is where we make cheese as well. and i guess if i had to say, that is probably one of my favorite rooms. because there is a lot of action and i enjoy baking very much there. next we could take a step up, the room to the left would be the room which is called the parlor. and that is a formal room you have. you are very seldom using that. the door would be shut much of the time. and what you are doing is you're having that room for weddings, for funerals, christenings and special occasions and at times the families could have light meals in the evening there. but the fact that you have a room you are hardly using shows you are doing well because most people are using every inch of space in their home. and then the next room we come to would be the hallch that is a room where you are dining.

and also could be spending time knitting, sewing, reading a book, playing a game, something like that. the family spends time interacting there and dining there primarily. then we have an upstairs. and that consists of two bedrooms. one for the parents and one for the children. and then we have a locked room, which would have been a bedroom for the servants. here on the english farm, prime a jenityure is important because that is the system by which who inherits what. and what i mean, is the oldest son is going to be getting everything. he gets the house and the land. and of course we're talking about 150 to 300 acres of land in the case of woodhouses. so second and third sons are left with, you could say nothing, tangible. an the second and third sons would be leaving and going to america to seek their fortune,

you could say. or they could choose the military, the university. and maybe be an apprentice to another tradesman much like joseph woodhouse was. the other thing that i would like to mention that is a common thread is people are wanting to have a place of their own. whether it be english or irish or german. and so if the oldest son gets everything, then the second and third sons are going to need to leave to go to america if they want to have land. and if you came to america, before 1700, paying your passage, of course, on a ship bound to virginia, you had the right to receive 50 acres of land for free. so that was an enticement for many of the second and third sons. my name is jerry kester and i'm a costumed interpreter on

the scotch irish farm. the time period here is between 1720 and 1740 and the farm comes from ulster, from the northern province of ireland. and this is the home of a farmer as well as a weaver. and 1720s, 40s, that is what the people start leaving ireland to come to america because they want a better life. and part of the reasons they are leaving is there has been a big depression in the linen market because there is a whole series of doubts and you are having foot shortage and famine and the flaxseed is low so there is a depression of the quality. and when the leases run out, the land lord doubles and triples the rents. so if you want a better life for yourself and your family, you sell everything you have and off you go to america. daily life, oh, you could get up early, the women or girls who go

out and start milking cows and cook breakfast and then work in the herb beds, make butter, take care of the kids, sew. but the most important job they'll have to do is spin. and because the man is a weaver it takes three spinners to keep up with one weaver so the women or girls are quite busy doing that and they stop working late in the day and get up in the morning and do it again. and the men and boys, they are going to be outside working. gosh, it is soon going to be time to harvest the oats and the flax and if you don't get those harvested then you don't have anything to eat or make linen with. so very important jobs. and everything will go out and help with that. but also in the meantime, you have farm jobs to do like taking care of animals. upkeep on the farm and maintenance, that sort of thing. taking care of the stone walls and everything. so quite a busy life, busy days.

now this farm, this is the first farm at the museum. and it is laid out exactly the way it was in count tyrone. so behind me this is the pig pen. the pig crawl here and the chicken are down below and the long buyer at the far end. and buyer that is scottish for barn. an the first two rooms on the long briar is for storage an the other two are for livestock. basically it is a two-room house. a classic irish architecture is one room deep with a chimney on the end. so when you first come in the front door, you are in the kitchen. and that is really the main room of the house where all of the activities take place because it is the only warm room in the house. and you also have a pete fire burning night and day year round and so that is where everyone is. and behind it is the shop. and that is also the boys' bedroom. they would have a mattress on

the floor where they would sleep. an the loom is in there too, so they take over the weaving so they are close to their work. the weaving process, that is one of those things that -- i'm sure they were planted by the galtal year. probably if it is a good year for the linen trades, they may have hired some alternate weavers to take care of that or maybe some irish laborers to work in the fields, then you could concentrate on the weaving. and of course a lot of it would take place in the winter time. and especially for the laborers, that is the only way they could make money in the winter time so they would have a year-round income. of course, you know, northern ireland, you have a lot of rain. so even though it is raining, you are not inside weaving because you have too much farm work to do so you only weave at night after supper. economically at the type, you would say he is a strong farmer. but he was a midland sort which means he was middle class. not the wealthiest realm but far

from being the poorest. in the early years of the linen trade, everyone is making money so life is good. but with the depression, things started going bad really quick. the linen board, when they -- the linen industry goes to northern ireland with the french huguenots so they start teaching everyone how things are done. and then they set up the lynnon board to kind of govern the production of linen. and for the girls, they would go there and learn how to spin. and they would start when they are really small, because they have the tinily little fingers so they could spin a finer thread. and part of the graduation present is they would get their own spinning wheel. now for the loom, in the early years, the linen trade, if you plant a certain amount of flax more they've give you a loom. but by now they aren't giving anything away and you have to rent your loom. and i'm not quite sure how much the rent would have been, but there goes another piece of your

income. and weaving itself, right now, all you have to do is sit there and step on the pedals and throw the shuttle back and forth. the hard part is setting it up. and one of the ways around that is you could hire a profogsal warper to warp the loom for you and that way you have less downtime and more production going on. everyone is convinced that they see the door and they are convinced everyone was short. and of course then they see the beds ab how short those were and they are totally convinced by then. but the reason the door is so low is structurally that holds up half of the weight of the roof. an the reason the beds are so short is the pete when it burns is smokey so everybody has bad lung congestion so it is easier to breathe if you are propped up. judging by barn space, they didn't have more than two pigs. maybe five or six cows, of course they are all going to be milk cows. and then probably one horse.

and then everyone has duck, geese and chickens. and you may even find a few sheep here and there. pretty much the animals we have, something like the pigs, we're going to sell those to the butcher to pay the rent. and then buy them back by the slice. and of course we could only afford the cheap cuts like pig feet and pig ears and pigtail for soup or something like that. the cows, with you get milk from them and make butter so that could market. occasionally three or four neighbors would get together and buy a steer so you have fresh meat for a few days but when it goes bad, you sell to pay the rent. and the chickens, you sell at market every day. you eat them when they get old and stop laying eggs and you may have to make soup out of them because they are so old and tough. education wise, more than likely it is home-schooling. and part of the reason for that is this farm -- the closest village is a place called drum quinn, about five miles down the road. and that would be awful far for

the kids to walk there and come back hope. but once you get to america, that is one of the things they take with them, their belief in education. so whenever they go, they set up schools and academies. and the ministers is a teacher and he's going to run a boarding school so the smarter kids, they will go there and stay and then everyone else pretty much was home-schooled. learned to read the bible. the girls would work on samplers and learn how to read and write as well. the presbyterians are the few groups that believe in educating girls. working here, you hear all sorts of stories about what people -- their ancestors brought. and you hear personal things like a spoon or a cup or bowls or plates. but you definitely would bring the family bible because religion was so important to them. and that is definitely one of the things that you would absolutely bring. furniture-wise, maybe a few odds and ends, but the trouble was you had to pay more storage on

the ship for the more stuff you brought so you pretty much just bring yourself. a lot of people landed in philadelphia because pennsylvania had such strong ties with the linen trades. so the flagships that had taken seas there on the spring and that is what you would arrive on in the fall. and you would arrive in the delaware valley or philadelphia. and of course, being farmers, you look for cheap land and so you come south on the great wagon old and end up in the shenandoah valley and what you get there, pretty much they said from stanton to lexington was called the irish track and that is where everyone would have settled. and you go to that area, talk to your county surveyor and he would tell you where the land is. so you would go there and look at it and tell him what you liked and what you saw and eventually he'll go to williamsberg and have had registered and then you have your land and the american dream has begun.

once the scotts get to america, especially on the frontier, they pretty much become the dominant culture there. so gosh, because they believe in education, because they build churches and schools and what not, then they are pretty much predominant leaders in that community. especially when elections come by, because they are educated. then a lot of them are elected as officials. and they are also some of the early signers of the declaration of in dependence, the early supporters. thank you all for coming by. and come back and see us again. my name is karais wayman and i'm an interpreter on our german farm site here at frontier culture museum of virginia. daily life was pretty much hard work. you are always working the farm. there is always work to do, no

matter what time of the year. and so there is definitely gardening to be done, field work, animal care, cooking, food preservation, cleaning. there is always something to do. it is very busy life. not a lot of leisure time. spinning pretty much is just twisting. and it is flax fiber. it comes from the stock of the flax plant. it is the type of fiber that makes linen. and all of the clothing that i'm actually wearing is linen. so it actually is nothing more than the fiber that is here. so when you spin it, you feed it into the spinning wheel and you let the spinning wheel twist it and you smooth it over with water as it is twisting it will go across the hooks and wrap right on the to the spool. and once the thread is made, you have to hand it to a weaver. the weaver will use a loom and make a fabric. and that can be made into clothing. so the spinning wheel just makes

the thread. they probably did more spinning in the winter time, whenever they had a chance. this time of year, you are out in your fields. everybody is working. if you can work, you are doing it. you are doing something. but you know, you possibly could give some of your thread that you ih make a little extra money. but this family's primary revenue source is the grain. lots of wheat, of vary theity of wheat they grew with shfelt that has become popular again today. rye, barley and some oats are just some of the grains. and we have a large barn out there, so you need a place to store that grain before threshing. our family would have kept maybe

a couple of cows. milking them, making cheese and butter out of the cow's milk. pigs, pork was definitely one of the primary meats that a lot of peasant families would use in their cooking. this family is doing pretty good. they are still peasants, technical technically serves. they have ties to the landlord and the local ruler of their region and they must pay fees and money as well as perform work on certain days of the year to their local ward or prince. so basically, this house is a decent home. this family is not rich. but they are not poppers. the house is an actual building that frontier culture museum acquired from germany and it was

dismantled and everything was numbered and actually brought here. it is not a replica. the region that we are really discussing is the ryanland province in southwestern germany. back then it was known as the holy roman empire and that particular region really had a tough time with the series of wars in the 1600s and early 1,700 and the region did really take some hard hits in areas. and so now is a time where families have been working to recover, to fix the land, fix the towns. and without a series of warfares or some really terrible issues going on, the population is growing and taf been raising -- they've been raising reasonably sized families.

and there just isn't enough land for everybody to farm comfortably. and there is not enough jobs and opportunities in businesses and trades. because they are surfs, some local rulers levied fees that must be paid in order to immigrant legally, or exit fees. and sometimes it was a little more expensive for women to immigrant legally than it was for men. but local rulers just don't want to lose too many people. and also, it is costly. you basically have to come up with the money to pay for the trip, you are living in a region that is land-locked and so you need to get to a sea port. and so you are going to have to sell off as many belongings as you can manage to help raise additional money for the boat

ride that is going to take you down the rhine river and pay any tolls along the river that you come in -- come to, and then also you need money for passage. so it is a hall kitchen house. you walk in the front door. you have your hallway and then the kitchen. and t and the kitchen is small. it is where you cook and do the dirty work. a lot of wood that the families are using is kindling wood, whatever they could collect on the ground in the forest and so we have a raised hearth in there where you burn small fires on top of the hearth. then to the side, the family would bring the food into the shtuba, which is a stove room. and the stove is mainly for heat. it is radiant heat. and families would take meals the stove room or shtuba and do textile work, spend family time.

and this is really the heart of the home, where you stay warm in the winter. and then we have a small bedroom in the back which gets some heat as well. and the calmer basically is usually where the oldest couple would sleep or whoever had the greatest need. so if you had grandparents in the home, there is a good chance they are in there. if you don't have grandparents in the home, but usually it is mom and dad. but children, you know, a lot of of times slept upstairs and there really wasn't a lot of heat in those areas of the house. the chest is an example of one that a family actually immigrated with in the earl 1700s, that is the type of chest you might pack up with extra clothes, blankets, some food, seeds, perhaps, so you can plant a garden in the british colonies, wherever you are going

to settle. you are also going to want to put tools in there because you are going to have to possibly build yourself a new home, replace things that you had to sell and leave behind. and anything that you think that might be desirable in the british colonies where people want to pay you good money, where there is amarket for it, you might want to pack some of those things because you can sell or barter them in the new world. there were germans that did go to new york state and parts of virginia, different ventures. but a lot of them took the path and went to pennsylvania. and then, of course, a number of them, once they got there, they are looking for the cheap land and a lot of them kind of leave pennsylvania eventually and move out into other areas, spreading out. but the pennsylvania germans are still very well-known today.

hi, i'm sarah gant and i am a costumed interpreter here at the museum in stanton, virginia. we're at the 1740s american settlement also known as the back country of the american colonies or the colonial frontier is what we also call it. it would have been west of the blue ridge mountains. so people had already settled in this area about maybe a decade or so before 1740s. so people had already started to move a bit west, settle that area. there were land grants that were gib and families would be recruited to come down and settle the virginia area. occasionally it would be one man coming out here and settling the area but most of the time it would be families. on average, we say about 4 to 9 people.

and they would have established themselves in the pennsylvania area first. so they would be familiar with living here and, you know, they would have had the means to purchase land down here getting land about 300 to 800 acres. so they were pretty well-off in terms of being able to buy the land. to begin with, they would need to clear the land. and that was a big change for them. because the environment was very wooded here. so clearing the land was a big deal. and then getting the fields ready for their crops. and they wore given a lot more land than they were used to, so it took a lot of work. so keeping up with the crops was a big thing. and then eventually getting to the building of the house and chopping wood, that sort of thing. it was difficult here. especially in comparison to the old world, climate is very

different. harsher summers and winters. very hot. all of the time. so hot weather which would affect your crops, it is also different in that it is, like i said earlier, very wooded. which is very different. especially if you are coming from ireland where they don't have as many trees and would have been making their homes out of stone as opposed to logs. so using the material that is available. another big thing would be the kitchen garden that we have. and that would include crops that would come over from europe and a kitchen garden would have been a style that would have been used in europe as well. we have carrots in the garden. we also have something called salsafy, we had mustard growing and turnips, lettuce, spinach.

we also are going to grow -- we had rye growing at one point. they also would grow wheat and hemp, that sort of thing. and then we also have tobacco as well. and then we also have in the fields down that way, we have corn beans and squash, which was not a influence from the old world. it was an influence from the american indian. so they with grown on the same mound. the corn, beans and squash grew together and the american indians taught them how to do that. oftentimes because they are so isolated and there weren't a whole lot of people to help, really whoever was strong enough to do the work did the work. sometimes, you know, the men would do more of the woodworking or building. and then maybe the women would have tended to the garden a bit more. and housework.

but oftentimes, even kids would have been expected to do work at -- tarting at maybe seven years old, basically as soon as they were strong enough to pick up a tool and use it. the children's education, if they would have gotten a formal education, they would have needed to go back to an older settlement to learn. often times there really was no formal education. it is whatever the parents had learned before coming to this area, then they would teach their children. but the skills, reading, write, math, were very, very basic. they would have brought maybe a pack horse or a cow. maybe chickens and sheep. pigs especially, because pigs were very easy to take care of -- or hogs, in that they were just released out into the acreage that they owned, just to

fend for themselves so they didn't have to provide for them and keep up with them as much. and, in fact, they were able to feed themselves a bit better on nuts and mushrooms and that sort of thing. so pigs were a great animal to have here. i really love talking about the chimney that we have because it really surprised a lot of people. you'll see that maybe, oh, a fourth or a third of the way up it is made with stone. and then the rest of the way up it is made with wood. so that surprised people. and we talked about that a little bit because -- and a lot of people ask, would the house have caught on fire a lot of times? and it would. it would. so you can see that the chimney is built a bit away from the house to begin with. it is kind of leaning a little bit. and they also would have had a way in which if they knew the

chimney had caught fire, they could pull it away from the house and hopefully it would smother the fire and get it away from the house so you could save your house. you would have to rebuild the chimney, but you wouldn't have to start from scratch. so that really intrigues a lot of people. it is pretty bare inside, really. not a whole lot. we've got a bed stead inside, where the parents would have slept or the most senior couple in the family would have slept. and then we have a dirt floor where everybody else would have slept. we also have a fireplace inside where oftentimes it would have been used for warmth during the winter time and to provide a little light at night. but most of the cooking would have been done outside. number one, during the summer, you would want the house to stay as cool as possible. you know, as we were talking about before, with