there, that is the main room of the house. and the parents' bedroom is off of the stubba and that is the parents bedroom. so three rooms in the main part of the house. originally, george bowman, name of the man that built this house, he was born yohan bowman, as i mentioned a german immigrant. here the way to acquire title to property, in the 18th century, one would venture down here, most folks from pennsylvania, not everybody, and meet with a county surveyor and the county surveyor was certified by the college of william and mary and had power because if that surveyor thought you might not be of the proper ilk to live in the area, you probably wornt going -- weren't going to find any property and he would assign you a guide and you would look at property available for purchase and a lot of the area in this western part of virginia was in large tracks of land to the north of us, the fairfax

tract, which was given to lord fairfax and the borden track south of that. but huge holdings. and then those members of the aristocrats that owned those lands were to settle it within a certain number of people within a certain number of years. so there was a lot of finangling of land and difficulties in people acquiring title. but meeting with the surveyor and finding a vacant piece of land and coming back with the guide and seeing if that property was available for purchase. and then prices of course varied depending on whether it was good bottom land or upland or whatever. but there were problems many times in acquiring final title. there were overlapping claims an you read about somebody might improve a piece of property and then some years later find it is claimed by somebody else. that was not infrequent. at that time, in the 18th

century, north of us, what is rockingham county and north, would have had a larger number of folks from germany, which this area which is now augusta county, rockbridge, everything to the south of us, in the 18th century was the iris tract because folks from northern ireland who didn't consider themself iric, they were the ulster scott orb the scots-irish. but those folks made up a huge population, more than the germans. but throughout the valley, there was a scattering of english, scott scot, irish and others as well. but where we are sitting now is referred to as the irish track and to the north where this house was originally built would have had more folks from the area of germany. this was the family -- at one point in the early 19th century there was 12 children that survived to adulthood. they were fortunate.

they were not slave owners. that was a large part of the economy here in the valley but most folks didn't own slaves. and these folks were fortunate to have that number of children to help work the land. so you know, their activities fluctuated with the seasons, for growing crops. generally the men worked in the field but the women would work alongside them because on a family farm everybody had to help. but there were differences in labor. right here we're bringing in the hay crops so the men would use a sithe to load the hay and children would act as bundling to wrap or rake the hay up and put it in a wagon and get it to the barn and if they are cradling wheat, when they are harvesting, the women an children would act as bundlingers to wrap it up into sheaths and put them in shucks to dry.

so it was shared work but the men didn't do the cooking, for example. the women and the girls did a lot of that. and unlike what we might think of today, the dairying and these folks did a lot of buttir and cheese, was primary the women and the young girls. they thought the girls an young women were much better at the dairy. in fact, a young boy would be embarrassed to be seen milking a cow here in the valley in the 1800. the wheat is what they are selling. and actually, that wheat was ground into flower, at local water powered mills and there would be several mills in the area and the flower was shipped in barrels long distances. we think of these folks -- or they appear to us in modern times to be self-sufficient but they were -- their lives were determined by basically international grain markets because that flower was shipped long distances around the

country and even around the 1850s, even out to california. so the products traveled far. but for the own use, the pork products, everybody raised hogs for themselves and corn was for their own use. this area, by the 1820s and up to the civil war, was -- it was no longer the frontier by that time period. it was a well-settled thriving farm area. the economy improving all of the time and more mills being built all of the type. more land being put under cultivation. so people were certainly aware of the -- the discussions going on and the problems within the country, most of them concerning slavery. but they probably felt that they wouldn't be effected by things like that. certainly in the 1820s, they would have felt safe and no one could have forecasted at that time the problem that the whole country and definitely the valley would face some 40 years

later. there were a lot of community. for example, when the main part of the house was built, this is a nice log house, that would be a community event. you might have four corner men responsible for the notching of the logs and everything else. but the entire community would take part. much like a modern barn raising amongst the ommish and other folks because they would catch up on news and do some courting and get together and socialize. so the community was definitely much more involved in things like that and these folks are lutheran and they went to the local lutheran church, raiders lutheran church in rockingham county and that would form their community events through the church. but they would also be form projects maybe when someone was bringing in a crop, folks would share that -- you know, share some of the duties in return for

help from that family for some other job on the farm. not everybody went to school. in 1820s, 30s, 40s here in the valley and somewhat later, school would be definitely a community thing, where it may be sefrm farm families and a local farm would donate a acre, half acre of his property and then several families would get together and hire someone, a teacher, to come and that teacher would generally board with one of those farm families and they would be paid by not very much, not very well. but they would get their room and board by one of the farm families and so they would live in the community. but not all children got to go to school. and if they were going to school, they wouldn't go to school in the springtime, when it is time for planning and in the fall when it is time for harvesting. so more of a wintertime thing. and we do have an 1840s run-room schoolhouse which is just outside of the window of the parlor from the valley as well.

my name is andrew richardson and i'm the director of education at the front ear culture museum and we're standing in an 1840s era single room schoolhouse. the children would attend school often year round. but it was irregular since most were farmer's kids and they were needed on the farms. the typical school day was from 9:00 to 5:00 with often a large break in between for lunch. they usually went home for lunch instead of eating here. and the busiest times of the year would have been outside of the busiest times of a farmer's life. so during the summer, an our school calendar today, follows that. it was the slowest time in the schoolhouse but busiest time on the farm. but then in late fall, or beginning in fall, and then through the spring, was your busiest time in the schoolhouse. this was a schoolhouse geared toward farmer's kids of all

ages. there was no grade system. children from maybe as young as 6 and 7, all the way up to maybe the upper teenage would attend throughout the year. and the students were divided amongst each other. boys on one side and girls on the other. but throughout the day, they would actually move around based on their skills. and they would be taught the basics of reading and writing, arithmetic, probably a little bit of geography and history and things like that. this was not a public school. at the time period we're talking about, it was before virginia instituted public schools in the 1870s. this was a privately funded school by the faups in a community. so often it was called a community school. the supplies, most were provided by the individual parents of their school children. the funding for the school and for the school master was often a collection amongst the families to pay to build the structure and to hire a school

mast tore come and keep inside of it. sometime this is was a farm who are got together with neighbors and they collectively paid for it and one would teach it. the man who started this schoolhouse taught his children and some neighbors children. they often would have to hire outside of the community and they would bring in a young man who might have some formal education, sometimes not. and it was a low paying job. and so often the school masters were irregular. they might not stay throughout the year and it often might be during a down semester for a college student or it might be somebody who answered a newspaper ad looking for pay for an amount of time. so when i mentioned earlier that the school year was often all year round, there is no guarantee there is actually someone teaching in it all year. it was very irregular for the students because of the farm life, but also very irregular because it was often hard to keep someone employed in the schoolhouse. sometimes it is a shock to

people that public schools does not begin as early as they thought they did. and it was state by state. and most of the southern states, they were instituted after the civil war. but it is a shock that people dent realize that public schools have been around for not that long, actually. this was a very typical schoolhouse found in the shenandoah valley, especially in the mid-atlantic states. typically you are finding a man teaching in it. one of the reasons, of course, was that men had more opportunities back then and therefore more education than women typically. but it had a lot to do with the corporal punishment. so hear accounts of men teaching in the early to mid 19th srnts because they wanted a firm hand in charge of a lot of students. but community schools like this, schoolhouses were found a lot in agricultural or rural areas simply because the population couldn't support much larger school. they did have especially in

towns and cities, you did find multiple room schoolhouses but out on the countryside where the families are clustered together in little communities, it is best just to have a single-room schoolhouse. the students have pro vied their own slate boards and pen and ink when they started using that. books are hard to come by in the sense there are plenty of them, there are a lot of textbooks back then, but books in general are more expensive and often the school master is the only one that might have a text book that he'll use to teach from. students were in charge of their own recess. they didn't -- so there was no gym class, to no toys or equipment were provided for that. instruction, it was very oral. so students are often having to recite or memorize things and present to the class in front of everyone. not a lot of say like homework

or work sheets were given out. rather it was assignments that were -- where you are practicing ello cuse or handwriting on paper but not a lot of things being turned in. it was proving yourself in front of others and in front of the school master. this house, that we're standing in now, is built in the 1840s. there are accounts of one existing about 50 years earlier. often these one room schoolhouses were incorporated into the public school system, but often replaced pretty quickly -- as transportation improved and school districts were formed. but some were used for quite a while. my name is megan sullivan and i'm an interpreter here at the museum working in the exhibit, the 1850s american runner. the family that lives here were the bargers in the county, they

came from western germany which is where we represent our german farm so the ryanland area. they would have traveled down the shenandoah valley and settled on a piece of land they got from a land agent. and they got approximately 225 acres of land, from them, and they divide that up based on what they need for cash purposes and subsistence. the house itself, the room that we're standing in, the hall and the room above it were the first original log cabin built by the family in 1838 and ten years later they add on the kitchen and dining and which is the restore and they add on the porches and the front and back and put the siding on the front and back and making it a nice big house. the family size itself will include a mom and dad, parent, and then aproxtly six to ten children. so a fairly large family size.

and if they had the means, the family might own a slave or rent one and that slave will also sleep inside of the house. this farm came with a springhouse, which is a stone building, it has -- it is a spring that comes from underground and the family collected that water in a trough and that spring water that comes underground is very cold so not only is that your source of water but also your refrigerator too, storage for like milk and cheese. it would also have a wash house. so direct access to that spring water, to wash clothes, a meat house where they store a lot of pork products like bacon and sausage and ham. we have a produce shed, which is where you store wood so it stays dry. but also vegetables and fruits that you are harvesting from your land. we have a tobacco barn that this family would have used to harvest maybe a little bit of tobacco. it is not a huge cash crop but

it does supplement income. our hen house with turkeys and chickens an ben the barn, where you are thrushing your wheat and your hay, storing the grain and storing your animals in the wintertime. typically, men and boys will be out in the field taking care of the major crash crop. they will be in charge of slaughtering the animals, of that major cash crop and be in charge of slaughtering animals whereas women will be in charge of cooking, cleaning, washing clothes. men will be the ones to take that major cash crop, the wheat, to the market to the mill to have it sold. they'll be going to town to have those products kind of appraised and get money for the family. men will make tools for the farm, repair tools. women will quilt and sew, take

care of children while they're not in school, so those kinds of tasks. they're really kind of delineated based off of spheres of the farm. the house is kind of seen as the domestic sphere. then you extend that about five feet and that's the woman's area of work. outside of that area is the work space for the man, the fields, the barn, and kind of harder labor is out there is for the men. this house comes from a county which is about an hour and a halfish drive south of roanoke. they're about average for where they come from. if you compare it to other farms in the shenandoah valley, this family would seem poorer.

the railroad is going to reach that family sooner than this house. it just takes awhile for it to march down the shenandoah valley. because of the differences in economic status across the shenandoah valley, that home can have plastered walls whereas we are using whitewash on the walls in this house. the 1820s house also has a cast iron wood stove that they can use to heat up a room whereas this house is still using standard fireplace for heating. and that's going to be -- just location is the major determining factor on economic status there as well as just the family choices. perhaps they didn't want the newest things. they were comfortable with open hearth cooking and were just happy with that.

1820s house is kind of showing a second or third generation family in america whereas this 1850s house is showing third or fourth generation. they're more removed from that old world country that they came from. the frontier at this point in america in the 1850s is going to rest more in nebraska and kansas. some families are still getting all the way over to california. so the frontier is more out west, but we're still showing a family in the 1850s farm living in the shenandoah valley, but the way they live could be very similar to how people were living on that new frontier in america towards the west. the industrial revolution is allowing people to have access to more goods. machines are allowing you to cut straight boards essentially, which really shapes how you can build your own house. now you can have clapboard on

the outside of your house as opposed to just building a log cabin, which had been previous. so those changes in technology shape how the frontier can be lived on. probably the biggest national political issue in the 1850s is slavery. that's definitely going to impact anyone across the nation. i mean, they're going to have things like a slave reward poster that they're going to find in their local tavern or their grocery store that they can pick up and take off the wall. for a family living in the s shenandoah valley, $200 might be a viable reward they want. the shenandoah valley is a little more ambiguous about how they feel about slavery. some families are okay with it and they will rent a slave. others are very against it and

are more ablish nolishnist in t thinking. reward poster like this is coming directly out of an event like the compromise of 1850. you have to capture those slaves that are escaping their owners in the south, and if you happen to see the guy that's advertised in this poster, this family might see that as a good economic opportunity. capture him and you get that reward and benefit your family, so slavery is definitely going to be entering your home personally, even if you don't own slaves. you're going to be bombarded with messages like this from slave owners. then your newspapers as well

will have -- your newspapers will have advertisements for slave auctions. and they will detail the reports of these national news and politics in the 1850s. the nation is really becoming more attuned to these national issues, so slavery is definitely impacting a family even on the frontier. education is a little spotty on the frontier. if your community can afford to build its own school, then your children might have a chance of being educated. if your family has a history and background of educated their family members, then it could be passed down just through family members and your children could be educated. but without that public school system that we really kind of celebrate today, it's a little bit uneven across the nation. but most children are going to have a rudimentary knowledge of how to read and how to write.

so a newspaper might be accessible to them so they can understand the new politics of the day. technology once again is allowing newspapers to become more accessible to families and therefore that's going to kind of do a whole push and pull factor and inspire a rise in literacy as a result. kind of cause-effect relationship. more newspapers and books available, more people are going to want to know how to read them, so a rise in literacy. the big bullet point and theme that we try to tell people about the 1850s farm is that it is the last chapter of this museum. if you're thinking about it as a big book, the big message that you want to take away is that people coming into america are slowly blending all of those cultures together, the english, irish, german, west african, and native american. by the 1850s, you have the

beginnings of that american culture as a tangible thing. you can see that in the way that they're living in this house, the foods they might be eating, the house they might construct for thems. this family is a german immigrant family, but by the end of the 1850s they're going to be speaking english. in terms of their food, sitting down to dinner with them, yeah, they're going to have saurkraut now and then, but they'll mix in peas. corn is definitely going to be a staple of their diets. native americans are teaching europeans how to cultivate it and grow it, so they're going to combine that staple grain with foods they would have traditionally eaten in europe. you have a native plant to north america and bread, which is very

common in europe, coming together to create corn bread. even in food and culinary practices. in terms of architecture, the room we're standing in resembles very much an english parlor. we have dishes on display to show fancy china. an english influence on architecture to create a room for guests and to display your fanciest goods, but we're right next to a very german bedroom. having the mom and dad of this household sleeping on the first floor is a very german tradition. that master bedroom is right next to this english parlor. then we have porches on the front and back of this house, which are a west african influence on american architecture as well. the house itself is just a whole big story of how these cultures are coming together and blending to create this new american culture that we still add to

today. it's not finished by any means, but this is kind of where we're at by the 1850s. >> thanks for visiting the frontier culture museum today. we're open 362 days a year. we'd love to see you out here, so please come and visit us in stanton, virginia. >> this is the second of a two-part series on the frontier culture museum. part one explored daily life in europe for migrants before they followed by the white house visitors' center and the frontier culture museum. american history tv airs all weekend every weekend on c-span 3 and in primetime on weeknights when congress is in recess. we cover all periods of american history and a wide diversity of

topics. you can watch all of our programs, find our tv schedule, see youtube clips of upcoming shows, and connect with us on twitter and facebook. this is american history tv only on c-span 3. each week american history tv's american artifacts visits museums and historic places. dedicated on march 17th, 1941, the national gallery of art was a gift to the american people from financier andrew melon. up next, we visit the museum to learn about early american portrait painting and the work of john singleton copley. >> hello. i'm dianne stephens from the education department, the national gallery of art. we're standing in a room full of portraits by john singleton copley, america's most important

colonial portrait painter. you can thi you want to ask them questions and receive answers. i don't think you can say it much better than that. let me give you a little background. in the early part of the 18th century in america, early painters without much background and much training, we call them the limbners, made ambitious but tentative efforts to capture likenesses on canvas because portraiture was the only way of doing that those days and it was really the most important type of painting in the colonies. it was with john singleton copley and john west that there was a great flourishing of portrait activity that became elevated to a level of international acclaim, so copley and west are two first high

level portrait painters. unfortunately in some ways but fortunate in others west left very early in his career and went to england to study where he had a successful career and became the portrait painter to the king and nourished many younger paints who came to study with him. copley, on the other hand, stayed in boston for the first 20 years of his career, so we have these wonderful portraits of early colonials by copley. let's start with this one of epes sergeant. he was a wealthy merchant who lived in gloucester, massachusetts. by the time he died, he owned most of gloucester. he and his sons owned most of gloucester. he was in his 70s at the time this was painted, and it's an early 1760s portrait by copley.

you get the sense of a man who's done well, who's happy with his position in life, who looks comfortable. copley has given us more than just a representation of his features, but we have a sense of his status and his feeling about himself. he's painted -- copley has a great attention to detail. he doesn't leave anything out. he's got the mole under epes left eye is there. his somewhat wrinkled skin is portrayed just as it is. the fact he's bursting his jacket, he's filling out his jacket anyway, is evident. the hand he has in front of him, i think, gilbert stuart, the american painter, said later about that hand if you prick that hand, blood will spurt out. it's so realistically painted

with no effort to make it pretty. here you see that epes is leaning on an antique column, and there probably weren't many of those in the colonies in the 1760s. copley gets much -- much of his training comes from the fact that his stepfather was an engraver and this compositional idea probably came from that. i love to look at this just a little bit. it must be his waistcoat showing through. he's dressed for conservatively in a very simple cloth, but you have that gold brocade coming through. it's a wonderful painting. he was a harvard graduate. if you look across the room, this man painted 12 years later but copley was his harvard

roommate -- not his roommate, his classmate. little did they think they would be hanging together in this gallery. this is eleazer ting. i think he owned land in new hampshire and was also a massachusetts merchant and political figure. he was 82 when this was painted. copley has shown him just as he was. you'll notice the way he's painted the face and the hands is a little different. this is 12 years later. copley has changed his techni e technique, so the hands are painted with a little bit more fluid paint and in the face as well. it's easier to show the details, so copley is changing and developing as he goes along through his career in boston. so copley's portraits of men show you these very substantial realistic figures that look comfortable in their setting and you have a sense that they had,

these two men especially, that they've had successful lives and they're in a good place. his paintings of women are sometimes just so ravishingly beautiful in their attention to fabric and texture and the beauty of the skin, like this portrait of anne fairchild bowler. this was painted in 1763, so about the same time he was painting epes sergeant, but it's a totally different approach. look at the beauty of the garland and the lace sleeves on her dress. you can see his training in engraving and in fine detail when you see how he's treated these fabrics. she's again shown with a column and the drapery in a very classical setting he probably saw in european engravings. there's an interesting story tho woman. she was married to metcalfe

bowler. he was very wealthy. accumulated a huge amount of wealth in the shipping industry, and they had a home in newport. he was very active in political affairs. they lived on clark street. in 1763 he had accumulated so much wealth that they retired to their country estate in port smith, new hampshire. maybe that's where her garland comes from. so they were happily loving on this estate in new hampshire, but the war came along and the british soldiers ravished his estate. his income from shipping totally stopped, and things got very hard for metcalfe. there was only discovered in the 20th century at that point he corresponded with gal