Trivia – Preservation of Historic Winchester

Saying Goodbye to 2016

For our last PHW blog post of 2016, let’s find out how to send off this year!

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has put together a list of 11 Preservation Wins and Losses in 2016. Locally, you can refresh your memory for the 2016 PHW Preservation Award Winners, reflect on the loss of the Winchester Towers, and recognize the ongoing efforts to save the Clowser House in Frederick County and bring life back to three historic structures after the fire on the south end of the Loudoun Street Mall last February.

To see the year out in a safe and family-friendly atmosphere, head to downtown Winchester on December 31 for the 30th Annual First Night Winchester celebration. Events take place from 10 AM to midnight, culminating in the apple drop and the fireworks display to ring in the new year. Buttons are $10 each, with free admission for children 10 and under. Find the full list of activities, locations, performers, and where and how to purchase your buttons at the First Night Winchester site.

If you are planning the celebrate at home, the Encyclopaedia of Superstitions we looked at for Christmas has a few suggestions to help bring in the good luck for the New Year. A plum tree branch should be placed over the front door to encourage fruitfulness and beauty. If you’d like to try a little fortune-telling, “lay a green ivy leaf in a dish on New Year’s night, cover it with water and set it in a safe place until the fifth day of the year. If the leaf is then still green and fair you will be safe from any sickness all the year; but if you find black spots on it, you may expect sickness.” For more interactive and enjoyable party entertainment than watching a leaf for five days, The Book of Games and Parties for All Occasions offers the game “Old Year’s Follies and New Year’s Resolutions,” which derives from the game Consequences (think of an early type of Mad Libs):

“The hostess provides a number of sheets of paper as confession blanks, one for each guest. At the head of one set of blanks she writes, ‘I [name of guest] hereby confess that in the year that is past I committed these among many follies:’ Upon the second set of blanks she writes, ‘I [name of guest] bitterly repenting my follies of the year that is past do hereby firmly resolve:’ Each paper is folded so that no name is visible and passed around in turn for each guest to write a folly and a resolution. Allow two minutes to each guest for writing follies and two for resolutions after which the papers are opened and read. The highly amusing follies and resolutions ascribed to the different guests will create the greatest merriment.”

While you are partying, whoever has the last glass of wine or other spirits from the bottle has had the “lucky glass” and will be successful throughout the next year. It is of course a tradition to sing a rendition of Auld Lang Syne just before midnight. To finish off your New Year’s Eve party, try opening your windows and doors at midnight to let the bad luck out and the good luck in, and make lots of loud noises to scare out those pesky evil spirits. Your neighbors will undoubtedly be thrilled with your shenanigans.

Stay safe, celebrate responsibly, and we will see you in 2017!

Vintage postcard from CardCow.com.

Around the Internet: Christmas Edition

Missing your Friday Photos fix? Shorpy Historic Picture Archive has a whole category devoted to vintage Christmas photos between the 1850s-1950s. Although not local to Winchester, the Church of the Nativity image was particularly striking.

Perhaps you need a small artistic project to take a breather from the hectic holiday crunch? Here are two sheets from the School Art Magazine of December 1920 which are ready for you to adapt to your decorating needs, color, and cut out. Click on the images to download them at full size.

Holiday music has become an intrinsic part of the Christmas observances. To quench your need for vintage carols in an authentic format, the Library of Virginia has shared a set of sheet music from Hotel Richmond on their blog this week. However, if you find belting out a tune a little on the tame side, the Atlas Obscura writers have turned up some genuinely dangerous Victorian parlor games to amaze and astound you. While they may be authentic, we would not suggest recreating Snapdragon or full contact Blind Man’s Bluff today!

If folklore is more enticing than roughhousing or games of truth or dare, the Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World for 1903 has a few choice tidbits for anyone hunting down forgotten Christmas traditions. To forecast the weather, “on Christmas day take twelve onions . . . and put salt on each one.” Each onion is designated as one of the twelve months of the year. Check the onions again on Epiphany (January 6); if any salt remains piled on an onion that month is said to be dry, while if all the salt has melted that will be a wet month. To boost your health, tradition says “to bathe on Christmas day will secure freedom from fevers and toothaches.” To increase your financial success for next year, “if you put all the silver you possess on the table set for the Christmas-day feast, the light shining on it from the Yule-fire will bring good luck and cause the silver to increase.” Doubling up on this luck, it is also said to be particularly fortunate when Christmas falls on a Sunday, as it does this year. Find these and many more Christmas-themed superstitions starting on page 324 of the PDF of the encyclopedia!

Above all, warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season, from the PHW family to yours!

Paper Constructed Houses

The following text and illustration has been excerpted from School Arts Magazine, December 1919. The brief article by Dorothy Milne Rising tells of how her primary school classes constructed buildings of particular types from paper while studying those topics in class. The activity was said to have been met with handclapping!

Click to view full size.

From a nine inch square of squared manila paper each child folded the sixteen squares with which you are probably familiar. Then he made the three cuts on each of two opposite ends to form a gabled roof. The lines were left on the inside to facilitate planning of doors and windows. . . . An extra five inch square was folded through the center for the roof and a slit made in one end of it, through which a flat fireplace passed. . . . It was discovered that by using a larger square and making two extra folds in the roof a building closely resembling a real barn resulted. . . . A second grade class was studying Mount Vernon as a type of plantation life. . . . For that house the addition of a simple floor was necessary in order that the columns might be attached to it.

One of the most interesting adaptations of the paper house was carried out as an upper grade problem, “Harmony between House and Grounds.” When an interesting house was constructed it was well placed and pasted onto a piece of cardboard suitable in size and previously covered with green construction paper. Trailing over the fireplace were paper vines. Massed in corners were paper shrubs. In contrast to the masses were open spaces of lawn. . . .

Is not the problem of the paper constructed house one which can be adapted to many grades and correlated with many subjects?

The Evolution of PHW’s Mission

I had been asked when education became PHW’s primary mission a few weeks ago. You might remember from the 50th Anniversary blog series post Education Becomes PHW’s Mission pegged this date as September 1970, following the loss of the Conrad House and prior to the creation of the Jennings Revolving Fund. But has the wording of the mission changed significantly over the years?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is as follows:

The earliest extant draft of the by-laws in 1967 includes a purpose statement to encourage “the preservation of ancient buildings and structures, and of places which hold historic interest in Winchester, Virginia and its environs and to collect and disseminate information and factual data. . .”

By 1973, the statement of purpose will sound quite familiar (punctuation and grammar as written in 1973):

Preservation of Historic Winchester, Inc., organized by concerned members of the community and incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, exist for the purpose of safeguarding the heritage of the City and assuring a quality of life for tomorrow represented by the best of the area’s past.

To the end that this goal may be encouraged among the people and the charm of their community maintained and improved, this organization shall through a program of education enlist support for and participate in the preservation, restoration, and ownership of sites, buildings, structures and objects significant to the (cultural, social, political, economic and architectural) history of the Winchester, Virginia area.

In the pursuit if these objectives, the fostering of civic pride, the uses of beauty, the welfare and pleasure of the residents, and the strengthening of the local economy shall be viewed as important by-products of the purpose defined.

The Jennings Revolving Fund was added in 1976, but the statement that education is the main vehicle by which PHW promotes preservation has remained largely unchanged since 1973. A grammatically incomprehensible revision in 1999, likely due to missing a line during retyping, was corrected in the 2003 by-laws revision.

(All known PHW by-law revisions on file from 1967, 1973, 1976, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1986, 1999, 2003, and 2010 were consulted to write this post.)

Trivia Answers for “Away, I’m Bound Away” Questions

It’s time to see how you did on the trivia questions posted Friday. These were some tough questions, so don’t feel bad if you didn’t know many — just follow the links, read up on some interesting Virginians, and then stump your friends with what you learned!

1. What Virginian became chief of the Crow Indians?
James Pierson Beckwourth
2. What Virginian became president of a foreign republic?
Samuel Houston
3. What Virginian became famous as “The Missouri Artist”?
George Caleb Bingham
4. What Virginian became the first African-American to serve a full term in the United States Senate?
Blanche Kelso Bruce
5. What Virginia writer helped promote the Westward Migration?
Jessie Benton Fremont
6. What Virginia slave mailed himself to freedom?
Henry Brown
7. What Virginian became the most famous fugitive slave in US history?
Anthony Burns
8. What Virginian “discovered” the Great Salt Lake?
James Bridger
9. What Virginian became an abolitionist governor of Illinois?
Edward Coles
10. What Virginian helped bring order to Central City, Colorado?
Clara Brown
11. What Virginian was instrumental in establishing the Pony Express?
Benjamin Franklin Ficklin
12. What Virginian became the founder of Texas?
Stephen Fuller Austin
13. Who was the first African American to serve in the State Senate?
George Teamoh
14. What Virginian served as President for a month?
William Henry Harrison
15. What Virginian explored Yellowstone River?
John Coulter
16. What Virginian was saved by a white bean?
William Alexander Anderson “Bigfoot” Wallace during the Black Bean Incident
17. What Virginian became a confidante to a famous First Lady?
Elizabeth Keckley
18. What Virginian made the first map of Tennessee?
Daniel Smith
19. What Virginian helped Kentucky achieve statehood?
John Brown
20. What Virginia slave’s lawsuit led to a famous Supreme Court case?
Dred Scott
21. What Virginian was probably the first African-American elected to public office in the United States?
John Mercer Langston, elected town clerk of Brownhelm in 1855
22. What Virginian established Centralia, Washington?
George Washington
23. What Virginian taught the first kindergarten in Detroit?
Fannie Moore Richards
24. What Virginian met with John Brown to encourage a slave uprising in the South?
George DeBaptiste, who met with John Brown and Frederick Douglass
25. What Virginian won the Northwest during the American Revolution?
George Rogers Clark
26. What Virginian killed himself three years after his famous expedition?
Meriwether Lewis (although some scholars believe he was murdered)
27. What Virginian explored the Louisiana Territory?
William Clark and the aforementioned Meriwether Lewis
28. What Virginian helped carry Methodism to western Virginia?
Elizabeth Henry Campbell Russell
29. What Virginian was called the “Iron Cutter” by the Sioux Indians?
Lawrence Taliaferro, whose last name is derived from “iron cutter” in Italian.
30. What Virginian revolutionized American agriculture?
Cyrus Hall McCormick
31. What Virginian helped found the Wilberforce Community in Canada?
Austin Steward
32. What Virginian was known as the “Great Compromiser”?
Henry Clay
33. What Virginian was given a flag made by Barbara Fritchie?
Jesse Lee Reno
34. What Virginian ended the bleeding in “Bleeding Kansas”?
James William Denver

Friday Photos: Kurtz Cultural Center Exhibits and Trivia Questions

From Kurtz Cultural Center Exhibits

This week’s selection of images were pulled from PHW’s slide collection. The slides feature some of the exhibits held at the Kurtz Building in the 1990s. One of the exhibits, titled “Away, I’m Bound Away” from the Virginia Historical Society features prominently in the images. It is also the subject of an extensive gathering of trivia questions based around the exhibit as part of the promotional materials. Chances are if you were in a local elementary school in the 1990s, you may have come here on a field trip and may even tried your hand at these questions once. Answers to the questions will be posted here Monday. There is no prize, but if you know all the answers without the aid of Google, you truly know your Virginia history!

Questions:
1. What Virginian became chief of the Crow Indians?
2. What Virginian became president of a foreign republic?
3. What Virginian became famous as “The Missouri Artist”?
4. What Virginian became the first African-American to serve a full term in the United States Senate?
5. What Virginia writer helped promote the Westward Migration?
6. What Virginia slave mailed himself to freedom?
7. What Virginian became the most famous fugitive slave in US history?
8. What Virginian “discovered” the Great Salt Lake?
9. What Virginian became an abolitionist governor of Illinois?
10. What Virginian helped bring order to Central City, Colorado?
11. What Virginian was instrumental in establishing the Pony Express?
12. What Virginian became the founder of Texas?
13. Who was the first African American to serve in the State Senate?
14. What Virginian served as President for a month?
15. What Virginian explored Yellowstone River?
16. What Virginian was saved by a white bean?
17. What Virginian became a confidante to a famous First Lady?
18. What Virginian made the first map of Tennessee?
19. What Virginian helped Kentucky achieve statehood?
20. What Virginia slave’s lawsuit led to a famous Supreme Court case?
21. What Virginian was probably the first African-American elected to public office in the United States?
22. What Virginian established Centralia, Washington?
23. What Virginian taught the first kindergarten in Detroit?
24. What Virginian met with John Brown to encourage a slave uprising in the South?
25. What Virginian won the Northwest during the American Revolution?
26. What Virginian killed himself three years after his famous expedition?
27. What Virginian explored the Louisiana Territory?
28. What Virginian helped carry Methodism to western Virginia?
29. What Virginian was called the “Iron Cutter” by the Sioux Indians?
30. What Virginian revolutionized American agriculture?
31. What Virginian helped found the Wilburforce Community in Canada?
32. What Virginian was known as the “Great Compromiser”?
33. What Virginian was given a flag made by Barbara Fritchie?
34. What Virginian ended the bleeding in “Bleeding Kansas”?