Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Artifacts 20140906 : vimarsa

History tv, american artifacts visits museums and historic places. Next, a visit to Fraunces Tavern at the southern tip of manhattan. To learn the history of the reconstructed 1719 building where general George Washington bid farewell to his officers following the revolutionary war. Fraunces tavern is at 54 pearl street, which is the corner of pearl and broad street in lower manhattan. It was built in 1719 with the delancey family. It was never lived in, it was built at a home, but it was a very mercantile area, lots of sailors coming in and out, lots of ships. So the delanceys never wanted to raise their family here, so it was rented out by different tenants. One of the tenants was mr. Holt and he rented a dance hall. In 1762, Samuel Fraunces purchased 54 pearl street and he opened up the queens head tavern. And being down here in lower manhattan, you were at the center of commerce. So it was location, location, location. It was a very popular tavern. Soon, the politics of the times started really kicking up and Samuel Fraunces was a patriot, so having a tavern named after your king and queen was not a good idea, so people referred to it as sam Fraunces Tavern, which is what its known as today. The tavern was very popular. He had two kitchens, he had a savory kitchen and a sweet kitchen, which was very uncommon for the time. In the late 1760s, when the turmoil of the politics were happening, many different types of people would meet here at sam Fraunces Tavern, including the sons of liberty. So the upstairs second floor Fraunces Tavern was a private room referred to as the long room for private rentals, and women were not traditional a allowed in taverns, but if you rented a room you could have female guests. So there were certain types of things you would find at a tavern, like the pipes to smoke, made of clay. You wouldnt bring your own, youd come to the tavern and youd borrow a few of theirs. And they didnt know about germs back then, so youd share your pipe with the guys before you. They liked to drink a lot of hot booze back then. So they liked their beer hot and their punch warm. One way to warm up your ale would be with a lagger head, which is a long wrought iron stick they would keep by the fire to heat up. And so this hot rod would be then taken from the fire and put into your pewter mug to start frothing up the beer. But imagine youre a bunch of gentlemen at one point in the night, sitting around the table, eating walnuts, having some oysters, talking politics. And things might get heated after a couple glasses of rum. If youve ever heard the expression coming to lagerheads, it comes from this time period. Youd have an argument, you might think it going to come to blows, so you go to the fire, you grab that hot lagerhead and you might want to hit the guy sitting next to you. So thats coming to lagerheads, so that may have happened here at Fraunces Tavern. Samuel fraunces would serve one meal a day, like a family style meal. There were no menus, this was predating restaurant, so youd come and eat what was served. Sam fraunces also is the first documented new york city tavern slash restaurant to do takeout. What they would do for takeout is they would put it in earthenware pots and pour a layer of fat on top and the fat would seal the food inside. Sam fraunces also did some canning for the seamen and the ships, the merchants that would be here, canned oysters, canned nuts, pickles, that kind of thing. So he did a takeout business on site as well. Now, the british occupiedd new york early on in the war, and sam fraunces saw the writing on the wall, he knew this was going to happen. So he left to new jersey with his family, and he left his loyalist soninlaw to run the tavern. The british captured him in new jersey and brought him back to new york, where they forced sam fraunces to, as a prisoner of war, to serve one of the british generals at a different location. And so sam fraunces was an entrepreneur. I mean he started this tavern, this fancy mansion, it was very popular. So being forced to work for free really rubbed him the wrong way. And as a patriot, he used this as an opportunity to help the cause. So he would listen in to what the british generals were saying at the dinner table and report that intelligence back to the Continental Army. He also would save table scraps and any kind of clothing and give them to the prisoners in new york city. Not many people know this, but more men died in the prison ships in new york harbor than on the battlefield. So sam fraunces was really helping the cause. And finally, cut to the end of Fraunces Taverns history throughout the war so, new york was a sad, sad city during the war. It was under british occupation, there was starvation, there were fires. And eventually we all know the end of the story, the americans won the war, and the british eventually had to evacuate the city. And just like today, when you bring your military in to a new area and you set up camp, it, if the war is over, you dont just get up the next day and leave. You have to disassemble all of the infrastructure that youve installed. So it took a while for the british to actually complete their dismantling and get out, and that was called evacuation day. So washington triumphantly marched into new york city on evacuation day and the british got on their ships and left. And the governor of new york, george clinton, actually hosted the dinner here at Fraunces Tavern. For evacuation day. And not too many days later, George Washington actually hosted a special event here at Fraunces Tavern, and thats one of the reasons why is this tavern is still here today. It was a famous farewell. So washington invited his officers to Fraunces Tavern. To say goodbye. I mean, they had they were brothers in arms. This davidgoliath story, and they won, they were victorious. It was over, it was time to go home. So he invited them here to say goodbye. And theres a famous, the only primary source document of that farewell is Benjamin Tallmadge wrote a memoir. So youre looking at the memoir and an en engraving of Benjamin Tallmadge, who was a spy during the war. This was written just five years before benjamin passed away and in it he documents his life, including his time during the war and his attendance at the famous farewell at the long room in Fraunces Tavern. In that memoir he quotes washington from that evening, and washington says, i cannot come to all of you, but if you could come to me and shake my hand. And this is a stoic man, this is the father of our country, and there claims to be tears on that evening. So that happened here in this long room at Fraunces Tavern, which you can visit today. And its set up as it would have been back in the colonial times. If you were to rent a room at Fraunces Tavern for a private event, we have some tallies of what was served at those private events. So if you had a party of 10, there would be about 10 bottles of rum, certain number of bottles of beer, and you would pay for your candlesticks, and obviously the playing cards. So also what they would serve here would have been oysters, they claimed in the hudson river at the time the oysters were a foot long. So these are roast beef sized oysters. You would use pewter ware, some china. If you came to Fraunces Tavern, not everybody there was no public education, so not everybody could read or could count with numbers. So they would use playing cards with symbols, so everybody knew that this was four because there are four hearts. So it wouldnt say the number 4, it would just have four hearts. So you would use these types of cards here at Fraunces Tavern if you were a gentleman visiting in the 1770s. So after sam fraunces sold the tavern in the 1800s, it had many different owners, and managers. It was a boarding house, a grocery store. It had three internal fires. And every time someone bought the building they thought, oh, this old building, lets improve it, put another floor on a flat roof, rebricks, a cast iron facade. So it had many changes in the 1800s. And through all of those changes and through this time it was starting to degrade. And it was going to be demoed. Fraunces tavern was always recognized as the place where washington said his farewell, so there an uprising and the sons of the revolution in the state of new york found enough money to purchase the tavern in 1904, to save it from the wrecking ball. So they took this tavern in 1904 and hired an architect to peel off the layers of the industrial revolution. And what they found was the original roof line, where the chimneys would have been, where the original staircase was located, and they rebuilt Fraunces Tavern conjecturally. So theres no pictures of it from 1719 when it was originally built. But the way it is today is most likely very similar to how it would have been built. So in 1904, there was a movement to save americas history and so thats a colonial revival. So it does have a little colonial revival taste to it as well. But the floors below me are original, so the yellow brick on the exterior we found that, the sons found that when they were doing excavation, so they found that and they put that back on the outside and bought some new ones to add to complete the facade. So this building is not 100 as it was when George Washington walked through these halls. But in the long room, 98 of the objects in this exhibit are from the colonial period. The sons of the revolution in the state of new york still own Fraunces Tavern. And they actually own five buildings on the historic Fraunces Tavern block. This society was founded in 1876, as a Genealogical Society for men who have descended from revolutionary war participants. And this society is still very active with a mission to educate the public about the revolutionary war and that time period. They have a flag day parade, they have an evacuation day event. They have a George Washington Birthday Ball fundraiser for the museum every year, and theyre the underwriters for the museum. As they opened the museum in 1907 and they still run it today. Welcome to the mcintee gallery on the third floor of the museum. This tells the history of the sons of revolution in the state of new york. The they had wonderful experience over the last 100 years through Fraunces Tavern doing many different Programming Options to educate people about the revolutionary war, including saving Fraunces Tavern and opening up a museum. Flag day parades, tallmadge day, nathan hale day, as well as saving artifacts through the museum and displaying them here for the last 100 years. This case is a small segment of the washington collection here at Fraunces Tavern museum. What youre looking at right now is a lock of George Washingtons hair. So this object has been in the museum for close to 90 years, and in the 1990s the f. B. I. Was debuting d. N. A. Testing. So as a media stunt, they gathered locks of supposedly George Washingtons hair from many institutions including Fraunces Tavern, and they tested this hair to one of George Washingtons descendants. And this hair here at Fraunces Tavern is 50 likely to be actually from George Washingtons head. Now, the reason why its only 50 likely is because over the years the hair has degraded as it does, it breaks down, so it was hard to pull solid d. N. A. From the strand. In this case youll also find a tooth fragment. Now this tooth fragment came to the museum claiming to be a fragment of one of George Washingtons teeth. Its commonly thought that George Washington had wooden dentures, but his dentures were made of animal and natural materials. In this case youre going to see artifacts that would have been carried by soldiers and officers alike, from their drinking cups made out of animal horn to their bayonets, their swords, their cartridge boxes. Leather carry boxes and in the back you see they would have carried that to hold letters and other documents that they would want to keep safe, as well as a cannon ball, shot pouch, which youd keep your shot in. All made of leather. These artifacts are actually from the revolutionary war. In this case in the gallery youll see artifacts relating to nathan hale, the martyred spy of the revolutionary war, who was hanged for being a spy, which was a offense punishable by death. And the sons of revolution actually had a statue, which youll see in this case, a smaller version, they had a larger version built and installed at City Hall Park in manhattan. Every year, the sons of the revolution in the state of new york host nathan hale day, where they go to the statue at City Hall Park and lay a wreath to the martyred spy. This case details the restoration of Fraunces Tavern at 54 pearl street. Youll find newspaper articles relating to the time of the restoration, to things found when the site was dug. The spikes from the original building, and bricks. As well as an invitation from the grand opening of Fraunces Tavern museum and restaurant in 1907. In this room youll see exhibited part of the dunnsmore collection. Fraunces tavern has the largest collection of dunnsmore painting anywhere, 42 pieces in this collection. About 10 years ago the museum discovered that these paintings were in disrepair, the frames were cracked, there were holes and tears in the paintings. So in the last 10 years the museum has had a large effort to conserve 37 of the 42 pieces. This conservation effort was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and is finally complete. So today can you visit Fraunces Tavern and see all of these beautiful 20th century illustrations exhibited here. They detail the story of the revolution from fabled events to actual events. And dunnsmore as a painter was an amateur archeologist and historian, also a member of the sons of the revolution in the state of new york. So his paintings are relatively accurate and they give a great glimpse into different pieces of the story that make up the American Revolutionary war. This painting is one of my favorites. Its called going to the hunt, and it depicts George Washington at mount vernon, leaving on his horse to go fox hunting, which was his sport of choice. And so a lot of people think that George Washington loved horses, and while this may be true, his true passion were for his dogs. So George Washington actually is recognized as the creator of the american fox hound, by breeding two different types of hunting dogs together. George washington loved his dogs so much that he kept the kennel close to the main house at mount vernon and he would check on his dogs every morning and night. During the first continental congress, George Washington actually brought his favorite dog with him, sweet lips. This painting depicts George Washington, and to his left the marquis de lafayette. On horseback at the encampment of valley forge during the hard winter of 177778. Visiting the soldiers without shoes, barely clad, yet in this painting you can see a Soldier Holding his gun and standing in reverence of his leader. This painting of dunsmores is titled washington family at mount vernon the library. Its a domestic scene of our father of our country sitting by the fire with his wife and her grandchildren, nellie and washy, as they called him. So George Washington and martha never had children of their own, but they did adopt two of her grandchildren, and this is a wonderful domestic scene that people are very fond of. This painting by dunsmore which was recently conserved thanks to the effort of dr. Michael wolf, is titled john adams proposing washington for a commander in chief. And youll see washington is the only man in this scene in uniform. Hes also facing the opposite direction of everyone else. Being a humble servant, George Washington knew what was about to happen and he left the room so that he wouldnt sway anyones vote with his presence. This scene depicts the interior of Independence Hall in philadelphia. This painting depicts quaker lydia darer in her home being questioned by a british general. He was a quaker and therefore a passivist, and the british occupied her home which they allowed her to stay in. The general told her and her family they had to go to bed early that night because he was holding a special meeting. So lydia actually hid and was able to listen in on the meeting, and she reported the intelligence she gathered from that meeting back to the Continental Army. And in this scene you can see theres a garbage can thats overflowing, and thats one of the painters traits is that you could see the unrest in this scene. So the garbage can with the papers coming out of it is kind of a metaphor for the tension. This painting of dunsmore is