00:13 - Hello.

00:14 - Welcome to the Joseph Priestley House.

00:16 - I am Tom Bresnahan with the friends of the Joseph Priestley House.

00:20 - Priestley House is the American home of the English clergyman

00:24 - that discovered oxygen.

00:26 - In this program, you will learn he achieved far more than just

00:29 - that.

00:33 - I'm standing

00:33 - in front of the Joseph Priestley Timeline exhibit.

00:37 - Joseph Priestley was the first

00:40 - to conceive of a timeline

00:43 - as a way to visualize history.

00:47 - In this chart,

00:49 - he has 3000 names,

00:52 - which he indicates their life span in a grid

00:56 - covering years.

00:58 - And you can find how close Archimedes

01:02 - life was to that of our to that of Euclid

01:07 - Priestley's time.

01:08 - So we developed a timeline based on his concept through a series of panels.

01:14 - This is the introductory panel.

01:16 - It shows that Priestley lived in several places during his life.

01:20 - He began in Bristol, England, and he ends up in Northumberland, Pennsylvania

01:27 - in Birstall with very modest beginnings.

01:30 - His father was in the wool business

01:33 - when he was a youngster.

01:35 - His aunt took her and took him into her house and sent him to school.

01:41 - He went to Daventry Academy,

01:44 - and Batley Grammar School.

01:47 - Priestley's first jobs were as a minister in two small communities.

01:52 - He was not very successful at that, but he was a scholar

01:56 - and he went to teach at the Warrington Academy.

02:02 - While there he published his first book, which was A grammar.

02:06 - It was modestly received in England,

02:09 - but widely received in the United States as the basis of grammar.

02:13 - And this grammar was based on usage

02:16 - rather than rules from Latin or French.

02:20 - He met Benjamin Franklin in this time,

02:23 - who was quite impressed with the young scholar.

02:28 - He began his work in science

02:31 - first in electricity.

02:32 - At the encouragement of Franklin,

02:34 - he wrote a history of electricity and made a couple of original discoveries.

02:38 - One of the discoveries is that electrical properties

02:41 - seem to obey the same physics laws.

02:45 - The Newton was this had discovered for big physical objects

02:49 - like planets and gravity and so forth.

02:52 - He also published a very famous work

02:55 - for the time on how to make carbonated water.

02:59 - Based on this, he was nominated

03:03 - and received the from the Royal Society of the Copley Medal,

03:07 - which is the equivalent of the Nobel in today's

03:10 - terms.

03:15 - Priestley's moved from Warrington to Leeds, where

03:18 - Joseph was a minister and conducted some experiments,

03:22 - but then he was invited to by Lord Shelburne,

03:25 - an English nobleman, to come be his companion,

03:30 - to be the tutor to his children, to organize his library.

03:34 - It is in Cowen that he discovered oxygen

03:38 - and ammonia and nitrous oxide that we know as laughing gas.

03:45 - He. Then he

03:47 - stayed there for several years, left the service of the nobleman,

03:51 - and moved to Birmingham,

03:54 - which was a very highly intellectual city full of

03:58 - of people interested in commerce and science and literature.

04:03 - There's something there called that they formed a lunar society of all leading men.

04:08 - Priestley was a member of the society, continued his work in science,

04:12 - met John Adams.

04:16 - And was very happy in Birmingham.

04:21 - He supported the French Revolution,

04:23 - which caused quite a bit of problems.

04:26 - In 1791, a mob

04:29 - organized unorganized mob with a list

04:33 - and left Birmingham one evening Sunday evening on this,

04:38 - after the second anniversary of the French Revolution

04:41 - came to Priestley's house, burned it down, burned his lab, burned

04:45 - his library, burned his church, and that of many dissenting families.

04:50 - Priestley fled to London while in London.

04:55 - He became the most hated man in the country.

04:58 - There were cartoons that he wished the head of King George

05:02 - the Third on a platter, knowing that he couldn't live in England anymore.

05:07 - He came to America.

05:09 - He was

05:10 - preceded in America by his sons, who had come here

05:13 - to speculate on lands along the Loyalsock Creek

05:18 - towards the New York border.

05:21 - He was met in New York and in Philadelphia.

05:24 - He was offered a chemistry professorship

05:27 - at the University of Philadelphia, which became University of Pennsylvania.

05:31 - He declined it, and he moved to Northumberland, where his children were.

05:37 - He lived here for ten years.

05:38 - He built this substantial mansion.

05:41 - He was friends with Jefferson and Adams,

05:45 - and he got involved in politics here, and particularly in the Alien and Sedition

05:50 - law, which was the law that said you could not criticize the government,

05:54 - even though we had the First Amendment, which said we had free speech.

05:59 - Percy wasn't in prison, but he was threatened with imprisonment

06:03 - or being thrown out of the country.

06:06 - He wrote a religious works here.

06:09 - His wife passed away here.

06:11 - One of his sons passed away here, and in February 1804

06:16 - Priestley passed away and is buried in the nearby Riverview Cemetery.

06:24 - The head of the chemistry department at Penn State learned

06:27 - that Priestley House was up for auction and possibly just to be destroyed.

06:33 - He ask his alumni

06:36 - to help him purchase the house, which he did.

06:39 - The house looks like this at the time

06:42 - George Gilbert Pond passed away

06:46 - before they actually opened it as a museum.

06:49 - Was a chemist gathered here in 1926 to commemorate

06:54 - the establishment of the Penn State Museum at Priestley House.

06:59 - Today is a part of the state museum system,

07:03 - and we're going to let Joann introduce you and welcome

07:06 - you to the House.

07:11 - Welcome to the Joseph Priestley House.

07:13 - You're standing in the foyer area.

07:16 - This is where you would come when you were if you were a tradesman,

07:21 - if you were a visitor coming to see someone who lived in the house,

07:24 - and you would be greeted at the door by a servant, you would wait in this area

07:30 - and sit on this bench until you were announced.

07:34 - The interior doors would be closed in the winter,

07:37 - mainly because they needed to keep the heat in the rooms.

07:41 - Of course, the main source of heat in the house

07:44 - was by fireplace, so you needed to keep as much heat in the room as you can.

07:48 - This home, by the way, is 10,000ft², so it's a very large home.

07:54 - It's got three floors, and so they had to conserve as much heat as they could.

08:01 - The next room I'm

08:02 - going to be showing you will be the dining room.

08:06 - We're now in the dining room of the Priestley House.

08:09 - Believe it or not, the meals,

08:11 - the main meal of the day would last several hours.

08:14 - It would start around 2:00.

08:16 - And not only would they have several courses of food,

08:20 - they would also have political and religious discussions.

08:23 - Therefore, children under the age of 12

08:27 - were not permitted to eat in the dining room.

08:31 - To be able to eat here, you had to demonstrate very good behavior

08:35 - and the ability to enter into conversations with the adults.

08:40 - The younger children, of course, would be

08:43 - sent to the kitchen to eat with the servants.

08:47 - Now, I'd like to point out

08:49 - that their works are a little different than the kind we have.

08:52 - They only have three prongs,

08:55 - and the dinnerware that they used

09:00 - was on the playing side.

09:02 - The Priestley's,

09:04 - along with their furniture and most of the furnishings in the house,

09:09 - were tended to be a little bit more on the playing side.

09:13 - Over here we have a dress that was made by our historic dress troupe

09:19 - that show us the type of clothing that Mary would have worn.

09:24 - She gravitated to earth tones.

09:27 - The browns, the greens, even black was a favorite color

09:31 - rather than the bright colors that did exist at the time.

09:36 - In this room, of course,

09:38 - we have a clock that did belong to the Priestley's,

09:43 - and it did work up until about, I'd say about 20 years ago.

09:47 - It was an actual working clock in the cupboard.

09:50 - We have the type of China and dinnerware that

09:56 - would have been in

09:57 - the room at that time, late 1700s.

10:01 - But none of these items belonged to the Priestley's.

10:06 - Of course, as I mentioned

10:08 - before, fireplace was the main source of heat.

10:11 - So you will see in each room there is a fireplace above the fireplace.

10:16 - We have a portrait of Mary Priestley.

10:21 - Now, Mary, when they came over from England, had some health problems.

10:26 - She had tuberculosis and

10:29 - unfortunately

10:32 - she died

10:34 - to about,

10:36 - I say, maybe about six months before the house was finished.

10:39 - Basically, it took over two years to build this house,

10:43 - and even though Mary designed it,

10:46 - she never had a chance to live here.

10:53 - In the corner of the dining room.

10:55 - We have some samples of things

10:58 - that were found in archeological digs that were done here at the house.

11:02 - We had a big dig at the lab

11:05 - area with the whole floor dug up for a while, and when they did

11:09 - the reproduction of the barn that's on the property,

11:15 - the state

11:15 - to do an archeological dig before they put that building up.

11:19 - And some of the things that were found are pieces.

11:23 - We have some Jasper wear, pearl ware,

11:26 - some blue and white transfer printed

11:30 - dinnerware.

11:32 - We even have a glazed stoneware.

11:36 - And all of these items were found in archeological digs

11:39 - that were done here at the Priestley House.

11:44 - My name is Susan Brooke.

11:46 - I'm happy to welcome you to Doctor Priestley's library.

11:50 - This is where he wrote his sermons.

11:54 - It's where he wrote up his experiments and where he wrote letters

11:58 - home to England, and also

12:02 - where he read it amongst his many books.

12:06 - When he had to flee

12:09 - from England, he had collect re collected all the books that he lost

12:14 - in his, in the great riots of 1791.

12:19 - So his library, amounted to 3000 books, which is a great deal.

12:25 - And for that period of time it was believed to be

12:28 - one of the biggest private libraries in the country.

12:33 - He, he was very generous with these books.

12:36 - He loaned them out to anyone in the neighborhood

12:39 - who had a had a desire to read and learn.

12:43 - He was a great educator as well as a scientist.

12:48 - And, we we value him for that.

12:52 - He, he had his lighter side, almost daily,

12:56 - when Mary Priestley was alive, he and Mary would play a game of chess.

13:02 - And we do have, amongst our collection here, a chess set

13:06 - that has come down in the Priestley family and was donated to the museum.

13:13 - We also know that, the Priestley's played other board games as well.

13:18 - One the night of these terrible riots, Mary and Joseph

13:22 - were actually involved in a game of backgammon

13:26 - when our folks came in and told them they would have to flee

13:30 - because the rioters were coming and intended

13:33 - to trash their home entirely.

13:38 - Doctor Priestley really spent

13:40 - a lot of time in this room from the beginning and to the end.

13:45 - This is the room where he he convalescent when he was ill.

13:50 - Later, he began to use it as his apartment.

13:53 - And it is in this room that we are told he died.

13:58 - He was working right up until the end.

14:00 - He was finishing a pamphlet that he was writing.

14:03 - And, among the items we have in

14:06 - the room is our, and any 18th, 19th century couch

14:12 - that would be similar to the bed that an invalid might use.

14:17 - We're going to move on now

14:20 - to the adjacent drawing room, where

14:24 - we'll talk a little bit more about Priestley.

14:29 - Our volunteer tour guides here at the Priestley House

14:33 - enjoy talking about the parlor or the drawing room,

14:37 - as it was called during that period of time.

14:41 - This is a room that had many uses.

14:43 - The furniture was considered very versatile.

14:46 - They would move it around depending on what they needed to do

14:49 - that particular day.

14:51 - This might be a place where the family would gather in the evening.

14:55 - It was definitely the place where they had their Sunday

14:58 - religious observances, because Doctor Priestley

15:01 - didn't have a church to preach, and he preached at home.

15:07 - It also was the site of the classes

15:10 - that Doctor Priestley gave for, older students.

15:15 - He taught several subjects astronomy and history among them.

15:21 - We also enjoy in this room portraits of Doctor Priestley.

15:24 - We have Doctor Priestley on a postal stamp from 1983.

15:30 - We have, Doctor Priestley depicted

15:33 - on the very prestigious Joseph Priestley Medal,

15:37 - which is awarded by the American Chemical Society.

15:40 - And this is this medal is awarded for the highest of

15:45 - groundbreaking chemical

15:49 - inventions, if you will,

15:51 - or discoveries, researches.

15:55 - It it is a large metal about this big and it,

15:59 - it has the picture of Doctor Priestley in his formal white powdered wig,

16:05 - such as, his acquaintance George Washington might wear.

16:10 - But we also have depictions of Priestley

16:13 - in his more informal look, which he adopted here in Northumberland.

16:18 - And why did he decide to stop wearing the wig?

16:21 - Well, there was no formal wig dresser

16:25 - operating here in rural Northumberland, Pennsylvania.

16:29 - So when Priestley's portrait is painted at, during his lifetime here

16:34 - in Northumberland, he also chooses not to wear the wig.

16:39 - And we have his portrait on display in this room.

16:44 - So that tells you a little bit about our parlor.

16:47 - Drawing room here.

16:53 - I am Ronald Lashley.

16:55 - I'm a retired high school chemistry teacher, and,

16:59 - the, Joseph Priestley Re-Enactor here at the Priestley House.

17:03 - I've been a volunteer and a tour guide here

17:06 - for more than 30 years.

17:10 - I'm standing now in the laboratory,

17:12 - which was of the first completed room in the house.

17:16 - Priestley was anxious to get back to his studies of science,

17:20 - and so he had the workmen do this room first.

17:22 - It's a very simple room, and so it was not difficult for them to finish it quickly.

17:28 - The room is set up very much

17:30 - as laboratories were in Priestley's day.

17:33 - In the corners there are a couple of large brick ovens,

17:38 - and above them there's a fume hood.

17:42 - The idea

17:42 - was that the ovens would warm the air around them, and the warm air would rise

17:47 - and go up through the fume hood and vent to the outdoors through the roof.

17:51 - That way you could get good ventilation

17:55 - in a time when they did not have electric fans.

17:58 - Ventilation was very important in this room, in any chemistry laboratory,

18:02 - actually, but especially this one where Priestley discovered

18:05 - carbon monoxide.

18:09 - He was trying to make carbon dioxide by a new method.

18:13 - He mixed finery, cinder, basically

18:16 - iron rust with charcoal,

18:20 - and stuffed it into a gun barrel and then heated it.

18:25 - When he did, he got a gas, which he found was lighter than air,

18:29 - but much heavier than hydrogen, and it burned.

18:33 - So, Priestley discovered here carbon monoxide.

18:39 - Most of his other discoveries

18:41 - had been made back in England 20 years earlier.

18:45 - The room is,

18:48 - ideally suited for Priestley's pursuit.

18:50 - Is attached to the house.

18:53 - But it's isolated enough that if he had any accidents here,

18:56 - it would not impact so much on the rest of the house.

19:00 - So Priestley discovered carbon monoxide in this room.

19:04 - But all of his other errors he discovered back in England

19:08 - 20 years before coming to America.

19:11 - Priestley is largely recalled as a chemist,

19:16 - but he was involved in all kinds of different sciences,

19:19 - and as a matter of fact, he began his scientific career

19:23 - when he met Benjamin Franklin in London.

19:26 - Franklin explained to Priestley about the experiments he had done,

19:31 - and then Priestley proceeded to do his own experiments

19:35 - and eventually wrote a book which became the standard textbook

19:39 - on electricity for the next couple of decades.

19:43 - The History and Present State of Electricity.

19:47 - In that book, Priestley described, among other things,

19:51 - Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment, the first time that experiment

19:54 - had been described in print.

19:57 - Priestley also

19:59 - did some some work in botany.

20:03 - He studied plants under the microscope.

20:06 - He studied pond scum, trying to figure out what was going on.

20:10 - He discovered pretty much all of the essentials of photosynthesis,

20:16 - but never quite put it all together to come up with a coherent theory.

20:21 - Priestley studied light and color

20:24 - and optics, and wrote a book on that topic.

20:28 - Also, it wasn't a bestseller like his one on electricity.

20:32 - He was involved in all kinds of things.

20:35 - And despite all of this, Priestley never really thought of himself as a scientist.

20:43 - He said that his first calling was the ministry,

20:47 - and his second calling was education.

20:50 - All of the other things that he did were a hobby.

20:53 - Yet, despite it being a merely a hobby with Priestley,

20:58 - he made many groundbreaking discoveries that have altered

21:01 - the entire history of science.

21:06 - This is Elizabeth Priestley bedroom.

21:10 - She and her husband, Joseph Junior, are the ones that moved into the house

21:13 - with Doctor Priestley when it was finished.

21:16 - They had two children at the time.

21:18 - They lived in this house until 1812, when they went back

21:21 - to England, and during that time they had three more children.

21:24 - So for a while five grandchildren lived in this house.

21:29 - Now this was the woman's domain.

21:33 - If the lady of the house, which of course at that time was Elizabeth,

21:36 - were to entertain friends, they would come up here to her room.

21:40 - The servant would provide the tea or whatever type of dessert

21:44 - that they were going to be serving.

21:45 - And this is where they would have it in her room.

21:49 - Some of the necessities, of course, would be the wardrobe

21:52 - where her extra clothing could be hung.

21:55 - Over here we have the wash basin.

21:59 - The servants job, of course,

22:00 - was to make sure there was fresh water in that every day.

22:04 - So that

22:06 - Elizabeth could freshen herself up for the day.

22:09 - We have a traditional canopy bed.

22:11 - As you can see, which most colonial homes had.

22:16 - Down here we have the cradle

22:19 - where the baby would sleep, and in the cradle we have a wooden door.

22:25 - Now, the wood drawer had two purposes.

22:28 - One, of course, was a plaything for the children.

22:32 - Another was when it was sent over.

22:35 - It would come with the style of clothing that was popular of the day.

22:40 - So the lady of the house, if she liked this clothing,

22:43 - could take it to her dressmaker and say, I want this dress.

22:46 - She could choose the fabrics that she wanted and she could have

22:51 - this made for her.

22:52 - Something else that's in the cradle

22:55 - that I wanted to show is

22:57 - this pillow.

22:59 - It's a decorative item.

23:01 - It would have been a wonderful gift, though, to give someone.

23:03 - It says, welcome, little stranger. 1801

23:08 - the interesting part about this, and the reason I'm holding it

23:11 - by the corners, is that it's made with straight pins.

23:16 - Now, today, we think of a straight pin as being something that's very inexpensive.

23:19 - But in that time period,

23:21 - straight pins, needles, objects like that came from England.

23:25 - So they were not inexpensive items, and you had to wait a long period of time

23:29 - to get them.

23:30 - So this would have been a very nice decorative item

23:33 - to give someone.

23:37 - Over in this corner on the other side of the bed.

23:39 - We have an adult commode.

23:42 - Of course the seat lifts up and the purpose for the adult commode is

23:46 - so that if the occupant of the room did not want to go to the outhouse

23:52 - in inclement weather

23:54 - or in the middle of the night, they could go here.

23:58 - And it was, of course, the servant's duty to make sure that it was cleaned up.

24:04 - Over in this corner, we have Elizabeth's desk.

24:09 - Now, of course,

24:11 - she had her quill pen and ink to do her writing.

24:15 - There's a pair of glasses over there that she used.

24:18 - And when you when anyone was done with their letters that they were mailing,

24:23 - they would fold them and they would melt the wax,

24:29 - put a and they had a special seal that they would put on.

24:33 - And this was the way they could tell if their mail arrived

24:37 - at its destination and was not tampered with.

24:40 - Same as if you were receiving mail.

24:42 - You would always check to make sure that the seal was not broken.

24:46 - Next to the desk we have a child's high chair.

24:50 - There are straps

24:51 - to keep the child from falling out of the chair.

24:56 - Over in this corner

24:59 - we have a work desk.

25:03 - Now it was the lady of the house.

25:05 - Was her job to instruct the younger children

25:10 - so she would use leaf collections.

25:13 - She would use bird feathers,

25:16 - eggs, all sorts of things from nature,

25:20 - to instruct the children and teach them things.

25:24 - There's also a sampler on that table.

25:27 - And of course, any young lady of the day

25:31 - had to learn how to do a sampler.

25:34 - There's samples of tatting,

25:37 - which is a very, very beautiful

25:41 - type of lace work.

25:44 - We also have different samples

25:46 - of the fabrics that they could choose from,

25:49 - because they have some really beautiful patterns in the day.

25:53 - We also have a book that's a sewing guide.

25:58 - We have needles in there and the lady of the house would have had,

26:05 - pincushion.

26:06 - She would have had

26:09 - wooden thimbles.

26:12 - And they also have in that chest

26:15 - the starting of a pair of socks,

26:18 - because even the boys had to learn how to do their socks.

26:22 - People in that time period were very

26:24 - self-sufficient.

26:28 - Behind me

26:31 - is one of the items that actually belonged to the Priestley's.

26:36 - It is a cloth that was given to them from one of their friends

26:39 - from France.

26:42 - But most of the other items

26:44 - in the room are period pieces,

26:47 - so they are valuable, but they are not,

26:51 - objects that were here when the priests were here.

26:54 - The table is another popular item in the room,

26:58 - because basically, when you weren't using it,

27:00 - you could fold it, and it didn't take up as much room as if you had the top up.

27:06 - On the bed we have,

27:09 - nightshirt, which could also be worn during the day with your regular clothing.

27:14 - And then it could be your nightshirt for sleeping.

27:19 - You'll notice we've got another wonderful fireplace

27:21 - as our heat source.

27:26 - And this was Elizabeth's room.

27:29 - She spent a lot of time here.

27:34 - Planned

27:35 - to visit the Joseph Priestley House in Northumberland.

27:38 - We are open for guided tours at one, two and 3:00 every Saturday and Sunday

27:44 - from the middle of March until the end of November.

27:48 - For further information about programs and special things,

27:52 - please check our website at Joseph Priestley House,

27:56 - George. For.