00:09 - Christina McSherry,

00:11 - executive director at Historic Rockford.

00:14 - Welcome to our program. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

00:17 - Rockford in Lancaster County was the home of Edward Hand.

00:21 - Why was he a significant figure in history?

00:24 - Well, Edward Hand was, most prominently Washington's

00:28 - adjutant general during the American Revolution.

00:30 - And, but he was also a very fascinating figure in that he was a politician.

00:36 - He was a doctor.

00:37 - So he has there's many stories we can tell about early America

00:42 - through looking at his life.

00:43 - Well, let's

00:44 - consider Han's military service, especially alongside George Washington.

00:48 - By the time he joined Washington's army,

00:50 - what phase was the Revolutionary War in?

00:53 - In the very early stages.

00:55 - He actually had military experience.

00:57 - It might surprise he came from the British Army.

00:59 - He joined the British Army in 1767.

01:02 - And that was how

01:03 - he ended up in the United States, before it was the United States, of course.

01:07 - As a, surgeon's mate, he left the British Army in 1774

01:12 - and joined the Continental Army as lieutenant colonel in the

01:16 - in the first Pennsylvania, Thompson's Battalion in 1775.

01:20 - So he was in the war from the very beginning, all the way through to the end.

01:24 - he, went to Trinity College Dublin,

01:27 - became a, training as a doctor, he was stationed at Fort

01:31 - Pitt, by Pittsburgh, during that military service.

01:35 - And then he left in 1774.

01:38 - So why did hand come over here?

01:40 - He from from what we can tell.

01:44 - I mean, he was with the British Army, so I don't know that he had much of a choice.

01:48 - But when he left the British

01:49 - Army, he had decided he wanted to set up his own medical practice.

01:52 - And in the process of getting to Pittsburgh,

01:56 - he had made several contacts in,

01:59 - in Lancaster, and,

02:02 - when he decided to leave the British service, he decided,

02:06 - of course, not to go back to Ireland, that he liked Lancaster.

02:09 - He liked, the contacts that he made there.

02:12 - He had letters of introduction,

02:13 - and he felt he could set up a medical practice there.

02:17 - So he left Fort Pitt and came back to like it came to Lancaster to,

02:21 - make it at his home.

02:23 - So he did, in fact, practice medicine when he got to Lancaster,

02:25 - at least for a while, at least for a little bit.

02:27 - There was actually a very short time.

02:28 - He came to Lancaster at the end of 1774.

02:31 - He actually married in March of 1775.

02:34 - But by June of 75, he was already with the Continental Army.

02:39 - So he was not in Lancaster long after, his,

02:43 - he set up his home there before, joining the Continental Army.

02:48 - But then of course, he, after the war, he came back to Lancaster as well.

02:51 - So he got married not long after he got to Lancaster.

02:54 - Not at all. Tell us about the woman.

02:56 - So he married, Catholic Catherine Ewing.

03:00 - And her, her uncle is actually a prominent

03:03 - Lancaster named Jasper Yates, who was a judge.

03:05 - And, she we actually don't know a lot about her.

03:09 - Unfortunately, we actually have no letters

03:12 - between the two of them. We know he wrote her frequently,

03:15 - but none of the letters from her to him survive.

03:18 - So she's a little bit of a woman of mystery.

03:20 - We don't have a portrait of her or anything like that.

03:23 - But we do know that she lived with her uncle, Jasper Yates

03:26 - at the time that they got married, with her mother.

03:29 - And she has a brother as well.

03:31 - And then they set up house,

03:35 - just about a block away from Jasper Yates, in downtown Lancaster.

03:40 - After they got married.

03:42 - And then, of course, she stayed there, while he was away at war.

03:46 - So who lived in the house?

03:48 - It would have been, hand, when he was home.

03:53 - Catherine.

03:54 - And then, the children.

03:56 - Children came fairly quickly.

03:57 - Sarah Hand was born in 1775, so they got married in March,

04:01 - and she was born in 1775.

04:04 - But there also would have been several enslaved individuals as well.

04:07 - We do know particularly supporting the household while hand

04:11 - was fighting the American Revolution, there were three enslaved people.

04:15 - What do we know about the slaves? Yeah.

04:17 - So we know, of a man named Robert.

04:21 - Now, Robert is a bit unusual because he also acted as courier.

04:25 - So in addition to supporting the household at home, he actually ran, messages

04:30 - and supplies between, hand and his wife.

04:34 - And he was, a teenager approximately.

04:39 - During that time, another enslaved

04:42 - individual was, a woman named Susan.

04:45 - And she would have been helping with the domestic work at the home.

04:49 - She did attempt to self emancipate in 1779,

04:52 - but unfortunately she was captured and returned.

04:56 - And we have,

04:57 - records of her, the ads placed for her return.

05:01 - So we have a decent amount of information on Susan, and the one we know the least

05:05 - about is, a child of about the age of 12 named Bette, who would have also been

05:10 - assisting in the household, in in Lancaster

05:14 - city, during the war.

05:17 - Let's talk some more about Edward hands and military experience,

05:20 - especially when he met the commander of the Continental Army, George Washington.

05:24 - Yes. So he, he actually may have met Washington even before that.

05:28 - Because they crossed paths at fort at Fort Pitt.

05:31 - At one point, but,

05:35 - we do know that, hand was involved

05:39 - in many of the early engagements of the war, including the siege of Boston,

05:44 - crossing the Delaware, the Battle of Trenton,

05:47 - and then he was actually sent back to his old stomping ground of Fort Pitt.

05:52 - Now, out there, he was involved in the Sullivan Expedition,

05:55 - which was absolutely devastating for indigenous communities in the area.

06:00 - Sullivan Expedition, tell me about that.

06:02 - So that was, an expedition that was

06:07 - a part

06:07 - of the western Western campaign of the American Revolution.

06:10 - And it was directly targeted towards indigenous communities.

06:15 - Supposed to be towards indigenous communities who were supporting

06:18 - the British.

06:18 - But, that wasn't always clearly apparent.

06:22 - And it became, very devastating for all the indigenous

06:27 - communities in the area, including destroying villages and,

06:30 - basically their livelihoods and communities.

06:34 - As the expedition went through.

06:36 - So hand was a part of that.

06:38 - After his service in the West, he was brought back,

06:42 - sort of to the East Coast theater of the war.

06:46 - And he, was in Lafayette's brigade.

06:51 - So he knew the Marquis de Lafayette very well.

06:54 - And then, the position of adjutant general opened up and, to, of,

06:59 - he was a rival with Alexander Hamilton to get the position.

07:04 - I mean, who didn't have a rivalry with Hamilton?

07:07 - But hand, beat Hamilton and became Washington's adjutant general.

07:12 - Now, they were very close friends, from what we can tell.

07:14 - Washington and hand, and they maintained a connection after the war as well.

07:19 - In that, he was invited

07:22 - to the presidential residence in Philadelphia for dinner.

07:26 - He was invited to Mount Vernon for dinner and Washington came to Lancaster

07:30 - on the 15th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to visit the hands,

07:33 - and actually made his only public 4th of July speech in Lancaster.

07:36 - When he came for that visit.

07:38 - Now, tell me

07:38 - more about the responsibilities in general of the Adjutant General job.

07:42 - Yes. It's, it has an administrative role.

07:45 - But it's a very military facing administrator role.

07:48 - So he works closely with the commander in chief to determine,

07:52 - sort of what is needed for a battle campaign.

07:57 - What is, you know, what is needed

08:01 - as far as supplies, what is needed as far as soldiers?

08:04 - And his job is to make sure that everyone gets where they're supposed

08:07 - to be, that the allotted people and supplies are there.

08:10 - And then, one thing that we see, at the end of these campaigns

08:15 - is we see his, he he's the one giving the reports of casualties.

08:21 - He's the one saying, okay, we lost this many men, this many wounded,

08:24 - this many captured.

08:25 - He's the one writing those reports to Congress, at the end.

08:28 - So he's sort of

08:30 - doing all that sort of accounting,

08:32 - and, administrative work as part of it as well.

08:36 - He would have been involved in planning the battles as well.

08:39 - Instrumental in planning the battles.

08:41 - We know for a fact that he was

08:43 - very heavily involved in the planning of the siege of Yorktown.

08:47 - So the battle that ended the war, And he was at the surrender.

08:50 - There's a letter between him, I believe, and Henry Knox talking about what

08:54 - to do with the surrendered British swords after they were done.

08:57 - So it was a very military facing role, but also a very important administrative

09:01 - role, very much front row seat to the actions of the war.

09:06 - What do we know about Edward Hand's attraction to military service?

09:11 - You know, we don't know a ton about that.

09:14 - His letters are his letters are fascinating.

09:16 - They're our biggest window in it, too.

09:19 - And and letters went back and forth between he and his wife.

09:21 - He and his wife and he and Jasper Yates, primarily.

09:24 - So his wife's uncle, those the families were very close.

09:28 - So, there's we sort of have to it's always interesting to look at when he's

09:33 - describing the same event to both people, because he takes a very different,

09:37 - I'm safe. Don't worry. That was very close.

09:40 - He just said when he talks just free, and he's like, that was a close one.

09:43 - And we talk to his wife. It's fine.

09:46 - But they're not. He's describing the same.

09:47 - How much does he want to stress out?

09:49 - His wife?

09:49 - His wife?

09:50 - So that's always interesting.

09:52 - His his letters are incredibly descriptive in terms of what he's seeing

09:56 - and where he is.

09:57 - You can actually trace the entire war through his letters.

09:59 - Everything from the Declaration of Independence in front of the army today.

10:04 - How did it how how was it received in Lancaster to, you know, describing the,

10:08 - the we have a letter where he describes crossing the Delaware with Washington.

10:13 - But he doesn't always let anything.

10:17 - There's very, very little about letting it personal,

10:20 - or his personal opinions about the military.

10:22 - The closest we have is a letter he wrote shortly after joining,

10:25 - that sort of gives the sense that because he decided to make his home in America,

10:30 - he saw a responsibility to the cause of American independence.

10:36 - He did seem to feel very, very strongly of that.

10:39 - That also comes through in his letters

10:42 - about the Benedict Arnold treason incident as well.

10:45 - He was very, very strong in his dislike of of Arnold.

10:50 - So at least his service

10:53 - in the American Revolution seems to be very much,

10:57 - tied to the cause, more so than service itself.

11:03 - We also do get a sense that he at times maybe

11:06 - got frustrated with military service because he wanted to be with his family.

11:09 - So we do have a couple back and forth where he came home on leave.

11:12 - And Washington's finally saying, all right, you're done.

11:13 - Now come back.

11:15 - And he's taken enough time. We can't come back to the Army.

11:18 - So yeah, that's that's about the insight we have as far as that.

11:23 - Well, as far as any other possible insight is concerned into his relationship

11:27 - with his wife. Did something come through in his letters?

11:30 - Yeah.

11:30 - As I said, we have a very one sided conversation between him and his wife

11:34 - because we don't have any of her letters back to him.

11:37 - We we have not found any of them, you know, that she wrote him.

11:40 - But we don't have those letters. We don't have those letters.

11:42 - One thing that I was taken with is his involvement with the children.

11:48 - He is talking about the children.

11:50 - He's talking about the children's medical care.

11:52 - He's talking about, gifts are getting a puppy for the children.

11:57 - So it seems like a very involved father, which I was struck with.

12:00 - But I also get the sense that maybe,

12:02 - Catherine didn't write him back as much as he wrote her.

12:06 - Because there are several letters that start with.

12:08 - I've written you a few times. Could you write back, please?

12:12 - So, we do get the sense that maybe he was writing

12:15 - her, a bit more frequently than he was getting return letters.

12:19 - So for how long did he go back and forth between Lancaster and the war?

12:22 - Pretty much the entire war.

12:24 - We have several, and we can tell this because of, a few children,

12:29 - as well as those letters back and forth between Washington talking about leave.

12:34 - So we do know he went back and forth.

12:36 - We do know he's had messengers coming back and forth.

12:39 - And we also know there was a lot of military business in Lancaster as well

12:42 - that he was involved with.

12:43 - Lancaster was a place where munitions were stored.

12:47 - And there's some letters with Henry Knox regarding that.

12:50 - But also, he had,

12:54 - hand was involved in the trial of John Andre, the British spy, and, he,

12:59 - Andre was, imprisoned in Lancaster,

13:02 - basically on house arrest.

13:06 - During, during that process. So,

13:08 - he was also doing some military things when he'd come to Lancaster as well.

13:12 - So it sounds like hand

13:13 - was often in the front row occupying the front row seat for history.

13:17 - Pretty much. He was there the entire war.

13:20 - Most of the events of the war,

13:23 - that you could think of or that people know of, he was there for

13:27 - and he was brushing shoulders with Washington and Hamilton and Lafayette

13:31 - and Rochambeau and all of these figures that we hear about for the revolution.

13:37 - What do you suppose his greatest military accomplishment was?

13:40 - What do we remember about him today?

13:43 - That that's a that is a hard one.

13:46 - I think

13:49 - one that he had

13:51 - the most impact on would have been something like the siege of Yorktown.

13:55 - Because of his position at that point,

13:57 - that's where he would have had the most impact.

14:00 - As far as the one people tend

14:03 - to notice about him is usually crossing the Delaware with Washington.

14:06 - Right. Immediately.

14:07 - That brings an image to mind as it does.

14:09 - And that particular image, there's no key for that image.

14:12 - But the.

14:13 - So we have no proof of this.

14:14 - But the urban legend, as it were, is the one behind the flag.

14:18 - Holding the hat is Edward Hand.

14:20 - Holding his hat. On his head is Edward Hand.

14:22 - But of course, like I said, we have no proof of that.

14:24 - So I have to say, if if visitors are thinking about it over here,

14:29 - they often think about that crossing the Delaware.

14:31 - But as far as his actual historical impact,

14:33 - I think Yorktown, would probably be where I'd fall on that.

14:36 - Finally, the war ended. What did he do then?

14:40 - He came back to Lancaster.

14:41 - Now he was still in the military.

14:43 - He actually, didn't his commission didn't end until, 1800.

14:48 - So he was actually in the new United States military.

14:51 - But, he came back.

14:54 - He practiced medicine.

14:55 - He also became a gentleman farmer.

14:56 - Eventually at Rockford.

14:58 - So in, 1790, they lived in their town house in Lancaster.

15:03 - He bought land outside of Lancaster and,

15:07 - started the process of building the house.

15:09 - They would eventually move there in 1794.

15:12 - But he held a lot of, government positions.

15:15 - After the war.

15:17 - So he was in the first electoral college.

15:20 - He was in the Continental Congress in, late in the 1780s.

15:24 - He was in, he helped write the Pennsylvania Constitution.

15:30 - He was Lancaster Lancaster's chief Burgess.

15:33 - He actually advocate.

15:34 - We have a letter where he advocated for Lancaster

15:36 - to become the capital of the country.

15:38 - And it's interesting because it reads in many ways

15:40 - the same things that we tout for, like college admissions in Lancaster or,

15:46 - people, or tourism of like, it's close to Baltimore

15:50 - and it's close to Philadelphia and it's close to New York.

15:53 - It has everything. It has everything.

15:55 - There's a lot of different people here.

15:57 - He, he helped create the almshouse and hospital in Lancaster.

16:02 - The turnpike, he was, a founding member of that.

16:06 - He was a founding member of the, and president of the Society of Cincinnati.

16:10 - So, which is a fraternal organization for Revolutionary War, officers.

16:16 - So he really had a lot of those foundational positions

16:20 - to the founding of the country, the founding of the country.

16:25 - In many different areas, everything from local government

16:28 - to national government to

16:32 - sort of the setup of institutions.

16:34 - But then he also was a doctor and he was becoming a farmer, a gentleman farmer.

16:41 - It's funny how a census, with its mundane information

16:44 - can reveal interesting things.

16:46 - And I noticed that the 1800 census, I showed 14 people living at Rock

16:51 - Ford House, so 14 people in that house give me an idea of what life was like.

16:56 - And some of them were slaves.

16:57 - Yeah. So, yeah.

16:58 - So we have, the 1800 census is actually one of our best records

17:02 - for that early time at, at, Rock.

17:05 - So we do know they moved there in 1794 based off of tax documents.

17:09 - And then in 1800, we get a little bit of insight into who lived there.

17:14 - Now, a lot of those people were family.

17:16 - So we do know hand and his wife still have kids living there.

17:21 - Yes. So actually, none of the children married until after had passed away.

17:25 - Which is a bit unusual.

17:26 - The daughters were in their mid to late 20s by that point.

17:29 - When they moved into the house in 1794,

17:32 - there were seven children between the ages of two and 19.

17:35 - And they actually had eight children.

17:38 - Unfortunately, one of those children passed away

17:40 - before moving to Rockford, so that accounts for a lot of that number.

17:45 - In addition to that, we have

17:47 - three paid, three free white people.

17:52 - Two are, women, one older and one younger and one man.

17:56 - We believe that this was these could have been paid servants

18:00 - or something like that.

18:01 - We don't have names associated with them,

18:03 - and unfortunately, we don't have any other, records.

18:06 - And then the other person who was in the house was, a man named

18:09 - Frank, and Frank was, living at Rockford, and Frank was an enslaved man.

18:15 - He is the, enslaved man that we know was at Rockford.

18:20 - It doesn't appear any of the enslaved people

18:23 - that were at their townhouse in Lancaster came to Rockford with them.

18:26 - And Frank was their carriage driver.

18:28 - He did self emancipate in 1802, and was successful.

18:33 - We we believe he probably made it to Philadelphia is our current best guess.

18:38 - But at the time in 1800, he would have been their carriage driver.

18:41 - So he would have been maintaining the carriage house, the horses,

18:45 - and then driving the hands where they needed to go.

18:48 - From from the from the home.

18:51 - Well, let's consider the Rockford house today.

18:53 - Let's bring it completely up to date, because the public can take

18:56 - a tour of Edward Han's former home in Lancaster County.

19:00 - So, briefly, give me a description of the outside of that mansion.

19:03 - Yeah.

19:03 - So the mansion itself is a Georgian mansion.

19:07 - So we are on the National Register of Historic Places

19:09 - and in the National Building Survey.

19:11 - In part because of the connection to Han, because he is an important

19:14 - historic figure, but actually also because of that architecture.

19:17 - It is textbook early American Georgian architecture.

19:22 - And what's absolutely remarkable is the house itself is 90% in

19:26 - original condition.

19:28 - Two 1794 there were no additions or anything like that placed on it.

19:32 - So the architecture that you see today as a visitor,

19:35 - the hardware, the doors, the windows, it is,

19:39 - like I said, 90% original, pretty much the only thing that has been completely

19:42 - rebuilt is the porch that is on the back of the house.

19:45 - But the front of the house is your standard Georgian, facade.

19:50 - So it has the symmetry.

19:51 - It has, you know, the fan, window above the door.

19:57 - It has the brickwork has,

20:00 - is fascinating because it has more expensive patterns

20:03 - where it would be seen, less expensive patterns on, like the back of the house.

20:08 - But yeah, it's very textbook Georgian.

20:10 - Well, let's consider some of the items within the house

20:13 - that have a personal connection to Edward Hand.

20:16 - And one of the items you have is, his name plates from out in the field,

20:19 - that that's a special thing to have. Yeah.

20:21 - So the name plate is actually on a field desk.

20:24 - So, the field desk is,

20:28 - it's a it's a wooden box that would fold out and create a desk.

20:33 - And this was hands during the revolution.

20:36 - So all of that

20:36 - administrative correspondence, there's reports to Congress of casualties.

20:40 - Those letters to his wife would have been written on this desk,

20:43 - during the revolution.

20:45 - And we're lucky enough to have that.

20:46 - And who knows?

20:47 - Maybe their impressions in the top of that desk.

20:49 - Possible. We haven't found any yet. You never know.

20:53 - Let's consider

20:54 - the, what is called the formal parlor.

20:57 - There.

20:58 - And just the whole idea of a parlor just sounds quaint in the 21st century.

21:01 - It hasn't it?

21:02 - Yeah. It does.

21:02 - So this is the.

21:03 - This would have been the most public room of the house.

21:06 - And the way we've furnished the house, we're lucky enough to have,

21:09 - several items from the hand family, but of course, we don't have everything

21:13 - that was in the home.

21:14 - But when hand passed away in 1802, a probate inventory was done of the home.

21:19 - And it basically gives us a listing of everything that was in the house in 1802.

21:25 - And because they were only there from 1794 to 1802, we can assume

21:29 - that those items were probably there for at least a portion of it.

21:32 - It's not like someone lived in the home, or the family lived in the home

21:35 - from like 18, ten to, you know, 1870 and 1871 reflect 1810.

21:41 - We can say that

21:41 - that probate inventory is very reflective of the family's time there

21:45 - because it was so small.

21:46 - After Han died, Catherine remained there a couple of years, till 1805.

21:49 - Yeah.

21:50 - And then the eldest son passed away in 1807.

21:53 - And then it was sold out of the family.

21:55 - But the formal parlor would have been the most public space it has,

21:58 - the piano forte.

22:02 - It has the most lavish, decoration and furnishings.

22:05 - So this is where they would have entertained and,

22:09 - those furnishings that we have, we've tried to match

22:11 - to that probate inventory as much as possible.

22:14 - Tell us about this chair.

22:16 - Yeah.

22:16 - So the, hands chair, this is, on display in the study,

22:20 - and this has come to us through a hand descendant.

22:24 - Now, we do believe it was custom made for general hand.

22:27 - We don't have a lot of information on it, but if you see it in person,

22:31 - and maybe you can even see this from the image.

22:33 - It's a bit long in the seat.

22:35 - Especially compared to other chairs of the period.

22:39 - Hand was six foot four.

22:41 - So we men had long legs. Yes.

22:44 - And you picture him next to Washington?

22:46 - Both of them being very tall, in the period.

22:50 - So we believe that was custom made for him and,

22:53 - a bit long in the seats to, accommodate, his height.

22:58 - About the dining room there.

23:00 - Yeah.

23:01 - So the dining room, this would have been

23:02 - the other most public space of the of the home.

23:06 - And, again, done by the probate inventory,

23:11 - or, interpreted using the probate inventory for us.

23:15 - But there's a couple

23:16 - really special things in this room that I do want to point out.

23:18 - One is the window in the kitchen in the dining room.

23:22 - Actually still has two of the children's names carved into it,

23:26 - which is pretty special. Sure, it is.

23:27 - The eldest son and daughter carved their name onto the window,

23:31 - so that is still there.

23:33 - The other thing is the portrait of George Washington.

23:35 - Now, this one is a replica.

23:36 - But we do know that a portrait, probably a Gilbert Stuart

23:40 - portrait of Washington, was hanging in the home,

23:44 - when the hands lived there again, showing that relationship with Washington

23:47 - as well as, sort of the patriotism of the, of the early republic.

23:52 - And another thing that's pretty special about our interpretation is we do,

23:56 - change up our table, the food that's on our table,

23:59 - every item on the table is representative of a period recipe.

24:02 - And it gives us a way to talk about the people who are cooking,

24:06 - who are the other people in the household other than just hand.

24:09 - So your display gives us insight into their diet, into their diet.

24:12 - It occurred to me.

24:12 - Yeah.

24:13 - And we change that, every month or two.

24:16 - And, we have a wonderful volunteer who actually makes all of our food

24:20 - based off of these recipes.

24:22 - And, I think that's something sort of unique,

24:25 - a unique insight that you can get, in the way that we interpret them.

24:29 - So when people take a tour of this house, Christina,

24:32 - they can get up close to these.

24:34 - Yeah.

24:34 - So our tours are, the house isn't as big as you would think.

24:38 - Especially when, when we go through how many people live there.

24:40 - It's, it's a three bedroom home with parents and seven children.

24:44 - So. But our tours are fairly intimate, so they're,

24:48 - no more than 15 people usually.

24:49 - So you really can get into the room and see what's there.

24:53 - So tell us about the kitchen.

24:54 - That's got to be, a busy room in a house with a lot of people.

24:57 - Yeah.

24:58 - So this kitchen would have been the heart of the household,

25:00 - even if he and his wife were not down there frequently, if at all.

25:04 - And this is where Frank would have interacted.

25:07 - This is where the servants, would have been working.

25:10 - But there are some interesting things about the kitchen.

25:13 - The kitchen is largely very well preserved. We still use it.

25:16 - We have an 18th century cooking,

25:19 - reenactment, group that called Warm Hearts Committee.

25:23 - They, demonstrate cooking once a month in there,

25:26 - and they try to make the recipes that you see on the dining room table

25:29 - so that there's that continuity of how it would have been done.

25:32 - But they could have gotten food from Lancaster.

25:34 - It was a market town. Philadelphia.

25:35 - It would have been bustling.

25:37 - But there are some one of the interesting things

25:39 - that you can see in the image is the, what's called the spit jack.

25:43 - And it was a time saving thing.

25:46 - It sort of works like a lined up toy.

25:47 - And it's on the, the sort of the mantel.

25:49 - You can see it there,

25:50 - and it's actually connected to a weight, and you can wind it up

25:54 - and it's connected to a wheel on your meat spit.

25:57 - And when it's all wound up, it turns your meat spit for about 20 minutes,

26:01 - and then you can wind it back up and it'll turn it for another 20 minutes

26:04 - so that you didn't have to be turning your meat spit.

26:06 - And that's something that we know they had based off of that probate inventory.

26:10 - Let's take a look at the bed chamber at Rock Ford.

26:13 - Christina, is everything in that photo authentic?

26:16 - Yes. And actually more authentic than you would realize.

26:19 - Oh, so those bed hangings and curtains, actually, still exist?

26:25 - They're in winter tour museums collection in Delaware.

26:28 - The hand bed hangings.

26:30 - And they have been meticulously reproduced,

26:33 - in, for our interpretation.

26:37 - So, not only do you see

26:40 - period furniture and the things that reflect that permeated,

26:43 - but we can actually say exactly what pattern was on the,

26:47 - the hands bed hangings, which is pretty cool.

26:50 - Now, the last picture we're going to look at is

26:52 - especially interesting to me,

26:53 - because you said you don't have a lot of personal information about Catherine,

26:56 - but yet you have something as intimate as an article. Clothing.

26:59 - Yes. So we don't have any of her letters to hand.

27:02 - We don't have a portrait of her, but we do have one of her pieces of clothing.

27:07 - We have her dress.

27:08 - If I had to pick a favorite piece in in our collection, this would.

27:12 - This would be it.

27:13 - And what's interesting is the fabric is older than the dress.

27:16 - The fabric is imported from England and 1750 or 60.

27:20 - And the dress was remade to be fashionable a few times.

27:24 - This the view of it that you see today reflects approximately

27:28 - the around the time, the hands got married in 1775.

27:32 - So it gives us some insight into her clothing, her her her size and stature.

27:37 - It's something very personal.

27:39 - Last question.

27:40 - Christina. When a visitor completes

27:42 - a tour that Rockport, what do you hope they go away with?

27:45 - We hope we go.

27:46 - They go away with, a better understanding.

27:50 - Not just of hand, but of early America and early American culture.

27:54 - We always talk about these folks that are doing the big things,

27:59 - the things that hand and hands life between the doctor and the immigrant.

28:04 - He's, you know, being an immigrant, the farmer, the politician.

28:08 - We have so many windows and avenues to discuss early America,

28:12 - an early American culture.

28:13 - We also have, the enslaved people, the servants, the tenant farmers.

28:17 - Rockford is really a great place for those conversations.

28:24 - Combined with the John Jay Snyder Junior Gallery, which opened in 2021.

28:28 - And that collection.

28:30 - Christina McSherry, executive director

28:33 - at Historic Rock Ford, thank you very much.

28:36 - Thank you.