So Much History, So Little Time

After a couple weeks at my internship at the New Castle Historical Society I seem to have a handle on the layout of town and at least a basic knowledge of all the history that New Castle has to offer.

Last week I had the opportunity to accompany Bruce Dalleo, Education Coordinator at the NCHS, as she gave a presentation to a group of students about reinterpretation regarding the Society's museums. Reinterpretation is important because it has to do with how to tell all the different stories embodied in one building. Buildings, like people, can change enormously over time, and house museums particularly have the job of telling all those different stories through different exhibits and tours.

For example, regarding the Amstel House: does the historical society tell the story of Dr. John Finney who built the house, Nicholas Van Dyke (Sr.) who became Governor of Delaware and lived in the house, or Van Dyke's daughter Ann who lived here with her husband Kensey Johns after Governor Van Dyke moved out? And that only covers the period from 1738 when the building was constructed until around 1790 when Ann and Kensey Johns moved into their new home in town. What about the time between 1790 and 1929 when the building was opened as a historic house? It seems to become more complicated the more you think about it!

I am encountering the same issues as I work on this project. For a tour that will cover nearly 200 years of history and possibly 60 to 70 sites, I am finding that researching all of the history of these buildings and the individuals that lived in them is perhaps the easiest part, it is the logistics of organizing the tour that may be the most difficult.

And some of the logistics I am thinking about off the top of my head include:

* Determining a walking route that flows both historically and physically (After all, you don't want people criss-crossing back and forth all over town!)

* Choosing which buildings and which stories you want to tell, because you can't tell them all, and there are SO many interesting ones! (While I may find everything interesting, I have to make sure that the tour is long enough for people to learn important things about New Castle, it can't be so long enough that they lose interest.)

* Balancing the types of information you want to include. (For example these tours are meant to appeal to everybody in some capacity, thus you have to make sure you strike the right balance between architecture history, history of the town, the stories of individuals, and between the secondary narrative and primary source excerpts)

These are all things I am trying to keep in mind as I work on writing my tour.