Many products from pre-industrial New Haven still exist around us. Strategies emerge from those that are accessible. Some of those are:
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buildings from earlier times, like the Pardee Morris House
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historical sites, like Fort Hale and the New Haven Green
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gravestones, like the ones transferred to Grove Street Cemetery from the Green
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paintings and lithographs in the New Haven Colony Historical Society, the British Art Center, and the Yale Art Gallery
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toys and games in museums and books
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poems and publications in early books and magazines
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local inventions, as represented by models: and pictures in the New Haven Historical Society and the Eli Whitney museum
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people who have special knowledge of arts, crafts and methods of manufacture of products from pre-industrial times
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tools, weapons, and family possessions from Native American cultures (at the Peabody Museum) and from European Settlers (from the Historical Society and the Morris House.)
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This unit will require about 12 weeks and should allow for frequent trips to study community resources such as I have listed. It could be expanded or contracted if time were a factor.
We will begin with a study of the land in New Haven, its shape and special features. A good start would be a trip up East Rock on foot in the company of the East Rock ranger or a volunteer geologist to view the terrain between East Rock and West Rock, and to discuss the geological history of the surrounding land and the features that made it attractive to the Native Americans who lived here. It should become evident how the natural—if shallow—harbor, the rivers, Long Island Sound, and the extensive natural wetlands influenced the lives of the Indian peoples who lived here. A trip to the Peabody Museum to study the tools and products of local Native Americans on display should yield good discussions about how these were made—out of what needs and what materials—and how the families and their homes, clothing, weapons and tools related to geographic features and resources. Reports can be assigned on Algonquin and Quinnipiac family life and tribal structure, so that similarities and differences to later New Haven families can be understood. Maps will be made to relate to present day New Haven.
This will lead into the next period, the arrival of Europeans at New Haven. How different were their tools and family products from those of Native Americans, and why? A trip to the New Haven Colony Historical Society to see how the early 9 squares were laid out and to view the drawings and paintings of the terrain and uses of the Green in those early days would supplement information on geological and resource factors. Another trip, to the Pardee Morris House to see the household appliances common in the l8th century, would be useful.
Sleeping arrangements for children and smaller furniture sometimes made for them will be noted, along with the sparse storage available for clothes. This will be a good time to invite in people in our community who have mastered earlier domestic arts: spinning thread and using it to weave or knit cloth, or demonstrating the arts of quilting, butter-making, beekeeping, candle dipping, and so on. Our community has people who can perform all these “lost” arts.
Pictures and portraits can be studied for clues to relationships, cultural attitudes, children’s roles, and family power structures. The way children are dressed, posed, and what they carry gives clues for students to unravel as they piece together a background of understanding of families living before them.
Understanding community and family life would be incomplete without considering the role of religion. The three churches on the Green—at least as congregations if not buildings since the earliest of the three buildings, Center Church, dates from 1812—have a lot to offer as artifacts of colonial life. Center Church is built over the graves of some colonists, and its crypt has well-preserved stones under it. It also has monuments to the Regicides—the three judges who sentenced King Charles to death and then had to flee to the colonies when his son came to the English throne. Another monument is to Theophilus Eaton, founder of New Haven Colony. There is a Tiffany window showing the Rev. John Davenport and Eaton celebrating their landing in New Haven with prayer.
Finally, we will study the nineteenth century as an example of a culture changing because of advancing technology. New Haven became a town with less sea traffic and more industry, driven by the many inventions of the time, many of which were developed here. Tools and toys began to be manufactured in factories which adopted Eli Whitney’s pioneering manufacturing methods in his old Gun Factory which today is incorporated into the Eli Whitney Museum. Household articles became more complex, more sophisticated. A growing merchant-middle class could allow its children more play; they were not needed on farms nor in business until they were older. Of course, the children of the poor were exploited by the factories, but philosophically a change in the role of children occurred. They were no longer expected to be miniature adults, who have to be chiseled into moral beings through punishment and the constraints of adult clothing and expectations. They were increasingly regarded as essentially good in nature, until corrupted by society. They could be children and could enjoy childhood, a state which hardly existed in earlier times. School then became more important, because children’s roles in business would require it. Girls more often received formal education, and some work outside the home began to open up for women.
New Haven itself in the 19th century became more sophisticated and varied in its public and domestic architecture. Neo-classical and Georgian influences are still to be seen today in homes around our school. The Eli Whitney barn and the Eli Whitney museum are within walking distance, and we can visit the latter to learn about Whitney’s inventions and contributions to modern industrial technology. Sometimes it is possible to make wooden toys at the museum.
The colonial and early industrial ages meet in Grove Street Cemetery, where stones from the earlier days of the colony are propped along the walls, having been moved there from the Green when the churchyard of Center Church became too crowded. Many of the old
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still in readable condition, with their death’s heads, resurrection angels, and numerous epitaphs reminding us all of our mortality. Crowding around these are the less well-preserved stones of the 19th century, which have been more affected by city air population but bear the mournful but more hopeful symbols of the Romanticism current in the art and literature of that century. The gate of the cemetery, by Henry Austin, is derived from the Egyptian temple at Karnak. We will visit Grove street to see and decipher the inscriptions and collect symbols by means of rubbings, which will help students understand the differences in family life and beliefs of both centuries. We will discuss the religious ideas that lay behind the symbols, and write verses and inscriptions for our own tombstones, choosing a symbol to represent our own view of eternity.
This can be only a partial list of possible tie-ins to language arts, with opportunities for reports, diaries, role-playing skits, and special readings from the past. Copies of McGuffey Readers, which dominated school life across America for more than seventy years, with their poems, stories, homilies and information, are now in paperback. We will use excerpts from it to help us recreate a day in a 19th century schoolhouse, experiencing the activities and customs of the second half of that century.
As a culminating activity we will make a class trip to Mystic Seaport, a recreated “village” on a river which has many of the attributes of nineteenth century New Haven.
