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Exhibits |
West Africans were brought to the American colonies by the hundreds of thousands in the 1600s and 1700s. Enslaved African and African American laborers were among the earliest settlers on the colonial frontier. They cleared new land for cultivation and worked as artisans and domestic servants. The West African Farm recreates a type of home many Africans were taken from and brought to America. |
West Africans were brought to the American colonies by the hundreds of thousands in the 1600s and 1700s. Enslaved African and African American laborers were among the earliest settlers on the colonial frontier. They cleared new land for cultivation and worked as artisans and domestic servants. The West African Farm recreates a type of home many Africans were taken from and brought to America. |
West Africans were brought to the American colonies by the hundreds of thousands in the 1600s and 1700s. Enslaved African and African American laborers were among the earliest settlers on the colonial frontier. They cleared new land for cultivation and worked as artisans and domestic servants. The West African Farm recreates a type of home many Africans were taken from and brought to America. |
Most of the American colonies that became the United States were established and governed by the English in 1600s and 1700s. American descendents of English colonists often held large tracts of frontier land in the 1700s and served as leaders of newly formed county governments. The English Farm shows how many of these early colonists lived in their homeland. |
Rural blacksmiths made and repaired tools and implements for farming families in pre-industrial times. The Museum’s Irish Forge is a working example of a blacksmith shop from the 1700s. |
Protestant dissenters left the north of Ireland for the American colonies in significant numbers beginning in the early 1700s. Many of these Irish presbyterians settled the colonial frontier and in would come to be known as the Scotch-Irish. The Irish Farm represents the homes these dissenters knew before they emigrated to the American colonies. |
The colonial frontier of the 1700s was an area where people from all around the Atlantic world encountered each other, and the challenges and opportunities of the North American environment. By the 1740s settlers from Germany, Ireland, West Africa, and Americans of English descent established homesteads in the river valleys of the Appalachian Mountains. The 1740s American Farm recreates the experience of these early settlers on what some call the First Frontier. |
German-speaking immigrants from the Rhineland states of the Holy Roman Empire arrived in the American colonies in large numbers after 1720. Germans were among the earliest settlers on the colonial frontier. The German Farm is an example of the home these German-speaking colonists left behind to come to America. |
Between 1740 and 1820 the American colonies became the Untied States, and the western frontier pushed beyond the Appalachian river valleys to the Mississippi. The settlers of the new frontier were descendents of the colonial settlers, and they carried a distinctive American frontier culture with them as they moved west. The 1820s American Farm shows how the immigrant settlers of the colonial frontier became Americans and the homes the new generation of pioneers left behind. |
By the 1850s the American frontier extended south to the Rio Grande River, north to the Canadian border, and west to the Pacific Ocean. Americans were settling all across the vast territory of the United States and confronting new challenges. Many of these settlers started their journey from farms in the Appalachian valleys of the old colonial frontier and benefited from the experiences of their colonial ancestors. The 1850s American Farm is an example of the kind farm these settlers would have remembered. |