“They need to know what a wonderful place we live in”
Many people might find it a little intimidating to host nine groups of 20+ second graders at their place of ‘business’.
But, Town of Cornwall Historical Society President Susan Kamlet, with longtime Historical Society member and volunteer Jane Harkinson at her side, have been spending weekday mornings for the past few weeks doing just that. Starting on May 2, and continuing through June 4, the two are making sure all of Cornwall and Cornwall-on-Hudson’s second graders know the history of where they live.
On Thursday, May 16, it was Cornwall-on-Hudson Elementary’s second grade class taught by Tara Burke. The youngsters, carrying backpacks with their lunches in them, walked to the Historical Society (located behind Town Hall), and then spent about two hours with Kamlet and Harkinson, first, learning history in the Historical Society, then touring Town Hall.
Leading up to the visit the students — many whose families are native to the community — had worked on family trees, both at home and in their classes.
To start, once the children got settled in the front room of the Historical Society, Kamlet, a retired 33-year teacher and librarian at COH Elementary, told them what the mission of the Historical Society is — “to preserve Cornwall’s history, to educate people about that history, and to promote it; we want to tell people how wonderful Cornwall is!”.
Last week’s students completely understood what history is. Said Ethan, in answer to Kamlet’s “what is history?” question: “it’s a time like yesterday”.
“Yes!” Kamlet said. “Yesterday was history.”
A young man named Thomas told Kamlet that if you “go into your Chromebook’s history you can see things you did a long time ago”. He also was not wrong, she acknowledged.
They talked about ways to learn about history, including Kamlet’s favorite way — via books. In fact, she read to them a little bit from Making a Difference, The Story of an American Family, a 1989 book by Margaret Hodges that recounts the story of Cornwall’s Sherwood Family.
“I’m old fashioned, I like history in book form,” Kamlet told them. Later they would walk deeper into the little building and find many Cornwall High School yearbooks spread out on the table, tagged with photos of some of their family members and friends’ family members. There were also photos of relatives of some of the students — picture a very young Kurt Hahn (Cornwall’s Emergency Preparedness Coordinator) in the arms of his parents as a baby. Hahn’s daughter Michelina, was in the class.
Kamlet also showed the children many of the artifacts which the Historical Society owns, including a sampler stitched in 1820 by one Margaret Elizabeth Dubois, age 8, from Cornwall. Kamlet spoke to the students about how Dubois family had no electricity, and how Margaret did most likely not go to school … because she was a girl. The young students found that unbelievable, and asked then how she learned to write the words stitched on her sampler. “Her mother and father probably taught her,” Kamlet said, when she wasn’t busy helping with cooking meals, sewing clothes and other chores.
“She didn’t have any devices to play on, like children today do,” Kamlet said, “sewing was her play.”
Back to those family trees the students had made in preparation for their visit, Kamlet held up a large poster of what she called “Cornwall’s pizza”. It was a pie divided into four sections, with each section representing the people who live in Cornwall. One section is called ‘First Families’, and that is families who can trace their roots way back in town. The next is called ‘Incoming’ — “I’m in this one,” she said, “I’ve only been here 54 years.” The third is ‘Returning’ and is made up of people who grew up in Cornwall, left, and then eventually returned. The fourth group, she said are the ‘Seasonal’ folks — people who reside in the community just part of the year.
After about 45 minutes the class split in half, with Harkinson taking a group to Town Hall, while the remainder explored the Historical Society.
In Town Hall, the students met with Town Clerk Jenn McCormick, among others, and explored the various displays and records in that building which relate to Cornwall’s History. They learned, for instance, that Town Hall once was a school for boys, and looked at town and village maps which document which of the buildings in the two communities are registered as ‘Historical’.
