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Leading a tour in front of the cabins on site. Credit: The President James K. Polk State Historic Site.

The Many Tasks of an Intern at a Small Historic Site

By: Dominique Romero, Public History Track

A few months ago, I was sifting through the websites of various institutions in the pursuit of finding an internship that would fit my career goals. I looked through opportunities’ at large institutions, museums that had a wealth of resources, and other internships that were not in my career focus. I eventually found the President James K. Polk State Historic Site, a small museum in Pineville, North Carolina, which hosts an exhibit development internship that called to me. Given my career goals, an internship focusing on the preparation of a temporary exhibit, including research and writing the exhibit text, sounded like a dream to me. I was excited to be offered the position and I knew it would be an extraordinary educational opportunity for my career. This internship, however, has prepared me and challenged me in ways I did not expect.

My responsibilities went beyond exhibit text and research, to include visitor services and social media. While it was not what I initially expected, my various responsibilities allowed me to be involved with different areas of daily operations and to learn about how small historic sites function. The 10 hours a week that I worked on-site, across two days, focused on learning about visitor services. Having worked at a historic site in Downtown Boston in visitor services, I fully believed I was prepared enough to master visitor services at the James K Polk site quickly. This was not the case because the two sites cater to different audiences and experiences.

Leading a tour in front of the cabins on site. Credit: The President James K. Polk State Historic Site.

The experience at the James K Polk site requires more interaction between the staff and the visitor because of the guided tour component. At Polk, my role demanded immediate and consistent connection with visitors, from the moment they walked through the door when I greeted them and explained the available activities. After visitors viewed a short film on President Polk, I led them on a guided tour through the site, which I conducted every two hours. Exceptional and individualized visitor experience is a priority for this state-managed site, which includes offering multiple opportunities for learning. Learning how to lead a tour and interact with people during a tour was one of the major challenges of my internship. I arrived at Polk without prior experience or training in guiding. Over the course of the summer, I discovered that the job requires a lot of improvisation and thinking on your toes to read the impressions of the group. During this internship, I’ve gained a new skill set with creating an engaging experience for visitors and I’m excited to continue using it throughout my career.

My internship with Polk also gave me opportunities to build skills in interacting with online audiences through social media posts. The staff has been committed to expanding its social media audience for a few years now. They prepared a social media plan as a foundation for setting their goals for each social media platform and the desired online presence they seek. Site staff use a datasheet to analyze the success of posts and the number and nature of interactions on certain platforms. Their goal is to strategically use each platform to effectively reach an audience. I found it challenging to write in a voice that fits with the site and to choose an interesting topic that would entice social media users to engage with a post. The process of trial and error has given me insight into what users want to read and how to present, and crafting these posts has been a new source of learning for me.

While I dedicated 10 hours each week to crafting my visitor services skills on-site, I spent the other 10 hours of my week immersing myself in the exhibit planning process. Throughout this project, I gained knowledge in the exhibit planning process that I was looking for in an internship. At this stage of the planning process, I began by evaluating preliminary research already undertaken by the previous intern. Reviewing the information at hand, I identified areas for further research that helped form my initial exhibition outline. This outline included a general summary, main themes, influential figures to highlight, and strategies for organizing and presenting information on each panel. My work on the exhibit outline guided the draft of the exhibit text that completed my internship process.

Figure 2: Headquarters for the North Carolina Equal Suffrage Association in Raleigh, NC. Date. C.1910’s- ‘20’s. In 1894, the North Carolina Equal Suffrage Association was formed in Asheville, North Carolina to champion women’s equality and campaign for the right to vote. The NCESA did not gain political momentum until 1913, but its formation marks the beginning of the organized suffrage movement in North Carolina as the first suffrage club in the state.
Credit: Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina.

My work on this exhibition demonstrated to me the essentially collaborative nature of the exhibit planning process, at multiple levels. Early in the project, I collaborated with my supervisors to choose exhibit themes and storyline, and draft panel layouts. I reached out to higher-ups at the state level for help creating an artifact list and researching artifacts to be displayed in the exhibit. As I entered the home stretch, I worked with my supervisors on editing drafts of the exhibit text and labels, in preparation to send it on to the exhibit planning committee of state officials for approval. This aspect of the internship reinforced my own career goals and proved the many rewards of working collaboratively to create an exhibit.

My internship at the President James K Polk State Historic Site gave me insight and opportunities to learn a variety of skills necessary to practicing at a small historic site— in visitor services, guiding tours, exhibit planning, and daily operations. Performing so many tasks at a small historic site may be challenging, but it is an enriching experience that will teach you something new every day.

Scene from the NEMA tour of special collections held by the Barnum Museum, Bridgeport, CT. Courtesy of the Barnum Museum. This image may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the Barnum Museum.

NEMA at 100 – Museums on The Move Centennial Conference, 2018

February 5, 2019 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By: Kristine Malpica

At the ripe old age of 100, the New England Museum Association (NEMA) seems to be going stronger than ever. That’s my impression, based on this year’s centennial conference in Stamford, Connecticut, attended by nearly 1000 people from the northeast region. This year’s theme, Museums on The Move, offered attendees a reflective look at the history of this organization, from its humble origins as a philanthropic project begun by Delia Griffin, founder of the Boston Children’s Museum, and a handful of colleagues, to its present status as one of the nation’s leading advocacy organizations for museums (www.nemanet.org).

So, what’s changed since NEMA’s inception? This year’s conference featured for the first time TED-talk style “storytelling sessions,” presenting 20 minute case studies. Also new was the “Collections Corps” service project, organized by the Registrar and Collections Care Specialists and Conservators PAGs, which assisted Connecticut’s Shelton Historical Society with a collections project.

NEMA at 100 featured some new and unique presenters, too. Instead of the usual keynote address by a single individual, several speakers, representing a cross-section of disciplines and fields offered short reflections on a wide range of topics including “Art as Healing,” “Museums and Civic Dialogue,” “Diversity, Youth and Museums,” and “The Future of History.” These talks culminated in a multi-media performance by Kledia Spiro, who recounted her compelling personal and professional journey from war-torn Albania to becoming a competitive powerlifter and now an emerging professional at the Fitchburg Art Museum. Her performance was anything but traditional!

So, what did I learn at NEMA? One of the biggest challenges at any conference is choosing what to attend. The NEMA conference offers many sessions specifically focused on career development, especially for emerging professionals. At the informal Independent Museum Professionals Affinity Group for established and emerging professionals, I learned about the challenges faced by independent museum contractors, including how to create an equitable project budget and fair price for contract labor. Uncovering Your Inner Compass, an interactive workshop focusing on discovering core values that help navigate our paths with purpose, took a more personal approach to career planning. This provided an opportunity to reexamine my motivations and core beliefs, as they relate to my academic and career goals. In a Career Conversation with Larry Yerdon, Executive Director of Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth NH shared his specific career path through a variety of cultural organizations. This helped me to better understand the real life journey of a museum executive, serving as a useful professional model. At the Newcomer’s Reception, a mix and mingle of young and emerging museum professionals, I met students and museum staff, with whom I discussed academic and career-related topics of mutual interest.

NEMA at 100 also offered opportunities for guided experiences at local museums. Bridgeport’s P.T. Barnum Museum staff led a group tour of the exhibit The Real Deal: P.T. Barnum’s Legacy in Bridgeport. The exhibition revealed Barnum’s entrepreneurial career as an innovative museum proprietor and visionary big top circus promoter, who exhibited and represented some of the most fantastical and novel objects and people. However, we also learned that Barnum was not just an exploitive capitalist; he was also a progressive politician and ardent supporter of abolition and women’s rights, who worked for social change. Our visit included a special hardhat tour of the building badly damaged by a tornado, leading to an in depth discussion of the challenges of natural disaster planning and recovery for museums. We were also treated to a behind the scenes visit to the archives and collections, where the curator showed us a range of artifacts not on view to the public.

Full-color poster, “Scenes from a Long and Busy Life,” featuring a portrait of P. T. Barnum, surrounded by vignettes illustrating highlights of his life and career. Ca. 1881. Courtesy of the Barnum Museum. This image may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the Barnum Museum.

Perhaps most importantly, I learned about recent community engagement and cultural preservation efforts in the museum community. The session Museums in Puerto Rico, focused on Hurricane Maria’s devastating impact on museums and socio-cultural institutions across the island in 2017. The panel was moderated by museum professionals working in Puerto Rico and the mainland at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico; Harvard Puerto Rico Winter Institute; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, and Boston Children’s Museum. This session presented current museum outreach and community engagement projects, post-hurricane recovery efforts by museums and their role in preserving cultural resources and identity.

Professor Pedro Reina-Perez, professor of history at the University of Puerto Rico San Juan and the Harvard Puerto Rico Winter Institute, warned of the startling possibility that much of the island’s cultural patrimony could be lost, through a combination of natural disaster and the auction of university and museum collections to repay debts. He spoke about the importance of culture– “Culture equals identity. For colonial people culture is the most important thing.” This stark reality check was by far the most impactful moment of my NEMA experience. It also prompted me to speak with Professor Perez about ways that students and museum professionals might provide assistance or support to universities or cultural institutions on the island, and closer to home. As a father of a current UMass Boston undergrad, he was eager to engage in further discussion of how history students might help. I look forward to continuing this dialogue and hopefully connecting our communities in creative and compassionate ways.

So, why should you go to NEMA? It’s a great opportunity to meet and engage with new and seasoned museum and history enthusiasts from around New England, share your stories and experiences and learn from others as a student and emerging professional.

There are also a number of sources which can fund your NEMA conference professional development. For more information about NEMA scholarships: https://www.nemanet.org/conference-events/conference/2018-nema-conference/scholarships/.

I would like to thank the Graduate Student Assembly for funding my NEMA conference. For more information: https://gsaumb.wordpress.com/programs-and-grants/professional-development-grant-pdg/

Sign, Adams National Historical Park. Image is in the public domain.

Presidential Predicament: Developing a Self-Guided Tour at the Adams National Historical Park

November 12, 2018 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By: Kurt Deion

When I first toured the Adams National Historical Park as an eight-year-old in 2003, it never crossed my mind that someday I would have the opportunity to help reshape the visitor experience there. Fifteen years later, that is what I am doing as a project intern.

The John Adams Birthplace Home. A panel-based, self-guided tour here will partially focus on John Adams’s transition from student to attorney and his early romance with Abigail Smith. (Courtesy of Kurt Deion, 2011).

Under the auspices of the National Park Service, the Adams National Historical Park maintains several buildings related to the politically-prominent Adams family, which are spread throughout Quincy, Massachusetts. These include the side-by-side saltbox birth homes of John and John Quincy Adams, the second and sixth presidents of the United States. The elder statesman spent his childhood at a plain, wooden structure on his parents’ farm at Penn’s Hill, and in his adulthood he moved to the neighboring house, where his son was born in 1767. This second home was where he established his burgeoning law practice, and where matriarch Abigail Adams raised their children alone when her husband was away supporting the American Revolution.

The John Quincy Adams Birthplace Home. Here, the tour will feature additional aspects of John Adams’ law career and his role in drafting the Massachusetts Constitution. (Courtesy of Kurt Deion, 2011).

The Adamses uprooted from the Penn’s Hill farm in the 1780s and moved a few miles north to a residence that became known as Peace field. Naturally their belongings followed them, and short of disturbing the interior of the Peace field estate, in modern day the NPS is faced with a dearth of original furnishings to display at the birthplaces. At present, however, the ANHP is in the process of rethinking its historical narrative; in this context, the lack of artifacts at the saltbox homes creates an opportunity to refocus on the lives of the family members, such as John and Abigail. My internship responsibilities include identifying and prioritizing the stories that should be told at the birthplaces, via a self-guided tour.

John Adams. Portrait by Gilbert Stuart.

Before I arrived at the ANHP, my supervisor had already outlined some general areas she wished me to investigate, such as John’s law career and his early romance with Abigail. Yet I was given much freedom within those parameters to prioritize particular stories at the birthplaces. In addition, because the Adamses were prolific writers, I had many primary sources as the foundation for content, for they left behind thousands of documents in the form of letters and diaries. And finally, the ANHP’s draft Visitor Experience Plan outlines their priority to implement the principles of inclusive history, which I learned about in the UMass Boston History MA program. My education at the university has emphasized the need to tell the accounts of groups marginalized by those in positions of power, which in the United States has historically been white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men. In my role at the ANHP, I must determine what stories are important that can also resonate with modern audiences regardless of age, race, and gender.

Abigail Adams. Portrait by Gilbert Stuart.

The correspondence exchanged between John and Abigail during their courtship and early marriage paint a picture of their thoughts as a young couple in 18^th century Massachusetts. These letters also provide a good basis for any future research focused on Abigail’s maintenance of the farm in John’s absence, and her personal philosophies. I struggled more with discerning which of John Adams’s court cases to include in the tour. As I read through his annotated legal papers at the Boston Public Library, I found many of the lawsuits to be archaic and inaccessible in the 21^st century. Some, however, revealed much about John Adams’s thinking about rights. In King v. Stewart, for example, Adams represented a loyalist whose home was ransacked in part because of his prospects as a Stamp Act collector. Adams also defended the British soldiers implicated in the Boston Massacre. These cases demonstrate Adams’s belief in the right to a fair trial and representation, even for those whose political allegiance differed from his own.

It was very rewarding to find those cases that resonate with current issues and principles of law. In Sewall v. Hancock, John Hancock was tried for smuggling in Admiralty Court, which deprived him of a right to a trial by jury. As his attorney, John Adams argued that British Parliament was depriving American colonists of a right granted to their brethren across the Atlantic. This allowed me to draw a line from John’s experience as an attorney, to his resentment for the British Crown at the dawn of the Revolution, and also to his draft of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1779. When he drafted the document in his law office, it included the right to trial by jury. This and other protections, such as freedom of the press and prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments, were subsequently included in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I hope that the relevance of these documents in Americans’ lives today will help illustrate the importance and influence of John’s legal work.

Digitization in progress; photograph taken during a UMass Boston field trip to the Northeast Document Conservation Center, 2016

10 Tips for the Student Digitizer

October 23, 2018 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By: Madeline Moison

Madeline Moison (Archives Track, '19) spearheaded a digitization initiative for an archival institution in Boston during the summer of 2018. In this blog post, she shares some of what she learned with her peers at UMass Boston and beyond.

Today archival documents, images, and film are being digitized more and more for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, documents are just too fragile to be handled frequently, or they hold great value to researchers around the world, or they’re so valuable they need to be digitized to make sure a copy of the document exists somewhere. Whatever the reason for digitization, institutions often choose to hire part-time or term archival workers to carry out this work. Graduate students in archives programs, like the one at UMass Boston, might find themselves hired for this kind of work, and tasked with digitizing a collection over the course of a semester or term.

Illustration of digitization by Jørgen Stamp for https://digitalbevaring.dk/.

This can be daunting for someone who doesn’t know a thing about cameras, editing software, or image file types. It’s no substitute for training, or for reviewing relevant manuals, but here are ten tips and tricks for students approaching digitization for the first time:

(#1)

A lot can be said about the right camera for the job. Not every camera will work for digitization. Depending on what the end goal of the project is you’ll have to find the camera and editing software that works for you. But for the most part you will be shooting images in RAW. RAW is a type of file like the all familiar JPEG. JPEG won’t work for this sort of work, because the images shot in JPEG are compressed versions of what the camera “sees”. This is great for a lot of photos of your beach vacation (when you don’t care about quality as much as you care about quantity). However, when it comes to digitizing, your priorities are a little different. RAW files are uncompressed, so essentially everything the camera “sees” is saved as is. These are wildly large files– so watch out!

(#2)

Why shoot in RAW anyway? Well, because RAW images show everything the camera “sees,” they are extremely detailed. The level of detail allows you to zoom in on the image and avoid the fuzziness that can happen when you zoom in on JPEG images. The closer you can get to capturing the original document in that photo the better.

(#3)

Bring headphones! You will be left alone to your own devices for hours at a time with just the large stack of papers, photos, and books you are digitizing. I would recommend downloading a few good history podcasts or maybe a true crime one to keep you on your toes in the quiet of the archive.

Image is in the public domain.

(#4)

Back up everything! I can’t say that enough. Who do you think you are not saving anything in multiple places? Getting a portable drive can be expensive– but you can even get some 64 GB flash drives. If you’re feeling high-tech, take the two minutes to get a Drobox account to store stuff, too. A word of warning: if Terminator has taught us anything, it’s not to trust those pesky robots. So, keep a hard copy of everything you do on any type of external drive anyway. Don’t fall prey to Skynet; they want you to lose access to the precious bits of human history you’re digitizing for future generations.

(#5)

What to do with these files now that you have them? Odds are these files look rough. You’ll need to edit them. It’s not as daunting as it sounds. You can get a Photoshop monthly subscription for as little as 10 dollars a month that should cover all your needs. I won’t explain the details of Photoshop to you here, but you can watch a few YouTube tutorials and in no time, you’ll be a pro. Lightroom CC is a type of Photoshop that is extremely user friendly when it comes to photo editing and is what I would recommend starting with. The main tools you’ll probably end up using in Lightroom are clarity, dehaze, temperature, and sharpening. They all do what it sounds like they do, but temperature is a key one. Using the temperature gage, you can adjust the yellowy tint your paper documents may have picked up in non-ideal lighting situations by adding the slightest touches of blue to the image. A word of warning: don’t edit the images too much. You can end up with a much grainier version of the image than you expected.

(#6)

Have two copies at least of those RAW photos you took. You shouldn’t be editing the only copy you have.

(#7)

Pack a good lunch. You’ll work up an appetite turning pages and taking photos. There is nothing worse than a deadly quiet reading room filled only by the sounds of your angry stomach. I’d recommend a lovely quinoa salad with pickled onions with a side of strawberries and Cheeze-its.

(#8)

Now that your images are looking edited and beautiful you can convert the RAW images into a different file format. TIFF is a good bet, but it all depends on the end results you and your archive are looking for. TIFF files are a sort of in-between option of RAW and JPEG files. TIFF images are slightly compressed but still retain a lot of detail, so they’re perfect for uploading to the internet. Everyone’s computer can handle opening a large number of TIFF sized images, but if you tried to work with many RAW images things would get very slow very quickly. You can buy a RAW to Tiff converter on the internet, or you can change them in Photoshop.

Now, I bet you’re wondering why I told you to shoot in RAW if it was just going to be turned into a TIFF image anyway. Well, you can shoot images in TIFF format, but the cameras that can do that are very expensive. If you have access to one go for it, but I’m assuming you don’t have a 3,000 dollar camera lying around.

This chart, by Scott Baldwin Photography, demonstrates how digital cameras process data when saving data as Raw files vs. JEPG or TIFF.

(#9)

If you can, take the time to get to know the staff of the archive or repository you’re spending all this time in now. Odds are you’re an outside contractor doing a job funded by a grant and are new to the building. Talk about that cool new true crime podcast you just downloaded. If you already work at this place then it’s still good practice to know your coworkers, so get to it! It never hurts to network, especially if you’re going to be entering the job market soon!

(#10)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

BACK UP EVERYTHING!!

Jonathan Green delivers a talk on the compass and navigation in Milton’s history for the January 2016 Fireside Chat.

Always Night at the Museum

October 18, 2018 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By: Jonathan Green

Sign on Canton Avenue marking the location of the Suffolk Resolves House and identifying it as the headquarters for the Milton Historical Society. Photograph by Jonathan Green.

Since 2014, I have served as the resident caretaker of the Suffolk Resolves House (SRH) located in Milton, MA and curator for the Milton Historical Society (MHS). Over the past four years I have answered one question numerous times: “What is it like being the caretaker for a historic house?” Normally when I reply, I try to convey the fun and humor that I find in the position and simply say, “It is always night at the museum!” The truth, however, is a bit more complex. Serving as a resident caretaker requires constant awareness as to what is happening inside and outside the house to preserve the structure and its collections, while also ensuring that the house and grounds remain safe, functional, and attractive spaces for visitors. In applying for the position, I sought a new professional challenge, and I found exactly that.

Resident caretakers must embrace the phrase “other duties as assigned.” Initially I envisioned dedicating most of my time to collections management and interpretation. Instead, I spent the first few months getting to know the house, and occasionally its collections, by dusting, vacuuming, linseed oiling, polishing, clearing out wasp nests, and attempting to get a handle on the house’s mouse problem. Regardless of my professional interests and aspirations, the house always came first, and I had to be prepared to address problems as they developed.

Sure, it is a unique job, but serving as a resident caretaker is a lot like being a homeowner. A resident caretaker, like a homeowner, must focus on maintaining the interior and exterior of the house, as well as the objects stored inside it. Seasons and weather often dictate how and when certain things are to be done. For example, unfinished thresholds require linseed oil every other fall before cold weather sets in. Other duties like checking mouse traps and bait stations, emptying dehumidifiers—the SRH has three—and dusting and vacuuming the house and its collections occur daily, every other day, and weekly, respectively. As the phrase “spontaneous needs” suggests, this only represents a glimpse of required maintenance.

Front of the Suffolk Resolves House in August 2017. Photograph by Jonathan Green.

As with anything, however, there are exceptions; in this case two. First, the SRH serves as the MHS’s headquarters. As resident caretaker the MHS’s Board of Trustees acts as my landlord, which means they establish rules, approve expenditures, and determine when the house transitions from private residence to MHS function space. When my wife and I are away from the house longer than twenty-four hours, we have to notify the MHS board, so they can arrange to have someone check the house daily. Other rules include no pets, no children (i.e., dependents living with the caretakers), and the caretakers can only store personal belongings in the three private rooms—bedroom, den, and bathroom—and the kitchen. That adds up to just under 700 square feet- and the kitchen becomes a public space for events. Second, there is no compromise when it comes to what is best for the house and its collections. As resident caretaker my personal tastes regarding décor, ideal interior temperature, and desire (or lack thereof) to conduct maintenance do not matter. While at times the job can be demanding, it is always fun and immensely rewarding.

Emma and Jonathan Green decorating the Suffolk Resolves House in November 2014 for their first Christmas open house as resident caretakers. Photograph by Jonathan Green.

Nine months each year, my focus turns to public engagement. This happens several ways. Open houses are the most common, when we invite the public to view the house, grounds, and collections. For these events my fellow board members and I don our docent caps and field any number of questions about the house, the MHS’s collections, and Milton’s history.

For the 2017 Fireside Chats, I invited Alex Dubois, Curator for the Litchfield Historical Society, and Tom Begley, Executive Liaison for Administration, Research, & Special Projects at Plimoth Plantation, as guest lecturers. Photograph by Jonathan Green.

Fireside Chats in January and February are intimate events that welcome twenty guests to attend a lecture prepared and delivered by the curator at the SRH, complete with cozy fire and refreshments. The Fireside Chats bring together one or more objects from the MHS’s collection to tell a unique and engaging history. My favorite event, however, is the Fifth Grade Tours. In May and June, the SRH is one of several stops on tours that immerses Milton fifth-graders in the town’s historical landscape. After arriving at the SRH, fifth-graders engage in a hands-on Backyard Archaeology activity, and, without fail, these students ask stimulating questions and offer exceptional answers.

For example, when examining a lace-makers lamp we discussed how veteran lace-makers earned the right to sit at first light—right next to the lamp—while less experienced lace-makers sat further from the lamp. One student asked why the more experienced lace-makers needed to sit closer to the lamp. “Aren’t they better at it,” she asked. “So why do they need more light? Don’t the ones [lace-makers] who aren’t as good need more light?” Moments like this, when I did not have an answer, forced me to be the best educator I could by simply admitting I do not know but that I can find the answer. Public engagement like this is what sustains the MHS and is a key component of the caretaker’s responsibilities.

Collaboration. Is. Essential. In December 2014, this contractor repaired a cracked bullseye window pane in the back door of the Suffolk Resolves House. Photograph by Jonathan Green.

Collaboration is essential. My first week in the position, the MHS president asked my wife, “Are you going to be able to help Jon with all the work? There is a lot of work that goes into this and he’ll need your support.” He was absolutely right. At times, the position can be labor intensive, which is why organizations hiring for resident caretakers frequently hire a dynamic duo rather than a solo caretaker. Plus, resident caretakers cannot know it all. This is why at times I feel something like a general contractor. When the HVAC system’s coolant line malfunctioned in the middle of July, I had to coordinate repairs with the contractor and arrange to have a board member meet the technician at the house because my wife and I could not get off work. You do not have to know everything to care for a historic house, but you do need to be able to troubleshoot, locate experts, and collaborate.

Though you may be doubting it, resident caretakers do have social lives. On average I dedicate about ten hours a week to my responsibilities as caretaker and curator. Most of the duties become part of a weekly routine, so we still go out on weekends. We are even allowed use of the museum spaces to host family and friends. Fun fact: my wife threw my thirtieth birthday party at the house. Just like there is life after thirty, there is life after the duties of caretaker and curator are complete.

After four years serving as resident caretaker and curator for the MHS, there is still never a dull moment. Whether caring for the house and grounds, the diverse collections, or interacting with the public, this job has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. The beauty of the position is that it regularly puts you outside your comfort zone, forcing you to directly confront new challenges by learning, adapting, creating, and collaborating. If that does not sound cool, remember that as resident caretaker, it is always night at the museum.

Jonathan Green received his MA in history (public history track) from UMass Boston in 2016. He is currently Assistant Director of Archives and Digital Assets Manager at Stonehill College.

Public History at UMass Boston