Historic house museums can connect their physical spaces with personal experiences, including grief.
This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s May/June 2024 issue, a benefit of AAM membership.
Historic house museums often focus on the experiences, routines, and challenges of the individuals and families who once lived there. However, few spaces are devoted to the most universal human experience—grief. Everyone at some point in their life will experience this emotion, which is not restricted by gender, ethnicity, or class.
Museum visitors expect to confront this feeling when they go to institutions such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and 9/11 Memorial and Museum. But understandably, most historic houses tend to emphasize the positive aspects of people’s lives, showcasing accomplishments, watershed events, and entertaining stories. Visitors like uplifting and inspiring narratives, and, frankly, celebrating is a lot more fun than mourning.
For both of us, after experiencing the devastating loss of a child, the stories of infant mortality and family separations at our respective historic sites—President Lincoln’s Cottage (where Callie Hawkins works) and Tudor Place Historic House & Garden (where Rob DeHart is employed), both in Washington, DC—took on new meaning. Viewing these stories through the lens of grief, it becomes evident that they were significant life events warranting more attention. Parents who lose children experience a trauma from which they never recover. We felt compelled to consider how our respective historic sites could create fuller and more nuanced portrayals of past lives by exploring the mental toll caused by grief. We also wondered how these stories could aid visitors with their own grief journeys, and how our institutions could become spaces for reflection and remembrance.
As a result of our efforts, our institutions have given grief research and interpretation a more prevalent role in their missions. These efforts demonstrate how incorporating the shared experience of grief into historic site interpretation can contribute to greater visitor engagement and healthier communities.
Grief and Love at President Lincoln’s Cottage
In June of 1862, Abraham and Mary Lincoln departed the White House for a hilltop cottage located approximately 3 miles from the White House. The Civil War was raging, and the family was desperate for a bit of quiet following the recent death of their beloved son, Willie. Willie was their second son to die from an illness in childhood—a death that rocked them to their core. Writing to a friend, Mary Lincoln said, “When we’re in sorrow, quiet is very necessary to us.”
Their impetus for moving to the cottage had been part of our tours since the cottage opened to the public in 2008, so “Reflections on Grief and Child Loss”—a special exhibition that opened in 2021—wasn’t a departure for our team. However, our initial approach focused more on Willie’s death as a circumstance that led them to this place rather than a turning point for the family. We were failing to understand grief as a universal human emotion that every visitor who walks through our doors will experience if they love and live long enough.
In February 2018—on Abraham Lincoln’s 209th birthday—my beloved first child died. I was immediately struck by the invisible string connecting me to the Lincolns in grief and love for my precious son. Present also was the deep suspicion that society’s understanding of grief had evolved little since Mrs. Lincoln’s time and that my own future depended on strong social and support networks that she didn’t have.
At the outset of our project, we aimed to support grievers by linking modern grieving families to each other, to the Lincolns, and to the cottage. To do this, we started with history to build an understanding of Abraham and Mary Lincoln as bereaved parents. Through their correspondence with friends and loved ones, we identified universal facets of grief—such as memories, expectations, and places that hold meaning—and built reflection questions around them.
We asked nine modern families who have lost children to reflect on those questions, and the exhibition weaves their responses with the Lincolns’. By connecting the Lincolns’ experience to those of contemporary families whose children died inexplicably or because of illness, violence, and other tragic circumstances, we found commonalities and meaningful differences across time. And, while each experience represented in the exhibition is unique, these families are connected to each other, the Lincolns, and other bereaved families in their grief and their love for their children who have died.
Because grief is universal, the cottage team hoped the exhibition would be meaningful to the tens of thousands of visitors who come to the cottage annually. And we hoped that it might cultivate a new audience of bereaved people who have limited opportunities to share their experiences publicly in a society that is so grief averse.
Visitors not directly impacted by child death report that the exhibition’s message is incredibly instructive for all types of grief and grievers, specifically noting the efficacy of take-away cards that provide suggestions on how to best support grieving loved ones. One mother who shared her reflections on grief as part of the exhibition explained the importance of participating in this project: “When your child dies, you get no more moments where accomplishments are celebrated, or milestones achieved. With [my son] being part of this, I get to feel proud that he has a chance to make an impact, bring awareness, and potentially create change. …”
To our great honor, bereaved parents, many of whom have traveled great distances to visit the exhibition, have chosen to spend the anniversary of their child’s death or their birthday at the cottage, memorializing them on a vellum leaf that hangs on a large weeping willow at the center of the exhibition. As the tree fills up, the cottage team transcribes the messages from each leaf onto seed paper and ultimately will plant a grief garden on the cottage grounds.
We believe strongly that understanding the depth of the Lincolns’ loss is crucial to helping our visitors understand the events that shaped them both into the people we remember today. With this exhibition, the cottage is holding space for the bereaved, just as it did for the Lincolns more than 150 years ago.
Restoring Grieving Parents at Tudor Place
Tudor Place Historic House & Garden preserves the stories of six generations of descendants of Martha Washington—the Peter family—and the enslaved and free people who lived and worked at this Georgetown landmark for nearly two centuries. Similar to other historic house museums of its time, the collection contains Victorian mourning jewelry, ephemera, and attire, and Tudor Place interpreted mourning traditions and funeral practices through the program “Death Comes to Tudor Place.”
Following the death of my daughter in 2022, I felt more acutely the personal tragedies represented by these artifacts. Inspired by the work of Lincoln’s Cottage, I sought ways to tell these stories more empathetically. These efforts made me deeply aware of what was absent.
The Peter family enslaved hundreds of individuals, and the site had never addressed the grief of enslaved parents who experienced child loss. Not only was infant mortality higher among enslaved mothers, partly due to having to work through pregnancies, but separation through sale was often the same as death because parents and children were rarely reunited. In these instances, there were no mourning brooches or memorial booklets to interpret. We had to find other means to restore this history to honor their grief.
For example, an enslaved woman at Tudor Place named Barbara Cole Williams gave birth to twins Barbary and Hannah in 1829. Barbary died shortly after birth, while Hannah survived. Most of Barbara’s family lived away from her on a Maryland plantation. Did she have to suffer the loss of her child without family support? Did her enslavers give her time to grieve? Without answers, we posed these questions to visitors.
We also turned to other sources to fill in gaps. In Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave (published in 1853), the author recorded the story of a mother named Emily whose two small children were sold away from her. He described her as “inconsolable.” One way she coped was by continuing to speak to her absent children as if they were still with her. We used this grief story to conjecture the emotions Barbara Cole Williams felt.
A greater sensitivity to the trauma associated with grief revealed new insights into old records at Tudor Place. A ledger entry in the site’s archives from November 1796 notes the sale of parents Bob and Sall (surname was not recorded) and their children George and Ned. In the entry, Sall is labeled as “invalid,” and George is listed as “insane.” Looking back in time, we were able to assemble a potential explanation for these identifiers. Two of the couple’s young daughters, Else and Kate, had been sold to another enslaver four months prior. As early as 1782, no member of this family was described in this manner. It is probable that Sall and George could not cope with the loss of Else and Kate. Instead of using the word “grief,” their enslaver used “insane,” much in the way it was applied to Mary Lincoln decades later. This story helped us discuss with visitors the stigma that was, and still is in some cases, attached to grief.
Another helpful resource for grief stories is cemeteries, but enslavers rarely recorded the final resting places of enslaved individuals. In addition, Black cemeteries, or Black sections of white cemeteries, were often neglected when African American communities were forced to move, often due to gentrification. As a result, many historic sites with a history of slavery possess scant resources on these burials.
Tudor Place is fortunate to collaborate with a historic Black cemetery located a few blocks from the site called Mount Zion/Female Union Band Society Cemetery. Developers would have erased Mount Zion from the landscape if not for the efforts of the nonprofit Black Georgetown Foundation. At least one person enslaved at Tudor Place, Barbara Cole Williams, is interred there.
In the “Death Comes to Tudor Place” program, we highlighted a tradition with African roots that persisted in Black cemeteries in the US—the leaving of personal and tribute items, such as favorite dishes, cups, toys, and seashells, on the grave of the deceased. An example at Mount Zion is the grave of a 7-year-old girl named Nannie who died in 1856. For decades, contemporary cemetery visitors have revived this tradition at Nannie’s grave, regularly depositing toys near her tombstone. Tudor Place displayed an image of the gravestone to illustrate this practice, and visitors were encouraged to visit the cemetery.
In tracing the narratives of grief within the walls of historic house museums, we not only illuminate the profound personal experiences of those who lived within them but also reveal the universal threads that bind us all. Through our efforts at President Lincoln’s Cottage and Tudor Place Historic House & Garden, we have sought to honor the depths of human emotion, acknowledging grief as an intrinsic part of the human experience. By embracing these stories, we invite visitors to connect with the past on an empathetic level, fostering understanding, healing, and compassion. As we continue to explore the intricate tapestry of history, our shared experiences of grief can serve as a bridge, connecting us across time, culture, and circumstance, ultimately building a more empathetic and just society.
PULL QUOTE:
“Because grief is universal, the cottage team hoped the exhibition would be meaningful to the tens of thousands of visitors who come to
the cottage annually.”