Tea at Trianon: Beneath an Old Fireplace

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Beneath an Old Fireplace

From Atlas Obscura:

IN HER 1931 DOCUMENTATION OF African-American spiritual practices, author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurtson wrote about Hoodoo, a set of traditions created by enslaved Africans in North America, with roots in indigenous West African religion. These practices were fundamental to the way the enslaved people defined their relationship to the world, to life, to death, and to each other. In the late 1980s, archaeologists began to make connections between these traditions and some of the material evidence they were uncovering at former plantation sites. From the discovery of crystals and other objects during 1986 and 1991 excavations at the Mont Clare Mansion in Baltimore, to the bundle of objects unearthed beneath a street in Annapolis in 2008, these artifacts can paint a clearer, more nuanced picture of the lives of enslaved people.

Recently, Maryland, the site of those other finds, has continued to produce such historical insights. In August 2022, a team of archaeologists led by Julie Schablitsky, chief of cultural resources at the Maryland Department of Transportation, discovered another spiritual cache at the Thompson Farm, the birthplace of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, in Dorchester County. This latest discovery, along with the foundations of a home, provide a window into the complex spiritual lives of the 40 or so people enslaved at Anthony Thompson’s plantation, and a new perspective on where the famed Underground Railroad activist was raised.

Since fall 2020, Schablitsky and her team have been excavating public and private property that was once part of the farm. Their first discovery was the home of Ben Ross, Tubman’s father. On the land that is now part of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, they also found artifacts dating back to the 1800s, including nails, bricks, and dish fragments. (Read more.)