Sitting on the Front Steps of Stephen Foster's House
Time travel isn’t limited to fantasy books and movies. There’s a real place in Dearborn, Michigan dedicated to traveling through history.
Greenfield Village.
Yes, I know there’s an indoor museum, too, the Henry Ford Museum, and when I was young, for special treats, Mom and Dad took our family to one or the other. (For an indoor historical museum, though, we preferred the one in Detroit across from the Art Institute. “Oh, good, we’re going to the Detroit Hysterical Museum!” we’d holler, on those outings.)
At the Henry Ford Museum, we climbed into enormous trains, saw rooms of inventions that improved over time, and walked down the hushed hallways admiring another way of life, but we kids danced in excitement whenever we went to Greenfield Village.
What genius to create a town with roads, sidewalks, trees, farms, and a town center filled with actual homes, shops, mills, and factories of historical places. Slave cabins, the Wright Brothers’ cycle shop. A covered bridge, bandstand, and windmill. The Edison homestead. One-room cabin schoolhouse. Town hall. Jewelry and general stores. Tintype studio, chapel, post office. Sawmill. Pottery shop.
We were fascinated by the Cotswold Cottage, the oldest building in Greenfield Village, with beautiful flowers around the house, originally built in 1619 in the Cotsold Hills of southwest England. The grass and garden, yellow-brown stone, gables and steep roof drew us inside, to be silenced by the dark interior, wood beams, and musty atmosphere.
Henry Ford bought Rose Cottage in 1930 for $5,000, dismantled, and shipped it. He also bought the barn and stable, originally used for storing and threshing grain, and housing a cow or ox.
And that’s only one of the marvels offered. We walked through history, entered houses and imagined life there, and were silenced by seeing the beginnings of inventions we now consider commonplace and necessary.
We were also drawn to the stunning carousel, built around 1913, with its brighty-colored, hand-carved zebras, dogs, goats, storks, horses, and frog. It was used in Spokane, Washington from 1923 to 1961. I remember riding on it. (Although carousel and merry-go-round are interchangeable, we were taught that carousels turned counter-clockwise.)
The working farms were alluring. Children don’t see hours of labor and weather-dependent success, but animals and barns and farmhouses. I used to announce that, when I grew up, I intended to marry a farmer and have ten children!
We crowded into the town center and waited for the moving figures (Gog and Magog, and two golden angels) of the Sir John Bennett tower clock to hit the bells on the hour. We thought the clock tower enormous, but when it was built in London in 1730 at the top of a five-story building, spectators must have been awestruck.
As an adult, I preferred to walk along the shady streets of old homes—where Robert Frost wrote in the 1920’s, Noah Webster’s house during the publication of his dictionary, Luther Burbank’s birthplace, the farmhouse of Thomas Edison’s grandparents, the frame houses with sidewalks and porches that invited visitors.
Some we were able to enter on a Christmas tour, with a stop at the Eagle Tavern for hot cider. Memorable.
Yet my personal favorite was Stephen Foster’s house, believed to be his birthplace, moved from Pennsylvania. I’m drawn to his sad life and brilliant musical talent for capturing a time in American history, as well as popular tunes our children still sing. “Camptown ladies sing this song, doo dah, doo dah…” Oh, Susanna, Old Folks at Home (Suwanee River), My Old Kentucky Home.
For me, though, he lives in his sad love ballads. Beautiful Dreamer, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair, and my favorite, Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway. When he died at 37, alone, his wallet held 37 cents and a scrap of paper that read, “Dear friends and gentle hearts.”
At Greenfield Village, I walked around his house, peered into the windows and stared at the piano in the parlor with sheet music, waiting for him to come home and play. Or compose.
When I think of Greenfield Village, I can go back in time to my memories of seeing homes and mills and shops, industry, wealth, genius, and poverty—all real moments in history, captured by the buildings where people lived, worked, created, traded.
But my memory always ends with me sitting on the steps of Stephen Foster’s house, waiting for him to come home. I’d have so much to tell him about the effect his music has on history, on our nation, on me.
Ah! May the red rose live always
To smile upon earth and sky.
Why should the beautiful ever weep?
Why should the beautiful die?
Greenfield Village.
Yes, I know there’s an indoor museum, too, the Henry Ford Museum, and when I was young, for special treats, Mom and Dad took our family to one or the other. (For an indoor historical museum, though, we preferred the one in Detroit across from the Art Institute. “Oh, good, we’re going to the Detroit Hysterical Museum!” we’d holler, on those outings.)
At the Henry Ford Museum, we climbed into enormous trains, saw rooms of inventions that improved over time, and walked down the hushed hallways admiring another way of life, but we kids danced in excitement whenever we went to Greenfield Village.
What genius to create a town with roads, sidewalks, trees, farms, and a town center filled with actual homes, shops, mills, and factories of historical places. Slave cabins, the Wright Brothers’ cycle shop. A covered bridge, bandstand, and windmill. The Edison homestead. One-room cabin schoolhouse. Town hall. Jewelry and general stores. Tintype studio, chapel, post office. Sawmill. Pottery shop.
We were fascinated by the Cotswold Cottage, the oldest building in Greenfield Village, with beautiful flowers around the house, originally built in 1619 in the Cotsold Hills of southwest England. The grass and garden, yellow-brown stone, gables and steep roof drew us inside, to be silenced by the dark interior, wood beams, and musty atmosphere.
Henry Ford bought Rose Cottage in 1930 for $5,000, dismantled, and shipped it. He also bought the barn and stable, originally used for storing and threshing grain, and housing a cow or ox.
And that’s only one of the marvels offered. We walked through history, entered houses and imagined life there, and were silenced by seeing the beginnings of inventions we now consider commonplace and necessary.
We were also drawn to the stunning carousel, built around 1913, with its brighty-colored, hand-carved zebras, dogs, goats, storks, horses, and frog. It was used in Spokane, Washington from 1923 to 1961. I remember riding on it. (Although carousel and merry-go-round are interchangeable, we were taught that carousels turned counter-clockwise.)
The working farms were alluring. Children don’t see hours of labor and weather-dependent success, but animals and barns and farmhouses. I used to announce that, when I grew up, I intended to marry a farmer and have ten children!
We crowded into the town center and waited for the moving figures (Gog and Magog, and two golden angels) of the Sir John Bennett tower clock to hit the bells on the hour. We thought the clock tower enormous, but when it was built in London in 1730 at the top of a five-story building, spectators must have been awestruck.
As an adult, I preferred to walk along the shady streets of old homes—where Robert Frost wrote in the 1920’s, Noah Webster’s house during the publication of his dictionary, Luther Burbank’s birthplace, the farmhouse of Thomas Edison’s grandparents, the frame houses with sidewalks and porches that invited visitors.
Some we were able to enter on a Christmas tour, with a stop at the Eagle Tavern for hot cider. Memorable.
Yet my personal favorite was Stephen Foster’s house, believed to be his birthplace, moved from Pennsylvania. I’m drawn to his sad life and brilliant musical talent for capturing a time in American history, as well as popular tunes our children still sing. “Camptown ladies sing this song, doo dah, doo dah…” Oh, Susanna, Old Folks at Home (Suwanee River), My Old Kentucky Home.
For me, though, he lives in his sad love ballads. Beautiful Dreamer, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair, and my favorite, Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway. When he died at 37, alone, his wallet held 37 cents and a scrap of paper that read, “Dear friends and gentle hearts.”
At Greenfield Village, I walked around his house, peered into the windows and stared at the piano in the parlor with sheet music, waiting for him to come home and play. Or compose.
When I think of Greenfield Village, I can go back in time to my memories of seeing homes and mills and shops, industry, wealth, genius, and poverty—all real moments in history, captured by the buildings where people lived, worked, created, traded.
But my memory always ends with me sitting on the steps of Stephen Foster’s house, waiting for him to come home. I’d have so much to tell him about the effect his music has on history, on our nation, on me.
Ah! May the red rose live always
To smile upon earth and sky.
Why should the beautiful ever weep?
Why should the beautiful die?
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