Tuesday, May 15th
The day started at 9am at Dewee's Tavern, one of the historic buildings within Trappe that I, and my fellow interns, will be working at. Expectedly, we were first given a quick tour of the tavern and shown the different areas in which we would work. Once we were provided with the long task list, the other intern and I headed to a second Trappe historic building, The Speaker's House, of which I had worked at previously (the summers of 2015 and 2016 for the archaeological field school). There, we worked alongside a head volunteer and board member in clearing the second floor rooms in preparation for the field school (to be held in June). Once various boxes and items were properly stored, we swept the upstairs and main level rooms, as there was a lot of construction remnants as well as walnuts brought in during the winter by squirrels. At the end of the day, we were given a tour of the third Trappe historic building of which we would be working at, Henry Muhlenberg's house (and carriage house and gift shop), and then another tour of Dewee's Tavern. Obviously, this day was used to gain an understanding of what the internship would be like, with some physical labor.
Hours: 9:00am to 5:00pm
Overall Working Hours: 8 hours
Wednesday, May 16th
Today we spent most of our time at the Henry Muhlenberg carriage house. There, we were primarily organizing the left side of the building. This consisted of removing any items that were deemed trash, moving large artifacts and boxes of smaller artifacts to the right side of the building, rehousing modern tools/nails/paints/wood, and making a pile of usable archaeology equipment that is to be brought to The Speaker's house for the field school. That was a lot of work to get done, especially as the left side of the carriage house was unable to be entered previously. I really wish I had taken a picture of what it had looked like before we started tackling its contents, but that's something I can remember to do from this point on. Anyway, now this side of the building is able to be navigated, and quite easily. The only things still in the way are objects we do not know whether to keep or throw out. Then, after lunch, we started re-bagging the artifacts that were moved to the right side of the carriage house in order to make more room for when we start organizing that side of the building. Because there were no details about where these artifacts came from exactly, we labeled them according to their location within the left side of the carriage house. Once we ran out of bags, we went to Dewee's and created a pile containing unwanted book sale books that had been previously left within the building. Finally, we brought some empty artifact boxes and more bags to the Henry Muhlenberg carriage house so that we can continue our work tomorrow.
Hours: 9:00am to 4:15pm
Overall Working Hours: 7 hours 15 minutes
Thursday, May 17th
So today was a whirlwind of a day. We first continued working on the Henry Muhlenberg carriage house, but as we mostly finished the left side, we started working on the right. This consisted of moving around some of the bigger items lined in the back of the room and, more so, dealing with the artifacts found by within the left side of the carriage house in order to make more room. There starts the whirlwind. We ended up boxing the rebagged artifacts, and brought them to Dewee's tavern, where they will be stored, and when we brought them there, another board member was a little surprised by what we were doing, and because of that, I kind of was working at communication liaison. That kind of threw me for a loop, and for the rest of the day, we did not continue working on the carriage house. Instead, we collected garbage from the attic area, separated pictureless frames, moved unused chairs into the designated archaeology storage room, and checked if the various books held in the archive had online equivalents. As well, we spent some time going through the book sale books we collected yesterday, and happily, I received a boxful of free books, so that was a win!
(Still forgot to take before pictures of our work because I suck.)
Hours: 9:00am to 4:45pm
Overall Working Hours: 7 hours 45 minutes
Friday, May 18th
Because of yesterday's issues, today we spent nearly the whole day painting (priming) wooden picket fences. Yes, I do it all; anything you ask, I shall do. (Don't mean to sound sassy or offput or anything, I actually enjoyed painting; it's much better than dealing with garbage and spiders...) After that was done, we vacuumed, swiffered, and just generally cleaned the visitor center and Dewee's. No artifact or archive work today. Although I will say we received an impromptu informal lecture about architectural artifacts, think nails and reused wood from the house structure, which was very interesting (that is not sarcasm, seriously, it was actually really cool to learn, especially as the two 'lecturers' were genuinely excited about relating the information to us).
Hours: 9:00am to 4:45pm
Overall Working Hours: 7 hours 45 minutes
Saturday, May 19th
Saturdays will usually be different than the other work days. Today, we visited the Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center, a small museum with an antiques show and sale. The exhibit was interesting, it was about a German family, the Schrwenkfelders, who immigrated to the US because of religious persecution and lived in Pennsylvania. On display were some furnishings, agricultural objects, and some needlepoint samplers. While it was interesting, I felt the descriptive plaques to be a bit under-descriptive, but that might just be the nerd side of me. The antiques show was also interesting; there were a lot of cool objects and pretty quilts. Afterwards, we headed to Henry Muhlenberg's house, and were given an example tour, as one of our future Saturday jobs will be giving the tours ourselves. We then sat in the visitor's center for a bit, then went into the carriage house to continue our cleaning (today we mostly sorted out the garbage).
Hours: 9:15am to 5:30pm
Overall Working Hours: 8 hours 15 minutes