Finding ways to recreate history through the stories of women is a widespread problem among museum curators and history enthusiasts, particularly in light of how rarely women are mentioned in historical documents.<\/p>\n
With this in mind, Dollie Boyd, director of museums for Tusculum College was recently published in an online blog for the American Association of State and Local History on the topic of \u201c5 Ways to Get a Woman Out of the Kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The blog submission was requested by AASLH after Boyd presented at a summer conference for the Tennessee Association of Museums.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first came to the\u00a0Doak House Museum,\u00a0one of my first tasks was to learn the tour script. The couple who built the home in 1830 were strict Calvinist Presbyterians \u2013 Rev. Samuel Witherspoon Doak and his wife Sarah McEwen Doak,\u201d said Boyd. \u201cThe tour script covered Rev. Doak\u2019s education, teaching career, ministry, the ledgers he left behind and family folklore. Mrs. Doak was mentioned only in relationship to the 13 children she bore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boyd began to consider how to interpret the life of Mrs. Doak with a measure of fairness and to look at ways to give her equal time in the tour script.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the lack of historical data on her specifically, there were other pieces and clues in the history that we could use to find her,\u201d said Boyd.<\/p>\n