THEME: Ohio In The United States
Introduction: Using the vehicle of Living History interpretation, I present four different programs for Social Studies of fourth graders. My living history character named Amanda Baugh, tells stories about her life during the Civil War and historical information about life on the early Ohio frontier through the stories of her friend Mary Rhodes.
Amanda Baugh is a fictional character but by researched information could have lived during the timeline of her life. Within each program Amanda includes required social studies standards from the fourth-grade focus on the early development of Ohio and the United States.
FIRST PROGRAM TITLE: Life On The Ohio Frontier, 1768
Amanda was born and grew up in the state of Kentucky but her early years are reflected in the story of her friend Mary Rhodes. Mary’s mother Jane Ragle lived on the Ohio Frontier as a child and shared her story with her daughter. It includes information about the Indian tribes that lived in Ohio. Other facts include isolation, hunting food, trapping animals, interacting with English traders, etc. More content of this program can be acquired through email.
Standard Content Statements for this program are listed as: numbers 1, 2, and 23.
SECOND PROGRAM TITLE: Immigration Story Of Amanda’s Grandfather
Amanda shares her grandfather’s story about his coming to America in 1786 from Ireland. The story includes why he traveled to the United States and how difficult the trip was. The story moves forward in time to when Amanda was 42 years old and some distant relatives travel to America also from Ireland. She describes how they were treated and the difficulty of finding employment. She gives a few statistics about why and how many Irish immigrants came to the U.S. More information about this program can be acquired through email.
Standard Content Statements for this program are listed as: numbers 1, 2, 13, and 23.
THIRD PROGRAM TITLE: Underground Railroad
Amanda talks about working with Mary Rhodes to secretly transport runaway slaves through the town’s Underground Railroad. In this program information about the status of Ohio during the Civil War, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Bounty Hunters, and a vocabulary of words that refer to the Underground Railroad are some of the talking points covered. More information about this program can be acquired through email.
Standard Content Statements are listed as numbers 7, 15, and 18.
FOURTH PROGRAM TITLE: Daily Life In A Small Village 1862
This is the main program that I have used since becoming a living history interpreter in 2002. Amanda talks about how life is as a lodging house owner after the death of her husband five years earlier. She talks about all kinds of subjects from how to run her own business, to working with the Ladies Aid Society to help make bandages and send care packages to the ‘boys’ from her village who are volunteering to fight in the war. She informs her audience about other people who live with her in the village and about their lives. In this program everything from the main topics of history, government, and economy can be found. More information can be acquired through email.
Standard Content Statements are listed as number 10, 16, 19, 23, and 24.
Length Of Programs
I do interactive interpreting. Monologues work poorly with elementary children. Each program can vary depending on how talkative the students are and how much information they can take in. I try to keep the whole program, including questions asked at the end, to 30 minutes. If the teacher feels her or his students can handle a longer program, and they have the time in their class period, I am happy to do longer programs.
Fee For The Programs
My fee is $175.00 per program. If the schools are close by there is very little in travel costs. If my program is presented to all fourth graders I charge $10.00 more for each additional class. Keep in mind too many students at one time diminishes the quality of my programs.
My Living History Background
I was hired by the Ohio Historical Society, now called the Ohio History Connection, in 2002 to work as an interpreter in the Ohio Village along with 17 others. We were trained by professional interpreters who had spent over 35 years presenting living history to school children and adult visitors to the village.
I fell in love with bringing history to life by portraying characters from different time periods in Ohio history. Besides Amanda I portray other characters but Amanda is the one I use to teach history to school children especially third and fourth graders. I retired from the Ohio History Center in 2012 and now work on my own doing living history programs. I have spent these past years doing programs for women’s groups, DAR chapters, and local historical Societies plus Senior Retirement Communities. I would like to get back to working with children where I feel I do my best work! I cannot put in this synopsis all the information that you may want. If you are interested in my programming I would be happy to talk to you or communicate through email! To me it’s all about making history come to life for children.
Additional Programming Offered
Besides programming for children I do programming for adults. All of my characters have been used over the years with programs geared for adults. I have presented these programs to historical societies, women's organizations such as DAR and Carpe Diem clubs, and church women's groups. I will be presenting to retirement communities in the near future, Other venues are being searched for use of all of my characters.
I offer two of my characters at this time for entertainment purposes. Amanda Baugh has been used for entertaining Bank employees for their Christmas parties. She has also been used to entertain church services with her history of what it was like attending church and women's roles during the 1860's. Isabella Farnsworth has had the pleasure of entertaining the members of a board of directors when they came to the Ohio History Center to celebrate the continued display of their exhibit.
Each character continues to use historical information for whatever venue they present to. Please contact me with any questions you might have on whether these characters could be used for your group, organizations, or clubs. Follow me on Facebook where my characters share their lives through the magic of the internet.
email: dgage2@att.net
phone: (740) 601-7120