Sam Houston Memorial Museum Blog

 

History Detectives

By Derrick Birdsall, Curator of Education

If you have visited the Woodland Home at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum over the last 30 or 40 years or so, you might have noticed the two small rooms on the south porch.  In log cabin parlance, those rooms are known as shed rooms and the larger rooms called pens.   For the last few decades, those rooms have been interpreted as a bedroom on the west side and a pantry on the east side.

While the Covid pandemic has put a temporary pause to our school tour and educational programing over the past year, it has allowed our staff to have the time to conduct research into every story that we tell to the thousands of school children and adult visitors that will typically come through our doors each year.  One such letter we came across was a letter to Fannie Bush Leigh, written in 1928.  Both the author of the letter and Fannie lived in the Woodland Home for a time, after the Houstons had moved off the property and in the letter, they are recollecting their days as young ladies and what the house looked like while the Houstons lived in it.

 

From the letter itself:

 

“I wish you could see the old Houston house, as it lives in my memory…. At that time three broad steps led to the double doors opening into the entrance hall. On the left a door led to Mrs. Houston’s room; on the right was the parlor. The hall extended into a large porch. A room at the west end of their porch. On the south side of Mrs. Houston’s room, a door opened on this porch. Adjoining Mrs. Houston’s room, on the south, there was a small bedroom – her Mother’s room.”

 

Using this letter as justification, museum staff decided that we would swap the rooms out as they have been on display for quite some time and  put things more in line as they were written down, as two old friends took a walk down memory lane together.  It’s the basis of what our goals are at the museum – to interpret as accurately as we can what the house and property were like when the Houstons called Huntsville home.  It’s very much a game of being a history detective, if you will, as we try to piece together day to day life of the Houstons on their farm.

If you would like to see the new arrangement, stop by, and let us know what you think!