Alexandria, VA – In 2009, Gadsby’s Tavern Museum launched its Junior Docent Program. The inaugural class had 15 students. One now works in the Alexandria Parks and Recreation Department. The program has grown to 58 students this year, allowing the junior docents to staff activity stations, including ice cream making and historic drinking chocolate. This year, we’re highlighting two stations for visitors to the museum.
Junior Docents have a brand-new Trivia Wheel Station that will test visitors’ knowledge of questions that appear on the U.S. citizenship test. The Material Culture and Clothing Station (MCC) has also been updated this year to include modern-day bed bug education (how to spot the bugs and avoid them) and how they affected the everyday lives of eighteenth and nineteenth-century people, including the travelers who stayed overnight in our two tavern buildings. The MCC was created by requests from a few Junior Docents who wanted to continue teaching and demonstrating the information they had learned from wearing the Museum’s 18th-century attire during shifts.
Until about 2019, all students in all stations of the program were given the option to wear the Museum’s period garb. Students stationed at the MCC undergo a separate intensive training to prepare them to talk about social class and the use of clothing and accessories to communicate wealth and status. This station focuses on artifacts found by archaeologists and what those objects can teach us about the past, including a new item this year—a jaw harp! This will help students discuss itinerant musicians and entertainment that was widely enjoyed by all. Jaw harps were cheap and easy to carry, so travelers of every class and background would have brought them along while visiting our town and taverns. If you have not heard this instrument, the Junior Docents can play a recording of it for you. You can guess where you may have heard it before (it is found in many cartoons and old movies, especially, and is Tigger’s bounce sound in Winnie the Pooh!).
In addition, our amazing Historic Chocolate Station has added a map to discuss trade routes of cacao and common spices used to flavor sipping chocolate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We are also grateful to Gadsby’s Tavern Museum Society for funding a paid internship for experienced Junior Docents who have risen to Peer Mentor status and are responsible for setting up and supervising the Historic Chocolate Station on our Family Day Sundays in the summer. These Head Chocolatiers get to put this on their resume as their first paid job. This new level of responsibility gives these young people a chance to gain work experience doing something they love, and it helps Museum staff have the ability to expand the program in exciting new ways.
One of the Head Chocolatiers is Patrick Ostermann-Healey. Patrick started as a Junior Docent eight years ago, following his older brother Paul, who also did the program. Patrick said, “My time in the Junior Docent program improved my public speaking and memorization skills.” Patrick has fond memories of dressing in period garb as a younger docent and continues to advocate for the activity stations to allow trained participants to wear period attire. His ability to work with younger students has translated into teaching violin to younger musicians during the week. After taking a gap year, Patrick plans to study music and environmental studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.
This year, we have a new, optional program opportunity for Junior Docent Peer Mentors at the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum! Several Peer Mentors will undergo training to serve as volunteer greeters at the Apothecary Museum while also introducing a new hands-on item that will allow them to discuss how bed bugs and other annoying insects were repelled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries using chrysanthemum-based insect powder formerly sold at the Apothecary. These fabulous new Peer Mentor Apothecary greeters will also help direct Apothecary Museum visitors to Gadsby’s Tavern Museum and encourage them to catch the Junior Docent program every Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. starting June 15 and continuing each Sunday through Aug. 31.
ICYMI: A Taste of the Past: Ice Cream History Tour Reveals Old Town Alexandria’s Hidden Gems
