Humanities scholars will use the $2,500 grant to study and appropriately present its history for public education and inclusion in Sweet Briar’s curriculum.

The former slave dwelling behind Sweet Briar House is the only one remaining of more than two dozen that once stood on the property.

The cabin is on its original site behind the former plantation house that serves as the home of the president of the College. It is the only slave dwelling remaining of more than two dozen cabins that were on the plantation property during the antebellum period.

The cabin is in excellent condition, which is unusual for slave dwellings throughout the South. Many have been allowed to decay and only a few existing cabins are open to the public. Although the Sweet Briar cabin has been in continuous use for about 170 years, much of the building is original. Visitors to the site can imagine what it would have been like to live there.

Lynn Rainville will administer the funds and oversee the project. Rainville is director of the Tusculum Institute at Sweet Briar, a community outreach program dedicated to preserving and studying historical assets locally and in the region. She says the proposed research and outcomes of the Historic Preservation Fund grant offer exactly the kind of educational opportunities Tusculum was created to provide: raising awareness of the past — the people, places and context in which events took place — with emphasis on local history.

“The survival of the cabin in close proximity to the former ‘big house’ enables visitors to understand the hidden history associated with African-American laborers, from antebellum to post-bellum times,” she says.

Writing in support of the grant proposal, Carla Whitfield, superintendent of the Booker T. Washington National Monument, noted the cabin’s history of housing both enslaved African-Americans who built the plantation and freed workers who built the College after its founding in 1901.

“Today the cabin offers numerous opportunities to explore the social and cultural history of Virginia from the mid-1800s, particularly as it relates to American slavery, and beyond,” she wrote.

For more information, contact Rainville at lrainville@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6432.

— Jennifer McManamay

Tearrance A. Chisholm visits the slave cemetery during his stay at Sweet Briar.

Endstation Theatre Company and Sweet Briar College will host a reading of “In Sweet Remembrance” by playwright Tearrance A. Chisholm at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 27, in Pannell Gallery. A reception follows the event, which is free and open to the public.

Commissioned by Endstation, Sweet Briar and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, “In Sweet Remembrance” is a tribute to the significant role of the black community throughout the College’s history. Chisholm, who lives in Washington, D.C., has spent the past four summers researching Sweet Briar’s cultural and historical importance, resulting in an original play that, according to Endstation, “explores the landscape of its past, discovers the contours of its present and realizes its future.”

A cast of actors, including Sweet Briar students and hired professionals, will perform the manuscript in its entirety for the first time on March 27. Michael Stablein Jr., who heads the company’s Playwrights Initiative, will direct the reading and also play a small role. Beginning March 10 until the end of the month, Chisholm will be in residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts to revise and complete the play. His visit will also include on-campus workshops for students at Sweet Briar.

In his writing, Chisholm explores the many faces of the African-American experience. The theme of race as a double-edged sword of advantages and shortcomings permeates all of his works, including “Burning Books” (MU New Play Series), “Liddy’s Sammiches, Potions & Baths” (Arkansas Rep; Voices on the River), “Vulpicide” (MU New Play Series) and “A Month of Sundays” (Midwinter Madness Short Play Festival; NYC). Chisholm has also been published in interJACtions: 75 Monologues by some of America’s Finest Playwrights and Arcadia Magazine.

You can learn more about the Playwrights Initiative and “In Sweet Remembrance” on Tumblr.

— Janika Carey

Sarah O’Brien ’13 catalogs old farm tools from the plantation and dairy.

Sweet Briar College’s agrarian past is the focus of the upcoming exhibition “ ‘I have lately bought me a Plantation’: A Brief Survey of Farming and Land Use at Sweet Briar,” which opens at 1 p.m. Thursday, March 21, in Whitley Gallery at Sweet Briar Museum. It will be on view through March 2014.

The result of a practicum project undertaken by senior Sarah O’Brien, the exhibition provides a brief overview of Sweet Briar’s farming history, from the days of the Fletchers, who founded the College, to the later 20th century, when the dairy was still in operation. O’Brien, a history major, says her interest in the subject was not just academic.

A milk bottle from the old dairy farm at Sweet Briar.

“I was born and raised on a farm, so I wanted to know the history of farming at Sweet Briar before it became a college,” she said, adding that it was her intention to create a narrative through which visitors can access the College’s past. The hardest part, she said, was deciding which items to include.

The final selection features an eclectic mix of artifacts, such as early 19th-century letters in which Elijah Fletcher wrote to his brother about farming; ceramic drainage tiles from the old tilled fields (courtesy of the archaeology lab); old farm tools; documents and photos related to the College’s early days farming for profit; and milk bottles, milk cans and signage from the era of the dairy.

Museum hours during the academic year are 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. For more information, contact Karol Lawson at klawson@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6248.

Author Henry Wiencek is coming to Sweet Briar. Photo by Tom Cogill.

Noted author and historian Henry Wiencek will discuss his latest book, “Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,” at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Feb 12, in the Wailes Lounge at the Elston Inn Conference Center at Sweet Briar College. A reception and book signing will follow the event, which is free and open to the public.

Drawing on evidence from archival documents at Monticello, Wiencek reveals a Thomas Jefferson most readers won’t be familiar with — one who, despite calling slavery an “abomination,” began considering slaves an excellent investment after the nation was founded. Wiencek shows that Jefferson, while continuing to speak out against it, in fact helped to modernize and expand slavery after the 1780s.

Published in October 2012, “Master of the Mountain” was featured on the covers of Smithsonian and American History magazines and has been widely acclaimed. The Washington Post deemed it a “brilliant examination of the dark side of the man who gave the world the most ringing declarations about human liberty, yet in his own life repeatedly violated the principles they expressed … Now the record has been corrected, to devastating effect.”

In her review during a recent “Fresh Air” episode on National Public Radio, Georgetown University professor Maureen Corrigan predicted that “political pundits and Jeffersonians [would] be wrestling over Wiencek’s explosive interpretations of the historical evidence … for years to come.”

Wiencek has been studying plantation families for more than two decades. He is the author of several award-winning books, including 1999’s “The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White” and 2003’s “An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America.” He holds a fellowship at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and has been awarded residential fellowships at the International Center for Jefferson Studies and the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College, where he was the inaugural Patrick Henry Writing Fellow. He lives in Charlottesville. To learn more, visit henrywiencek.wordpress.com.

The event is sponsored by the Tusculum Institute and by Sweet Briar College’s Lectures and Events Committee. For more information, contact Lynn Rainville at (434) 381-6432 or lrainville@sbc.edu.

The conference is aimed at K-12 teachers, as well as curators and docents from historical societies or museums.

The workshop will include the following sessions: “A Hands-On Approach to Interpreting Historic Architecture,” “Field Methods Guide to Interpreting Historic Places in Your Neighborhood” and “An Interdisciplinary Approach to the ‘Power of Place’.”

Speakers will include Carol Shull, chief of the National Park Service’s Heritage Education Services office and administrator of the NPS’s “Teaching with Historic Places” program and the online “Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary” series; Beth Boland, NPS historian who manages the “Teaching with Historic Places” program; Charles White, associate professor at Boston University School of Education who developed a K-12 curriculum framework for the “Teaching with Historic Places Program” for the NPS and National Trust for Historic Preservation; and Lynn Rainville, archaeologist and director of the Tusculum Institute.

Registration is free for teachers. To register, e-mail your name, school, e-mail address, phone number and grade(s) taught to Lynn Rainville, founding director of the Tusculum Institute, at lrainville@sbc.edu.

Qualified teachers are eligible for a stipend for participating and SOL-based lesson plans will be distributed to all participants.

All others should send a $25 check – made out to “Sweet Briar College” with “Teaching with Historic Places” in the memo line – to Dr. Lynn Rainville, Fletcher Hall, Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, Va. 24595. Please include your name, institutional affiliation, if any, e-mail address and phone number.

Continental breakfast and an afternoon coffee break are included with registration.

“Teaching with Historic Places” is sponsored by the Tusculum Institute and the Department of Historic Resources with support from the National Park Service. For more information, visitwww.tusculum.sbc.edu or e-mail lrainville@sbc.edu.

Formalized under a written memorandum of agreement signed by DHR Director Kathleen Kilpatrick and SBC President Elisabeth Muhlenfeld on May 30, the grant will help build the capacity of the Institute to carry out its educational and outreach mission to Central Virginia and the Sweet Briar community.

The grant will fund online material to share information about sustainable, historic preservation techniques; a conference, “Teaching with Historic Places,” to be held at Sweet Briar in 2009; and a three-dimensional architectural model of Tusculum, family home of the mother of Sweet Briar College founder Indiana Fletcher Williams and future home of the Institute.

Tusculum was once located north of Sweet Briar in New Glasgow, in what is now the community of Clifford. The 18th-century plantation house was dismantled in 2006 to make way for development and moved to a dairy barn on the Sweet Briar campus. It was later purchased by the College and awaits reconstruction as the Tusculum Institute.

At the conclusion of the acquisition process, Sweet Briar entered into a standing partnership agreement with the DHR, which subsequently established a satellite office at the College in 2007.

Under that foundational agreement, the College and DHR agreed to cooperate in nurturing the development of the Tusculum Institute and adapting Tusculum as the Institute’s new home. The new agreement and grant award are designed to strengthen that public-private partnership and carry it to a new level.

“DHR’s grant will go far to enable the Tusculum Institute in concrete and practical ways to become what it is intended to be,” Bob Carter, director of the DHR’s community services division and the agency’s on-site representative at Sweet Briar, said.

“It will help the Institute to create critically needed tools for the region and for Sweet Briar that can be replicated and used throughout Virginia and perhaps the nation. It will help the Institute to educate young people and citizens about the environmental, economic and cultural value of preserving historic buildings and historic places.”

The “Teaching with Historic Places” conference to be held at Sweet Briar will be co-sponsored by the College, DHR and the National Park Service, and will focus on encouraging educators to take their students to historic sites, including those at Sweet Briar College.

“Sweet Briar holds a wealth of opportunities, from our early twentieth-century Ralph Cram architecture to our nineteenth-century plantation complex, including an antebellum cottage and slave cabin,” Lynn Rainville, founding director of the Tusculum Institute, said.

“With the reconstruction of the Tusculum homestead we will add a unique eighteenth-century timber-frame structure to the landscape. Each of these buildings provides an opportunity to instruct students in architectural styles and the history of a place.”

Prior to her appointment in April, Rainville served as an assistant professor of anthropology and archaeology at Sweet Briar College from 2001 to 2008.

During that time, she conducted extensive research of African-American cemeteries in Amherst and Albemarle Counties, including the Sweet Briar plantation cemetery, and developed LoCo History, a Web site dedicated to preserving local history.

Also in the works is a Web site Rainville describes as an “interactive, online toolkit.” In addition to educating visitors about various aspects of historic preservation, the site will contain information about tax credits and other incentives available to people who restore old buildings and preserve the cultural landscape.

“One of Lynn Rainville’s many strengths is her facility in developing Web-based content materials and communicating effectively through the Web,” Carter said. “The whole world will benefit from Lynn and the Institute’s work through the eventual posting of all the products of this grant on the Internet.”

For DHR director Kilpatrick, who is a 1974 graduate of Sweet Briar College, the collaboration makes perfect sense. “As an alumna and as a manager of an agency, I have no doubt about the quality of our efforts going forward, because of my longstanding familiarity with Sweet Briar and its commitment to excellence,” she said.

“This is a no-brainer. We have a common purpose and vision and the opportunity to really do some good here for the community and the region and the Commonwealth and beyond.”

For more information, visit the Tusculum Institute’s Web site.

LoCo stands for “local county,” Rainville said, and “emphasizes the fact that local lore and community knowledge contributes to our understanding of American history.”

Created in February 2007, LoCo History originally focused on Albemarle County history. The new site is dedicated to the history of Amherst County and includes blog posts, “Gravestone of the Week,” activities for kids and links to local resources, such as the Amherst County Museum and Historical Society and genealogy Web sites.

Soon, it also will include virtual tours of homes, monuments, neighborhoods and other things that prove, as Rainville puts it, “Amherst’s rich history is not dead and buried.”

Rainville hopes the informal blog format will encourage residents to contribute their own remembrances and photos of history sites. All posts will be open to comments from the community. Individuals interested in contributing short summaries of historic happenings in Amherst should contact her at lynn@locohistory.org.

The 2008 theme for Preservation Month, which was launched four years ago by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is celebrated in May, is “This Place Matters.” For more information, visit the National Trust’s Web site.

Her official title will be research professor in the humanities, and the position is effective July 1.

The Tusculum Institute will be born from the reconstruction of Tusculum, an 18th-century plantation that was the family home of Maria Antoinette Crawford, mother of SBC founder Indiana Fletcher Williams.

Sweet Briar became interested in acquiring Tusculum in 2003. Formerly situated a few miles north of the College in Amherst County, the home was to be demolished to make way for new construction.

In 2006, the wooden structure was dismantled by restoration experts and moved to storage to await reconstruction on Sweet Briar’s campus. It was officially purchased by the College a year later.

Around the same time, Sweet Briar also entered into a partnership with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which subsequently established a satellite office at the College.

The VDHR will assist in the rebuilding of Tusculum and will help the College to develop the Tusculum Institute as an educational resource for both Sweet Briar and the surrounding communities.

Rainville will serve a one-year term as founding director of the institute, reporting directly to College president Elisabeth Muhlenfeld.

According to a statement released by the president’s office, Rainville will “shape the scope and mission of the Tusculum Institute, create an advisory committee, develop a strategic plan for the Institute and generate inaugural programming that supports its strategic mission.”

In addition to her work at Sweet Briar and the University of Virginia — where she taught in 2001 and 2002 and was visiting scholar at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies from 2002 to 2007 — Rainville has conducted extensive research of African-American burial grounds in Central Virginia, including the plantation cemetery at Sweet Briar.

She also has worked on projects involving the Monacan Indians of Amherst County, including an exhibit co-curated with art galleries director Rebecca Massie-Lane titled, “Family Portraits: Virginian Indians at the Turn of the 20th Century.” The exhibit is currently on loan to several college campuses.

“Her work with the social and physical history of Sweet Briar’s campus and with plantation burial grounds and African-American communities … has led Lynn to establish ties to a number of local communities including the Monacan Indians in Amherst County, and has fueled her long-standing interest in public history,” the statement reads.

“Together, these research interests make her an ideal leader for this new enterprise.”

— Suzanne Ramsey