Paula Elsey, an American historian, visited Dranesville Elementary sixth-graders May 19 to teach about history.
In her lesson, Elsey demonstrated how a historian
works using primary documents, allowing students to work on their own history projects.
Through the lesson students worked with inventories of their bedrooms and then compared their list to an inventory of David Piper's estate in 1766.
The children were surprised that they had more in their rooms than the entire Piper family had in their house.
They also tried to read a copy of a handwritten inventory from the Martin Cockburn estate of 1822. They quickly realized that historians have to be able to read all kinds of handwriting.
The children also compared the two estates and found that they could tell much about each family from the listing of the inventory.
For example, David Piper could probably read since he had books listed in his estate. The Cockburn family had many
more items of value so the students could tell that the Cockburn's family was wealthy. The children realized from the lesson that historians have to be detectives in unearthing history.