Underrepresentation

Re: Revisiting history — April 24

In response to letter writer John Kolb and others who may not have had the opportunity to visit the Joseph Schneider Haus in the past 35 years, I certainly hope Barbara, Joseph Schneider’s wife, has a smile on her face, wherever she is. Because there have been more serious women’s history researched by staff, documented in publications and interpreted in the farmhouse gardens and outbuildings than at any other living history museum I can think of.

Barbara, Sarah, her daughterin-law, and the children of both sexes who grew up in the house in the first half of the 19th-century get top billing daily in the majority of the programs of this living history museum. It is, after all, only the seasonal, domestic life of this farming family that can properly be interpreted in a farmstead that lacks the agricultural components of a typical Pennsylvania-German Mennonite farm.

Yes, the farmhouse and its environs were the domain of Barbara in her time, and Sarah and the children in theirs; the fields, barns and sawmill where the two Josephs spent most of their time

have long since been sacrificed to development as the town of Berlin grew. And though staff has worked very hard over the years to craft interpretive narratives that help to correct the gender imbalance, it is sadly Joseph and the boys of the family who are, not surprisingly, under-represented at the site.

I think it might be time to revisit your local museum and relearn the lessons of history.

Susan Burke, manager-curator (retired) Joseph Schneider Haus National Historic Site Kitchener