Junk in the Trunks: Reinterpreting the Stevens-Crawford Heritage House

by Liza Rosier ::

Top row, L to R: Clark Gazzola, Professor Barber, Evan Smiley, Tanner Tombelson, Stephen Jackson, Sylvie Andrews, Patrick Harbert, and Gage Rutherford. Bottom row, L to R: Jennifer Walter, Myriah Oliveras, Meg Suhosky, Liza Schade

Students in Dr. Katy Barber’s Introduction to Public History course (HST 4/594, Fall 2018) participated in a terrific video/social media project with the Museum of the Oregon Territory. As part of a grant plan to reinterpret the Stevens-Crawford Heritage House, Museum Director Jenna Barganski called on the class to create some social media content. Jenna received her M.A. in History and Public History from Portland State University in 2018.

The class had a lot of fun working together this term, to accomplish a diverse set of tasks for our client. After a couple of initial planning sessions, we decided to create a video about the Stevens-Crawford Heritage House, specifically a set of antique trunks and the artifacts. We chose six trunks from the attic of the house that stored vintage women’s accessories and shoes, spiked logging boots, military uniforms, and children’s clothing.

As the term progressed, the class created an enormous amount of content. Two amazing students offered to be videographers, so they took footage of the house, the trunks, students working with items, and an interview with MOOT Collections Manager, Johna Heintz. While they did the film work, other students took an important research, planning and documentation role, creating all the documents and shared files. Still others worked with the artifacts, removing them from the old trunks, noting item numbers, and repacking with them fresh tissue into acid free boxes.

Once we accumulated content, the final push began. Our videographers rushed to create the videos, so the class had time for editing suggestions, and what started as one video, quickly turned into two.

Students went with the flow and re-planned the first to be a fun, Hollywood trailer-style introduction to the trunks.

 

The second video provided a professional examination of the inventory process. Classmates also created short social media posts with extra content. Then we submitted all the finished products and shared files to the museum for use at their leisure.

 

 

There were so many lessons learned from this project! Teamwork, historic site reinterpretation, video production, client relations, collections management, and research improvement are just a few. We are so thankful to MOOT for allowing the class to participate. We hope the videos and social media content will help to gain some added interest in the Stevens-Crawford Heritage House.