"FIRE!"
[cannon EXPLOSION]
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Hello everyone, thanks for joining us. It's a beautiful morning here at Gettysburg National Military Park.
My name is Ranger Chris Gwinn and I'm fortunate right now to be in the front yard of what was the James and Eliza
Warfield home here on the Gettysburg battlefield.
James and Eliza Warfield were members of Gettysburg's
African-American community, and in 1863 just about a year before the battle
they end up purchasing the home that you see behind me. Now, their story is one that is incredibly powerful and poignant, free African-American
residing on the climactic battle of the American Civil War. But as you can see their house has gone through some pretty
significant changes over the years but in 2020, it'll be getting a face lift.
We're fortunate to have with us today preservationist Johnny Holdsworth. Johnny, why don't you come in.
Johnny, can you tell us a little bit about what you do here at Gettysburg National Military Park,
and what's gonna be in store for the Warfield home? [Johnny] Sure, Chris.
I'm exhibit specialist here at Gettysburg National Military Park and I supervise restoration work.
Some of the stuff that we have going on at this site involves taking the building back to its original
1863 footprint. We know that over the course of the building's lifespan following the battle a number of changes took place where it changed either the
where certain parts of the building had been added onto or even grew taller. If you look behind us here at the house
the sections of the home, which are masonry are the original footprint of the house dating to the mid 1850s
Subsequently after the battle several changes took place where the second story was added on to and anywhere
where you see siding today, aluminum siding in this case,
that's white that was added on later on.
So, our objective for the restoration work we're doing today is to take it back down to the one and a half story
structure that it was and remove some of the other buildings that were added onto the side and back of the house.
[Chris] So, you're gonna take this home and basically try to turn back the clock to make it look like James Warfield knew it in
1863, right?
[Johnny] Exactly.
We know that some of the physical evidence that we've been able to find through either research or
what's here on the property tells us a lot of the answers to the questions we have about what it looked like
what the windows were where the were located, what sort changes were done
to the internal structure. So, a lot of that information we're now taking into our restoration plan.
[Chris] So, I noticed a lot of the house is stone and that's going to involve a lot of stone work.
You want to go take a closer look at the side of the house and talk a little bit about
some of that side of the project?
[Johnny] Absolutely.
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[Chris] So, I noticed here we got some scaffolding up.
We got some stone. Tell us a little bit about what's happening on this kind of facade of the structure.
[Johnny] Sure. So when we got on site here and started doing some work there had already been a number of years of research that went
into what this would have looked like back in 1863.
You can't see it any longer because we've done the repairs already
but what was on this facade not even four weeks ago were two window openings.
We were able to figure out pretty early on that those two window openings weren't original to the structure. They were added on later.
Some of the evidence that we had that told us this were the lintels the pieces that were directly above the windows
were cast in place
cement, which wouldn't have been construction technique from the 1860s.
So, when we look behind those windows
you can also see a number of other changes. You can see there's a different type of plaster that been put in that doesn't match up
with the other plasters in the house, so we knew pretty early on that that needed to be removed and
turned back into just a
straight masonry wall.
We also have some evidence that points to this being the wall where the hearth was located and that
wouldn't line up with having two windows on either side of a hearth.
[Chris] What are some of the challenges you face as a
preservationist working with this kind of materials - I mean I must imagine it's more difficult to work with then say wood?
[Johnny] Yeah, the biggest challenge we're facing here on this site is just the method of construction that was used at the time.
Often times when you're working with a masonry structure you're
looking at a building that has mortar in it that's got a lot of lime in it.
This building was not constructed with much lime at all. In fact, as we started digging into the walls
we found that a lot of the stones were laid in dirt and soil and didn't have a lot of
structural stability. So, as we're going through the structure we're having to go back in and provide a lot more stability to the stonework -
take out some of the soil that's in there and put in more that's going to give it some strength.
Over the years things have been changed and sections of wall been removed and that also cuts into the structural stability of the masonry.
[Chris] Great, I'd love to see the back side of the house and some of the modern additions we hope to take off.
So want to head around the building?
[Johnny] Yes.
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[Chris] So we've moved around the house on the western face of the house now,
and as we kind of rounded the corner
I was reminded just how close we are to the Confederate battle lines of July 2nd and 3rd.
Right behind you is West Confederate Avenue. I can see the Longstreet tower.
So this house was really smack dab in between the battle lines, and I'm imagining, Johnny, that when the
Confederates who occupied this ridge during the battle looked in the direction of the house, they didn't see what we have behind us today.
So, tell me a little bit about what parts of this structure here gonna be removed.
[Johnny] Sure. So, what we're looking at right now behind us
nothing from 1863 is visible from our current
viewpoint. A lot of the construction that's behind us was added on in the years following the battle. So,
different periods of construction are right around the turn the century on into the 50s and 60s.
So, for the next couple of weeks when we're doing some of the selective demolition to remove the non historic portions of the house
everything that you see behind us now will completely change. We're really going back to the original footprint, which was just a two-room masonry house.
So, everything behind us now that a couple weeks will be completely different.
It's just gonna be a one and a half story stone structure you'll be looking at behind us.
We know in the back elevation, this western side, there's just to be two windows facing it here. The driveway will be gone.
Everything will be receded and regraded.
[Chris] I have to imagine
somewhere inside that modern structure the original exterior wall of the Warfield home can be seen. So, can we go inside and take a peek at that?
[Johnny] Yeah, let's take a look.
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[Chris] So, Johnny,
we're inside what looks like a living room and I noticed we have this beautiful stonework here and it looks like a window,
so what's going on?
[Johnny] Sure.
We're standing in what was the dining room for the former owners of this house, and what's behind us now is a
reconstructed window for what we know was a original window opening for the house.
If you come here, maybe about you know, three months ago we would've been standing in a much wider doorway. So,
when this part of the house was added onto they wanted to widen the doorway to allow a better flow through the house.
So to do that, they took the original window opening widen it and created almost a double wide sized doorway. For us to be able to establish
what the size of the original window was we were looking for any physical evidence that was still existing, and luckily
we go inside later on you'll see there's a piece of the original window trim that tells us exactly how wide the window was and
the trend that matches up with all the other trim of the historic windows in the house.
So, with that much information we're able to take that and
turn it into what you see behind us for an infill.
[Chris] I notice you have some work going on right now. We have Meghan here.
What exactly is Meghan working on?
[Johnny] So Meghan is grouting around the new window frame that we've added in.
So, for any elements that were removed when this dining room was added on we're attempting to re-establish now.
[Chris] So Meghan, tell me a little bit about what you're working on here. Obviously, you've got a window that you're creating
Tell me a little bit about the process.
[Meghan] Of course. We created a new window frame to match what originally would have been here to create that,
you know, original window opening. And right now, like Johnny said, I'm just filling in the voids
behind the window frame, and I'm using a grout bag here
which is very similar to what you would think people use when they frost cakes, too.
[Chris] So it went from being James Warfield's window to a doorway into a living room back to a window, right?
[Johnny] Correct. And you come back here in a couple more weeks you'll be standing outside again.
[Chris] Let's go around the corner here because I know there's some more work that you're doing
to rehabilitate this structure. So, let's go take a look.
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[Chris] So, Johnny we kind of moved around the corner here. We're standing at what looks like a stairwell,
there's some shag carpeting, and it looks like here you removed some of the
sheet rock, the drywall, and exposed again an original part of the house.
And I'm told you found some surprises when you did that. Can you tell me a little bit about what we're looking at right now?
[Johnny] Sure.
[Johnny] So, when we got started on this we knew that there was several layers of non historic materials that had been added on over the
years.
So you're right, where the studs are currently there was drywall here.
This covered this whole way up behind us all the way up the stairway. Same thing on the opposite side. So, we had two drywall
panels that were covering up what was behind here,
which was the original window opening. Everything you see behind us in terms of framing materials, paint trim,
that's all original to the 1850s version of the house.
And with that gives us a lot of good information about how these windows would have been set up -
how big the sashes were, how thick they were, what the setup was for the rails,
sash stops - so it gives us a clearer picture of what we need to reestablish.
The only thing that we have left for the original windows were the frames themselves,
but we have enough information now to be able to reconstruct the sashes so we know exactly what they would've looked like.
[Chris] Now, with this original
material in the house
do you try to keep that if you can and how do you determine whether or not you keep it or you replace it
with something more modern or more stable?
[Johnny] Sure, so we
as Park Service our ethos is to make sure that we save as much original material as possible.
All of it gives us that part of the story of how the building was constructed, what methods were used. It helps, I guess,
future historians to tell the picture or paint a better picture for us.
So, for all the materials you see behind us, we'd keep it in place.
We do as little as possible to keep from muddling it anymore,
but we try and protect it from
from any of the elements. Now, this has been covered up for a number of years,
it hasn't seen probably the weather for at least a hundred years,
so whatever we end up doing to it is going to be
something that's going to help preserve it for another hundred years.
[Chris] And I think it's wonderful that you're able to not only uncover so much about the past from the physical structure here
but that so much original still remains in the building.
It really connects us to the people that lived here a century and a half ago.
Now,
I would love to be able to see the interior of the house itself, the house that James Warfield would have known, can we go in
and take a peek at that? [Johnny] Yeah, let's take a look.
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[Chris] We're in front of the Warfield house now.
The original front door is is just behind us.
And again, you can see almost all of the second and third days battlefield from here.
It's such an amazing location, and I love that we're able to literally walk through the same door that James Warfield did
a century and a half ago. So can we go peek inside now Johnny? [Johnny] Yeah, let's take a look.
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[Chris] Wow, you know
one of the things that I notice when I walk in is it feels so different from the other parts of the building, more modern
parts, because when you walk in here you feel like you're in a nineteenth-century building.
So as I look around I see exposed beams. I see
some wood around the windows. Can you tell us what's original in this structure right here?
[Johnny] Sure, so a lot of what we're standing around is original to the construction from the 1850s.
Again, we first got here it looked very much like a modern living room, this in fact what it was for a long time.
So, we got in here we removed a lot of drywall.
Behind the drywall was another set of wall materials that were prepped by around the turn of century - some wood beadboard.
So we pulled that material off and then that exposed the original plaster walls.
Fortunate thing is a lot of plaster walls over the years delaminated from the stonework behind it.
We saved as much as we possibly could, especially pieces that gave us further evidence of how this
this room would have been laid out.
[Chris] Now, I look at some of these beams up here, they look old to me
but as a preservation how do you look at this and know it's from 1850?
[Johnny] Really you're trying to find anything that would give you an idea of what technology they use to hew it. So, if they were hand
hewing it
or if they were using
upright saws to try and whittle it down to the size it is.
That's gonna tell you quite a bit about the age of the wood itself and when it would have been installed.
Something like a floor joist like this,
it would have been incredibly difficult to change around. That gives us some clues to as to whether it would have been changed or not.
And again, looking at other materials
so there's a lot of
cut nails that have been stalled in that. And cut nails would have been correct to the period of when this was originally constructed.
[Chris] So, it's 1850 or it's
1860 we're in this main floor here. What would this have looked like? Do you have any idea?
What would have been going on in this room? Is this everything - is this the living room or the kitchen? What's happening here?
[Johnny] Yeah, so as best as we can tell the footprint of this building lines up pretty similar to other buildings on the battlefield.
So if you think of the Bryan house or the Leister house, it's really the same sort of footprint and configuration.
So if we're following that as our guiding point, we look for other clues that help to bolster that thought process.
[Chris] Yeah
[Johnny] So, this probably would have been a two room setup, and to give us evidence to that
you can look up at the floor joists above us and see that they've been painted,
they've been treated over the years, but where we're assuming there would have been a
partition separating the two rooms. You can see, or actually right behind this,
where there's not been any paint applied, where probably a plank wall would have been on the side over here.
So that give us a little bit of idea
of yeah there was probably a partition wall here and when they painted the walls, they obviously wouldn't painted anything behind there.
So that gives us part of the
picture of what was the original configuration.
The second piece is no longer here behind us, but there's another bit of information on that plaster wall
which is sort of this ghost mark of where that partition wall would have actually intersected with the plaster.
[Chris] Ghost mark - tell me a little bit about that. 'Cause I'm looking for it - kind of paint that picture for me.
What is a ghost mark? What does it tell you? [ Johnny] So the ghost mark I'm speaking of is this
upright line in the plaster where we can see there was a
wall that would have been put there at one point.
And the remnant of it is just basically where the plaster overlapped with a wall but never was flush
I guess with the opposite side of the wall. [Chris] There's a fair amount of what I would call detective work in what you do.
You're looking at the house with clues as to what it would have looked like in 1863. Now, I noticed so we have a
staircase here. Do you plan on keeping the stairs or do you plan on modifying them? What's gonna happen over there?
[Johnny] Yeah, so the staircase that's behind us now was probably the third generation of stairs that were added into this space.
We're guessing third right now because actually where we're standing right now we can see that there was a stairwell
installed here at some point in the building's history.
There's some question as to whether this would have been the stairwell that would have been here during the 1850s and 60s.
We did find other evidence as we started this project that points to there being a different configuration.
So we'll see a little bit more that evidence potentially upstairs,
but from what we can tell here we find another one of those ghost marks in the plaster here, and
if we're thinking about those other buildings we were talking about earlier, Bryan and the Leister house,
those would have had what's called a winder staircase.
So wherever the hearth was in some of these buildings
they would have had a very small, narrow staircase winding around the chimney to get to the second floor.
So we found that ghost mark which we line up with a similar configuration you see a Bryan or Leister.
We also found some evidence of where there might have been a stairway, but also, too, where the floor planking is
there's a different type of planking that was used there to potentially infill after it was removed. [Chris] You've talked about an
incredible amount of work that is going on, that still needs to be done in this house.
When do you anticipate this house will look like it did in 1860. When is this project gonna be finished?
[Johnny] So, right now we're going to be
beginning a lot of the selective demolition work that's going to remove the non historic parts of the house.
At this point in the season we're fighting against the weather,
so we're gonna try and do as much in this interior space as we can when
things get too cold to finish up any masonry work.
But our projections right now put us into late spring early summer for finishing the exterior restoration. On the interior
we have a lot of questions still about how we want to finish it off. Again,
we're finding a lot of new clues as to how things were configured -
pieces that we want to be able to highlight to the public to show what was here and
and make that part of the story. [Chris] I think the work that is happening here is fascinating and more than just
rehabilitating a historic structure. It offers us a different lens into the world of James and Eliza Warfield. It brings their story alive.
So, I can't thank you enough for the work you do for the Park Service
and thank you all for joining us as we explore the James Warfield house, and look forward to the improvements and
rehabilitation efforts that are to come in 2020. So, Johnny, thanks again.
[Johnny] All right. Thanks Chris.
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