Vision for Reliving History, Inc

Reliving History Inc is an educational organization focused on setting an accurate historic backdrop. This backdrop reflects the life of a typical middling-class yeoman farm family who migrated to new frontier west of the Blue Ridge Mountains in about 1748. At that time, our fledgling nation was in its infancy. The yeoman farmer was Peter Burr, whose ancestry is also of significance. He, among other notable cousins, was the fifth generation of one of the Puritan's who arrived in the New World on June 12, 1630 with John Winthrop's famous fleet. Peter Burr (1727-1795) was the gg grandson of Puritan Jehue Burre, who helped found two historic villages that have survived into significant cities today: Springfield, MA and Fairfield, CT. The same Puritan ancestor was the progenitor of numerous descendants, many of whom also attained recorded places in American history. These include among others:

• Chief Justice Peter Burr of the early Connecticut Supreme Court and esteemed graduate of Harvard 
• Rev. Aaron Burr, son-in-law of Jonathan Edwards (of Great Awakening fame) and one of the original founders and early president of New Jersey College (today known as Princeton University).
• Vice President Aaron Burr, who almost attained to President of the United States and who among all his wonderful achievements managed to achieve notoriety during a brief few minutes when he became the man who shot Alexander Hamilton in perhaps the most famous duel in history
•  Thaddeus Burr, who from his estate in Fairfield, CT played a major role in the Revolutionary War as he entertained British royalty and American patriots and helped in collecting secrets while providing wine to his guests.
  

Peter Burr (1727-1795) who migrated to the Virginia Colony long before the area became West Virginia represents a long line of settlers who played significant roles in settling new frontiers. And the pioneering blood must somehow be in the DNA as other Burr cousins have added their names to lists of early settlers who helped found new frontiers whether in the New World, or beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, or those who helped settle the Northwest Territory and parts of Ohio, or southward to Logan County, KY and Robertson Co, TN, and other new lands across our country. And today the pioneering spirit lives as at least one Burr ancestor trains astronauts who are headed for the International Space Station. Documentation of this family is abundant but also fragmented, located in many archives across the country and sometimes misrepresented in published histories. Yet, the history of this family, with roots in the Puritan influence, grows representatively as a core family, typical of the many families who tell the historic story of who we are today as a nation.

My intentions are to use this blog to announce and record periodic updates related to what we at Reliving History, Inc are doing and how and why we are doing it. Many families have roots back to the Puritans and Pilgrims and earliest settlers, but few have a ca.1751 house built and sustained by the blood, sweat, and tears of ancestors with their own DNA coursing through their veins. Our old house is a local treasure that is owned by a local government agency dedicated to helping to preserve it. Our old house is situated to become an ideal center for administrating historic focus of the colonial period via hands-on, experiential, educational programming. The tasks ahead of us are many, our methods are complex, but our vision is singular. We plan to help visitors to relive history through the eyes of those who saw history in the making.

Today, our plates are full as they are every day. We currently are trying to:

• Update the website as well as tie in this blog as a vital source of information
• Finish final revisions of the bylaws
• Complete preparation of the 501(c)(3) application to secure our status as a tax exempt organization
• Get ready for the upcoming (Oct 10, 2009) Harvest Faire at the Peter Burr House
• Prepare to write the AmeriCorps grant
• Watch for other RFPs (requests for proposals) from other funding organizations
• Build a network with and for other organizations focused on history of the local area (in and around today's Jefferson County, WV) during the years of about 1750-1800
• Plan for the 2010 Burr Familyl Homecoming
• Work with volunteers in building an accurate focus on period clothing
• Work with our archaeologist on the artifacts found at the Peter Burr House and support efforts to build exhibits with these artifacts as they are processed and identified
• Work with other volunteers to plan enhanced interpretive programming for next year (2010)
• Identify items we can sell online and at events to raise funds to support our programes
• Promote the new Eastern WV Community Foundation Reliving History Fund to raise funds in perpetuity (forever) to support the preservation, restoration, and programming at the Peter Burr House and other related sites that help to define the historic setting between about 1750-1800 and accurately educate the public so they can begin to identify with the history as it happened.
  
• Work with the Potomac Valley Audubon Society toward putting a rain garden on our property for the adjacent school to build "bridges" with educational organizations and to tie today's needs to those of our ancestors
• Work with the Potomac Valley Master Naturalists toward how to manage and shape our wetland to better use our property while also reflecting how the environment was important to the early settlers
• Work with the American Chestnut Foundation via their regional office at Penn State to put an American Chestnut Tree project on our property to help bring back the trees that were typical of the period
• Focus (with Dr Bill Theriault) on revisions needed for the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission's Master Plan for the Peter Burr House
  
• Develop a related tourism focus that will help set a backdrop to allow visitors to the Peter Burr House to understand the context of historic sites and events that Peter Burr would have visited, experienced, or known about
• Find descendants of Peter Burr to expand and help recover accurate documentation of the family's history and to build a family support base for the property upon which our DNA connected at a specific time in history
• Further find other citizens interested in helping to dig up and assimilate accurate documentation of the history of the local area and how the typical family fit into the daily setting.

These begin to enumerate the bulk of what we are doing right now. Meanwhile, as all these and other pieces come together, it is my desire to weave Peter Burr's ancestry into the information, so we will all have a better view of who this man was. So often in genealogy, people become only names and dates. Peter Burr represented a somewhat misplaced branch of the family when he, like so many early settlers, migrated to new frontiers at times when official record keeping was not yet organized. Written records vanished or more likely than not . . . just never existed. Filing birth certificates in new territories where cities did not exist and county governments had not been organized was not a priority for people more appropriately focused on survival.

In the last five years, Peter Burr (1727-1795) as become far more than a genealogical entry on some historian's family data sheet. As records come together, we have discovered that he is the same Peter Burr who helped found two Presbyterian Churches that continue to exist and hold services today. We now find his name recorded on documents with and among other notable names like: Charles and George Washington; Thomas and Robert Rutherford; Generals William Darke, Horatio Gates, Charles Lee; and Adam Stephen; and others.

And the Peter Burr House? Few families have such a marvelous place to come home to 250 years later. It is my desire to endear this typical family and its typical old farm house that has survived when others have not, and to share our family with those who would like to join us as adopted family into a vibrant thread of American history.

Meanwhile, at age 62, I know I'm getting too old to wish for a long future doing what I'm doing. Therefore, I maintain a constant awareness that I need to build this project to a stage that it can sustain itself with such potential that someone a little younger will want to step in and take over for me. While this project is also becoming my legacy and while I plan to give my self to it for so long as I am able, be aware that I clearly understand the need to groom a successor. Anyone who wants my job should let me know, and I will help a good candidate with the appropriate passion and vision to take my place.

B Joyce Cole
Founder of the Peter Burr Society (genealogy focus)
Founder and Chairman of Reliving History, Inc. (history education and networking focus)
And direct descendant of Peter Burr (1727-1795) via his son William Burr (1783-1746) who migrated to Logan Co, KY

A New Beginning Five Years Later

This month is five years later . . . five years later after the first time I discovered that I descended from Peter Burr who built the oldest surviving wood frame hose in what is today West Virginia. It is five years later since that cloudy day in September 2004 when I first saw the old house and walked around the locked chain-link fence, looking in and yearning to touch the old house. Next month, October 2009, will mark five years later since I first set foot in that old house and since the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I walked from the 21st century into a room built in the 18th century by two men with my DNA running through their veins. I knew the moment was monumental and I was fortunate to do what the vast majority of people today cannot do, walk in their ancestor's very foot prints. I looked out the window and imagined 13 pairs of little feet running and playing, totally oblivious to the fact that over 250 years later their descendants would look out their window at their playground and feel a connection to the past that was at the time just a normal day in the life of a child.

I walked on wooden floors installed plank by plank by my ancestors and touched fireplace stones set in place with the skill of a craftsman. And I marveled at the details. Only 20 years after settlers built the first permanent house in the new frontier, my ancestors in the same frontier were attaching chair rails to interior walls and hand beading the beams used for the ceilings. Later additions to the house did not utilize such craftsmanship, but at the same time young George Washington was purchasing his first land grants, my ancestors were purchasing property also and adorning their home with features known previously to them in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Today, is September 25, 2009 and I look both backward and forward on this day. This blog is not intended to be entertaining or funny, but to be informative and factual as it chronicles the on-going progress of our new organization, Reliving History, Inc. Herein we attempt to connect today with the past and with the future for the purpose of making history come alive and relevant for the sake of our future.

The Peter Burr House has long set isolated on its surrounding farm lands and until recently almost faded quietly into oblivion. Then about 20 years ago new visions for the house were born. Local citizens, especially one incredible visionary (Dr. William Theriault) had the foresight to realize this old house has stood against all odds, surviving wars, storms, freezing winters, hot summers, floods, droughts, pests, children, and industrialization . . . . For some unknown reason it has outlived all other totally wooden structures in the state and the vast majority of brick or stone structures. And we today wonder why? and how? And no one knows the answer.

But many of us have come to realize the old house is now a treasure that should and must be preserved and utilized for the value it brings to the landscape. The Peter Burr House, now (and hopefully forever) owned by the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission, is a public property with capacity to become an administrative center for networking with other local focuses related to the period in history when men like Peter Burr, Robert Harper, General Braddock, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, Benjamin Franklin, and James Rumsey were walking old roads that also continue to exist in the area.

The last five years have materialized into a progression that joins hands with the earlier progression started by Dr Theriault twenty years ago. The hairs that once stood up on the back of my neck are now aged with the rest of me, but the impact of that moment has not faded. Passion for the house and for the intricate history materialized into action. In the last five years we have located other descendants of Peter Burr and organized and held (October 2008) a successful first Burr family homecoming in over 200 years. Since that homecoming, renewed energy has led to the incorporating of Reliving History, Inc., an organization dedicated to preserving the Peter Burr House and breathing life back into the local history that lays dormant in the bowels of dusty archives.

Incorporation is complete. By-laws are written and in final stages of approval. A new Master Plan for the Peter Burr House is in review. The application for non-profit, tax exempt status or IRS 501(c)(3) is almost complete. Grant proposals are being prepared. Planning meetings are under way. And next spring is our target date for increased programming and local networking to benefit the Peter Burr House and other related historic sites and to likewise enhance the local focus on the incredibly rich colonial history in Jefferson County, WV.

This blog is intended to provide both background and updates as progress evolves. So check back periodically.

B Joyce Cole,
Founder of the Peter Burr Society and
Founder and Chairman of Reliving History, Inc.