Monthly Archives: March 2012

To the manor born

05 Monday Mar 2012

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Ever wanted to be a bonafide plantation owner? Now is your chance. The economic crisis has forced many South Carolina plantation owners to place their properties on the market in recent years. Hard as it may be to believe, tucked away at the end of many dirt roads in the Palmetto State are estates still standing that trace their roots back to the seventeenth century. Yes, that is the 1600s. Sherman’s men did their best to destroy as many of these estates as possible. The collapse of the slave system during the Civil War did the rest. Still, enough held on to serve as hunting lodges, paper mills, wildlife refuges, and retreats for wealthy Northerners during the Gilded Age and after. Such was the case with Hobcaw, the plantation owned by industrialist Bernard Baruch pictured at right. During Reconstruction such land was selling for as little as 3 cents an acre. Today, a plantation will set you back $3 to $20 million. Aspiring Rhett Butlers should be aware that annual maintenance averages an additional $500,000.

(image/Hobcaw Plantation, Georgetown County, S.C./LOC)

“How much is my Bible worth?”

04 Sunday Mar 2012

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1859 family Bible

When I was getting my MLS in the mid-1990s our professor told the class one day with a laugh that the question he was asked the most was, “How much is my Bible worth?” The answer is usually, “Not much.” This is because the family Bible was a ubiquitous part of most American households in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. A book isn’t “rare” if millions of regular folk own one. Many American families had only two books in the home: the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Family Bibles were especially plentiful in the north Texas town where I went to grad school. Though the area where I lived had transformed into a contemporary Sunbelt town, there were still a substantial number of Old Families in the community who traced their heritage back to the original settler families of the 1870s and immediately thereafter. I knew many of them through my volunteering at the local historical museum. No one will get rich on Antiques Roadshow selling their Bible, but they are nonetheless a fascinating part of our individual and collective heritage.

(image/David Ball)

Fire sale

02 Friday Mar 2012

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In the 1990s Harrisburg, PA mayor Stephen Reed envisioned a campus of museums dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of artifacts going back to colonial times. To this end, the city spent millions collecting pieces from across the country. The idea, as I understand it, is that the city would profit in the long run through the tourist dollars the museums would attract. In 2001 the National Civil War Museum opened in Reservoir Park. Less than an hour’s ride from Gettysburg, the museum is worth adding to one’s itinerary. It is a beautiful, modern facility with a collection few others can match. The scope is equally impressive, covering the entire Civil War era from 1850 to 1876. In 2009 it became one of the Smithsonian affiliates I mentioned the other day. Sadly the plans for the additional museums never came to fruition, the economic crises and budget deficits of recent years having rendered these plans untenable. Now Harrisburg has commissioned a New York auction house to sell a signifacant portion of the city’s historical collections to pay off the municipal debt. The sale will be held across eight days this coming July after a full inventory.

I do not know enough about the city’s fiscal troubles, though I am sure they are severe. These are tough choices, but I hope city officials are thinking things through. They held a similar auction in 2007 that netted the city $1.4 million. It is not clear how large the city’s holdings will remain after this 2012 sale. During New York City’s darkest years in the 1970s some New York institutions resisted the temptation to sell despite the obvious short term gains. Today, these museums and repositories are enjoying a renaissance of record crowds despite Gotham’s own very real financial difficulties. Something to consider.

(image/Confederate Bowie (top) and Naval knives in NCWM collection, Claire H.)