Children’s Activities In The House!
Our children’s table and chairs are filled with activities for children of all ages:
• Signing petitions sent by Concord children to President Lincoln in 1864 to “free all slave children” together with Lincoln’s response – old fashioned pens and ink are supplied so visitors can sign and take their own copy. https://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/uploads/Childrens-Petition.pdf
• Achi, an interesting West African version of tic-tac-toe – thought to be played by colonial enslaved children at the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, based on artifacts found by archaeologists at their site. Pieces of broken tile and dishes in the Slave Quarters yard were unearthed that had been shaped by hand into circles and squares, likely for use as gaming pieces. https://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/uploads/AchiSide.pdf
• Clay marbles and instructions for playing – children in colonial America played with marbles made of clay, which have been uncovered at a wide variety of eighteenth century sites, including the Slave Quarters yard at the Royall House & Slave Quarters. https://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/uploads/Marbles.pdf
• Coloring sheets of Frederick Douglass – who visited Concord at least 4 times between 1841 and 1844 – and crayons are available for our younger visitors. https://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/uploads/Douglass-coloring-page.pdf
![Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? We have you covered with a little Robbins house trivia. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem entitled Peter’s Field. Peter’s Field most likely referenced Peter Hutchinson, who was the last African American owner of The Robbins House. Peter purchased the home in 1852 and lived with his wife, Nancy, and several of their children in the home until 1868. Emerson described Peter’s farm, and by extension the original area of farmland attached to The Robbins House out in the Great Field like this:
KNOWS he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?]
That field by spirits bad and good,
By Hell and Heaven is haunted,
And every rood in the hemlock wood
I know is ground enchanted.
[In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts:
I wandered up,
I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.
For in those lonely grounds the sun
Shines not as on the town,
In nearer arcs his journeys run,
And nearer stoops the moon.
There in a moment I have seen
The buried Past arise;
The fields of Thessaly grew green,
Old gods forsook the skies.
Happy Reading!](https://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)