History Seniors Win Awards

Our history seniors received important recognition for their hard work and excellence during their studies at St. Bonaventure!

1. Wheeler Award: Amber Cheladyn; Lauren Perkins and Diana Phalon, Co-Honorable Mention

2. Political Science Award: Paul R. Bremmer

Amber Cheladyn also won the "General Excellence Award for a Transfer Student"

New History Club Officers!

The History Club has elected new officers for the 2012-2013 academic year:
President: Max Schneller
Vice President: Mariah Wolford
Secretary: Chelsea O' Connor- Rosiek

The club also added the position of historian whose job is to take photos of events and create a Facebook group. Sarah Southwell will be the first person in this position. She will also be in charge of posters and flyers to bring awareness to the Bona community about the activities of the club.

The History Club is open to anyone with an interest in history. Contact any of the officers for more information!

History is Everywhere!

Recently my husband and I took our son to look at Vanderbilt University, where he was considering going to graduate school. It is located in Nashville, TN, and although he has chosen instead to attend Syracuse University, his Dad and I played while he toured the school.

First we went to Andrew Jackson’s plantation, the Hermitage, just about 15-20 minutes east of downtown Nashville. It was very interesting to see, and impressive to me since they actually do incorporate slaves into the experience. Slave cabins survive and you can go inside. They are part of the museum exhibit and of the audio tour. Some of the cabins still had furniture, which was acquired quite late, sometimes after the Civil War when some of the freemen elected to stay.

In this sense it was far more impressive than George Washington’s Mount Vernon. The last time I went to Mt. Vernon they had not been so successful in including slaves into the picture. I will be going there again in the next few years, and I hope this aspect has improved. Someone else I spoke to who had just been to Mt. Vernon last year said that they had not seen much regarding the slaves at all. So the historians at the Hermitage are more sensitive in this regard. The film about Jackson involved some mild whitewashing of the man, but the speaker at the end made a point of saying that Jackson did a good job of representing the people he cared about – the “common man” of the era, whom we know was white and, of course, male. Andrew Jackson and his wife Rachel actually built their big house in their middle-age, and prior to that had lived in a much more modest two floor log cabin. It survives in a one-story incarnation. It was interesting to stand on the ground, look at the cabins in which Jackson and his slaves lived, and try to imagine life as it was then, still frontier when he arrived as a young man.