A new exhibit at the John Dickinson Plantation in Dover, Del., explores the lives of founding fathers, their family members, enslaved blacks, free blacks and tenant farmers who lived and worked on the farm of John Dickinson, one of the signers of the U.S. Constitution and “Penman of the Revolution.”
According to the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs blog, the interpretation required “painstaking research by historians, archaeologists and Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs staff members; as well as scholarship conducted under the auspices of the Friends of the John Dickinson Mansion, details about the lives of the plantation’s people have been mined from a variety of places including, among others, the Delaware Public Archives, Delaware Historical Society, University of Delaware and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. While important information has been gleaned from likely sources such as maps, letters and diaries, it has also been found in more mundane places such as probate inventory, account-book records and bills of sale. As additional information is uncovered through research, new panels will be created that tell the stories of other people who lived and worked at the plantation.”