Sarah’s Slate: a Child’s Image of Home

Summary

It is rare to find images of architecture by non-professional hands produced before the popularization of photography. More rare are representations by children except for the occasional sampler. In 1981, during the annual Arkansas Archeological Society Training Program at Washington Historic State Park, such a picture was found in an archeological context. Incised on a fragment of a school slate tablet is the image of a house, along with the name ‘»Sarah»’ and three sets of the paired numbers «’44.»’ While discovering the archeological evidence of a connected but lost kitchen behind the still extant Sanders House, we may have found an image of the house itself when it was new, at least from the perspective of nine year old Sarah Virginia Sanders in 1844. Careful examination of this artifact, experiments with similar slates, and comparisons with drawings of houses by children and adults, suggest indeed it is.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Revelatory Power of an Artifact in Context   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-14,06