Open house: 350 years within these walls

The Stanton-Davis Homestead in Stonington housed 12 generations of family members who left behind diaries, furniture, clothing, quilts, and traces of their relationships with Native Americans and slaves.

Now five students from the Avery Point campus are carefully combing through the artifacts, building a story from the vantage point the house offers on events from the 1650s to today.

Artifacts and furniture cram its rooms. The last inhabitant, John Whit Davis, two years ago left the center-chimney colonial to a non-profit group that plans to turn it into a museum. But the Stanton-Davis Homestead Museum, Inc., faces the daunting task of documenting and removing roomfuls of historic objects before it can renovate the deteriorating house.

Nancy Steenburg, adjunct history faculty member and assistant director of the Bachelor of General Studies (BGS) program at Avery Point, learned of the project's needs from fellow Stonington Historical Association board member Fred Burdick, who is vice president and treasurer of the Stanton Davis Homestead Museum.

Last winter, she arranged for students at Avery Point to intern with the museum. Five students, representing a range of majors in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - history, maritime studies, English, and American studies -- and a BGS student have spent months learning firsthand about the past four centuries.

They are opening trunks, inventorying objects, and learning how to research and carefully document their finds, using Past Perfect, a software system used by museum curators. They work with photographs, letters, clothing, furniture, and the tools of everyday life.

"This is the guts of history," says Steenburg.

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Photos by Daniel Buttrey