Gendered Firsts: A Site Analysis of Historic Edenton, NC

Abstract

Historic Edenton promotes itself as a town of firsts. This focus locates the visitor’s experience in the site’s colonial history, and emphasizes North Carolina women’s involvement in the Revolution, especially the famous Edenton Tea Party. Since Historic Edenton functions as the entire downtown area, sites that focus on women’s history and gender issues remain scattered throughout the town and visitors’ spatial engagement with women’s history and the events of the Edenton Tea Party occurs in a piecemeal fashion. The site thus lacks a guided narrative that carries women’s history from the start of the tour to the end. The creation of such a narrative would promote visitors’ full engagement in learning about a variety of women’s experiences and the gendered issues they faced during the colonial and antebellum periods in American history. An evaluation of the tour, its specific historic sites, and museum presentations provide valuable insights into cultural assumptions and representations about women in the colonial and antebellum periods. Critiques of historic sites also establish a means of appraising the practices of public historians, and provide opportunities to integrate the historiographies of women’s, gender, and public history. Furthermore, such evaluations question the ways in which historic sites, like Edenton, address women’s and gender issues in conjunction with themes of race and class. Ultimately, assessments of historic sites create opportunities for improvement and reinterpretation.