Bradford House, Whiskey Rebellion center, launch new season with fresh, revamped exhibits
Courtesy of the Bradford House Historical Association
A voucher for federal troops is on display at the Whiskey Rebellion Education and Visitor Center in Washington.
Courtesy of the Bradford House Historical Association
Art by the late Washington County artist J. Howard Iams is on display at the Whiskey Rebellion Education and Visitor Center in Washington.
Tracie Liberatore says that she has sometimes heard from visitors to the Bradford House that they don’t feel compelled to make a return trip because they believe they’ve seen it once and it will be the same the second time around.
Been there, done that, basically.
The museum is trying to push back against that notion with launching new or revamped exhibits as it opens its new season at the Bradford House Museum in downtown Washington and at the Whiskey Rebellion Education and Visitor Center, located directly across Main Street from the Bradford House. All the exhibits deal with various aspects of the Bradford family or the Whiskey Rebellion, of which David Bradford was a key leader.
The education and visitor center opened one year ago, and in the 12 months since, several individuals have donated artifacts to be displayed there.
“All these people and things came out of the woodwork,” said Liberatore, the executive director of the Bradford House Association. All told, more than 1,400 visitors from four different nations and 16 different states stopped by the Whiskey Rebellion Education and Visitor Center in its inaugural year, according to Liberatore.
The visitor center is displaying limited-edition woodcut prints by the late Washington County artist J. Howard Iams, along with five federal military vouchers and receipts from 1794. They serve as the centerpiece of a new section on the presence of federal troops in this region when the Whiskey Rebellion was being put down. The education and visitor center will also soon be displaying three books that belonged to the Rev. John Corbly, a Greene County minister who started many Baptist churches in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia when it was still part of Virginia, and was thrown in jail during the Whiskey Rebellion.
Meanwhile, the Bradford House Museum will have additional panels on Bradford and his wife, Elizabeth, and a revamped exhibit on the 19th century author and journalist Rebecca Harding Davis, who lived in the Bradford House in the 19th century and wrote about the plight of marginalized groups like immigrants and African Americans. A new exhibit, “Farm and Home,” looks at various aspects of life in the 1700s and farm animals of the era.
Hours at the Bradford House Museum are Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through November. Hours at the education and visitor center are Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through November. For additional information go online to www.bradfordhouse.org.