Van Hoosen Farm

For our first assignment in the history class, we were supposed to find a local historical monument, take a picture of it, and make two lists of questions, one from a historian's perspective and the other from a visitor's perspective. The first place I thought of was Van Hoosen Farm, which is also the Rochester Hills Museum. I remembered going there back in third grade on a three-day field trip, where the students got to learn in an old one-roomed schoolhouse just up the road from the museum.



Without having any previous knowledge about the farm or the people who lived there, I felt that many basic questions would be shared by both the visitors and the historians. Questions like:
~ Who lived here?
~ When was the house built?
~ How did the owners live?
~ Why was this house saved?
~ Where these people important in the community?
~ What did the family believe about life, society, and the people around them?



Some questions that I believe would pertain more to visitors are:
~ How were the lives of the owners different from those experienced today?
~ How was the area/world different from today?
~ What did the family do for a living?
~ What did they do for fun?



Some questions that I thought historians might ponder are:
~ Why are these people remembered when so many other farming families were forgotten?
~ How were social norms and expectations different from today, and how did these play into decisions made by the family members?
~ What types of sources do we have about the family, the farm and house, the community, the time period, and the way of life these buildings represent?
~ What is being portrayed about life in the 19th and 20th century and about the owners?
~ How are the building being preserved in order to ensure that they will continue to stand to be enjoyed by future generations?

While looking over some of the information that I could find about the Van Hoosen Farm, I came across a very interesting video promoting the farm and the museum that views history through a certain lens. It's definitely worth seeing.
Rochester Hills Video Library