Piecing the Past Together

Archeology and oral history inform interpretation and historic preservation at Arlington House. Investigations in the 1980s and early 2000s revealed that the home's original cellar was used to store food. Surveys also revealed packed earth beneath the 1930s brick floors in the slave quarters, and workers removed these bricks to restore the quarters to their original state. Interviews with Selina Gray's children and enslaved worker Jim Parks helped inform the style of fence installed around the flower garden. Artifacts from the site's wide variety of collections, including ceramics, tools, ammunition, and a China doll hand found inside a fireplace, also tell personal stories; the doll hand correlated to the period (1850s-1870s) when enslaved worker Selina Gray and her family lived in this room.

Arlington, Virginia · United States