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About this Thesis Project

This thesis project attempts to identify and address outdated interpretation and education programs of the Daniel Harrison House, a historic house museum also commonly known as Fort Harrison, in Dayton, Virginia. The written component of the project is to evaluate the Daniel Harrison House’s educational programs and develop updated programs that reflect current trends within the heritage education and public history fields. These updated programs are evaluated through an Interpretation Plan, which identifies the organization’s current interpretation methods, historical content, artifact collection, education programs, board members, staff and volunteers, accessibility of information to the public, and development resources. The Interpterion Plan suggests updated themes, which offer a more inclusive history of the Daniel Harrison House, the Harrison family, and European settlers’ experiences on the eighteenth-century Virginia frontier. This is the second component of the thesis project is a digital exhibit, https://schoemma.wixsite.com/home, which utilizes the suggested heritage education approach with the updated interpretation, as suggested in the interpretation plan of the historic house museum. The website also includes virtual educational outreach lesson plans for students, grades four through eight, to promote heritage education into classrooms and on-site visits. The goal of this thesis is for the Daniel Harrison House to ultimately reach a more global audience, as well as appeal to a more local audience, as students and visitors will have the opportunity to integrate the presented historical information into their own experiences.

Notes:

[1] Fort Harrison, Inc. “Unearthing Fort Harrison’s Diverse Cultures,” Grant Submission, 2022.  

from Prehistory to the Present (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010).

[2] George W. Fetzer and John Sease. Fort Harrison, Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society, 1979.

[3] Rockingham County, Virginia, Deed book 525, Deed of Sale: Daniel W Koogler and Josie Koogler to Fort Harrison Inc., (Rockingham County Circuit Court, 1978), 670-673.

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Dayton, Virginia

    ©2023 Created by Megan Schoeman, Masters Student in History Department at James Madison University.

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