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Henry Mercer

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Neither Henry Ford nor Henry Mercer was trained or credentialed in the study of history, but each developed a vision both of what American history ought to be and of how it ought to be studied. Their experiments stood as alternatives to the more narrowly focused academic history that would ultimately triumph. Henry Ford built a history museum in two parts, the galleries displaying a variety of objects and the village itself, however, can also be seen as collection of architectural objects on a grand scale. The museum and village pay homage to America's simple folk. The museum and the village erected as a memorial to America's preindustrial past and its "village" life to rescue a disappearing past. Ford reached back to retrieve his past. For …show more content…

He hoped to find an ancient camping ground of the Lenni Lenape, which supposed to have been located near Mercer's house along the Delaware River. And one day, he goes to fishing at a favorite spot after some high water on the river, Mercer spotted several arrowheads revealed by erosion. He left the place and soon returned with a shovel; and, there, in that ground, he began to dig. Then broken arrowheads came to light, Fragments of rude vessels, and savage implements of war, etc. when Mercer grew up, his pursuits were remarkably wide ranging. He became an important archaeologist of the New World in the 1880s and l890s. Toward the end of that decade, he began to collect the tools and technology of colonial and early Federal America. He eventually housed these artifacts in a museum of his own extraordinary design that he built for the Bucks County Historical Society (BCHS) in 1916. At the turn of the century, Mercer began experimenting with pottery production by trying to resurrect an eighteenth-century Pennsylvania-German technique for ceramic manufacture. As a result of his experiments, he established the Moravian Tile Works near his home in Doylestown. The tiles he produced there have been installed in buildings as far-flung as the State Capitol in Harrisburg, PA, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and the Casino in Monte

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