Face Of This Place
Frances Kennedy
What was your first introduction to our national lands?
My first visit to a national park was as a child to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Hiking there continued to be a great pleasure over the years, especially while my husband, Roger, was Director of the National Park Service in the early 1990s.
What brought you to The Conservation Fund?
In the 1980s there was a controversy over the Manassas Battlefield when a developer tried to build a shopping mall on unprotected battlefield land. After that, Patrick Noonan, founder of The Conservation Fund, called me and invited me to, in his words, “find better ways to save our Civil War heritage, create partnerships, get results, and save the land.” Since its founding, The Conservation Fund has protected 83 Civil War battlefields in 14 states.
I became director of the Civil War Battlefield Campaign and began building partnerships with local citizens, corporations, foundations, and public agencies. Our work was to protect these hallowed grounds where, as General Chamberlain said at Gettysburg in 1889, future generations, “shall come to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them… to ponder and dream.” The Conservation Fund’s book which I edited, The Civil War Battlefield Guide, includes 384 battlefields. Seventy authorities on the war contributed essays. It guides visitors, and it can also guide communities’ preservation work.
What inspired you to create The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook?
After I read the fine National Park Service (NPS) report on the preservation of the historic sites of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, I became fascinated by these stories and thought how exciting it would be for Americans to read a guide to these historic places that was also a guide to leading books on the Revolution. The book took shape around 147 places in the NPS report, described primarily in excerpts from about 100 outstanding books.
Did you learn anything from researching and editing The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook that surprised you?
I knew that there were loyalists, Americans who opposed independence, but I was surprised to learn about the tragic results of the many battles between the patriots and the loyalists; one of the worst was fought in October 1780 at Kings Mountain National Military Park in South Carolina.
And surprise may be an understatement of my response to learning about the strength and courage of twenty-five-year-old Colonel Henry Knox who dragged nearly 60 pieces of artillery across more than 200 miles of ice and snow from Fort Ticonderoga to General Washington in Cambridge in early 1776. The artillery enabled Washington to force the British to evacuate Boston on March 17, 1776.
How do you hope people will use this book and your previous one, The Civil War Battlefield Guide, to experience these places?
Learning in historic places enables visitors to feel, for example, the presence of George Washington at Mount Vernon, the hope in Independence Hall, and the tragic losses at Gettysburg — while reading about them in the guide. And being in historic places helps us to remember what we learned as a visitor – and to ponder our nation’s history.
"Being in historic places helps us to remember what we learned as a visitor – and to ponder our nation’s history."— Frances Kennedy
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