Defiant home: a material biography of the Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith historic site in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Abstract

This paper considers the current project by LancasterHistory, Lancaster county’s historical society, to restore the home and law office of Radical Republican congressman Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868) at 45-47 South Queen Street. Stevens lived in the Lancaster house with Lydia Hamilton Smith (1813-1884), a Black woman employed as his housekeeper, between about 1856-1868. Smith purchased the property after Stevens’ death with a substantial bequest left to her in his will. After her death in 1884, the house was neglected by preservationists as both Stevens and Smith were vilified in the historiography of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The building was repurposed as a series of rental apartments, retail spaces, and eventually an automobile repair shop. LancasterHistory is now in the process of developing the house into a historic site and museum honoring the legacies of both Stevens and Smith. This thesis is based on research undertaken to support a historic furnishing plan for two first-floor spaces that will eventually be interpreted as approximate recreations of the nineteenth-century parlor and law office. This paper examines the material history of the house itself, particularly the ways in which it intersects with the broader historiography of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Considering how and why the house was disregarded by preservationists until the early twenty-first century, this thesis proposes several ways in which a material history of the house on South Queen Street may meaningfully contribute to restoring the complex biographies of Stevens and Smith.