'TWAS CHARLOTTE, NOT CHARLIE
SACKETS HARBOR — Visitors can get a new look at the past when the Sackets Harbor Battlefield State Historic Site opens for the season Friday. After a new research effort, historians have revised their understanding of family life at the commandant's house during the years when Commandant Josiah Tattnall led the Navy yard in that role.
A team of researchers from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation bustled about the house Tuesday, rearranging furniture and changing rooms to reflect what they say is a more accurate interpretation of the lives of the Tattnall family's children and servants, who lived there for two brief stints in the mid-1800s.
The building dates from the late 1840s, and about a dozen different commandants occupied it with their families between 1848 and the 1870s, said Constance B. Barone, manager of the battlefield site.
Ms. Barone prompted the new research when she asked the historians who set up the Tattnall home exhibit in the late 1980s to look into the lives of the children and servants there.
The most interesting revelation the new research turned up was the likelihood that an adult child of the family was not, as previously thought, a son named Charles, but instead, a daughter named Charlotte.
Joseph Thatcher and Robin Campbell, historians from the Peebles Island Resource Center, a Waterford office for state historic preservation, said they had relied on 1860s census data when they first restored the house to reflect Tattnall family life. According to that data, three adult sons and two adult daughters — five of the Tattnalls' 10 children — lived in the home when their father served as commandant, including a son named Charles.
But Charles Tattnall was a bit of a mystery, said Mr. Thatcher and Ms. Campbell, who returned Tuesday to the exhibit they set up two decades ago, armed with new research unearthed by Mr. Thatcher, now a volunteer after his retirement in 2002. Aside from one appearance in the 1860 census, Mr. Thatcher said, Charles Tattnall left no records behind, no trace of his life.
And there was another mystery: a daughter named Charlotte, who had left clues of her life behind, but was conspicuously absent from the census data. Not only was she not recorded as living in Sackets Harbor in 1860; she wasn't recorded in census data anywhere in the country.
Researchers knew about Charlotte because she was referred to in records as being sickly. Her name also showed up on a list of items the Tattnall family left behind at the commandant's house when Josiah defected to the Confederacy during the Civil War. The federal government confiscated the property of "rebels" and sold the Tattnalls' things at auction in Watertown in 1863. Long after the war, relatives submitted a list of the items to the government —- including a box of Charlotte's clothing — as part of a claim for compensation.
So Charlotte was known to exist, but was not recorded anywhere in the 1860 census. And "Charles" had left no traces behind, except his name in the census. Lights went off: was the historical mystery solved?
"What if Charlotte was called 'Charlie'? All the kids had nicknames," explained Ms. Campbell. "The census taker must have been wrong!"
To reflect the change in hypothesis about the Tattnall children, the researchers, along with Ms. Barone and employees of the battlefield site, decided to do some last-minute rearranging of the commandant's house. A bedroom thought to be used by three boys will open for tours Friday as a bedroom for three young women. And the room previously thought to belong to two sisters will reopen as sleeping quarters for two brothers.
Other changes are in the works as well — including updates to the servants' quarters in the attic, and the addition of a rare Chinese sewing table to the daughters' bedroom.
The changes to the house and the new information that will be presented during tours may also give visitors a new reason to drop in, Ms. Barone said. The process "shows how history isn't stale and dead, that you're always finding out new information," she added.
Starting Friday, the site will be open for the season from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and from 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. The battlefield will be open Memorial Day, when special activities are planned there and in the village. Call 646-3634 for more information.
