Paul Szmal: Welcome back to FLX Morning. It is 8.15 and I'm joined by Kate Grindstaff from the Seward House Museum. Kate, good to have you back on board. How are you this morning?
Kate Grindstaff: I am doing fantastic, Paul. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Enjoying the sunshine here this morning and hopefully the sun will shine on Friday for the lunchtime lecture program that is coming up. I love the title of this. It's called The Problem with Olive.
Kate Grindstaff: Yes, yes. So we are very excited to offer this. Of course, we have our lunchtime lectures every month, but this is going to be the very first one that is held in our newly reopened barn and carriage house, which we just finished renovating. So that is going to be at noon to one and it's going to be free as usual. And it's going to be given by one of our past interns and current interns, Allie Brown. She spent her internship last year studying olive. She wanted to know a little bit more about Olive Risley and actually did her entire senior thesis around this topic. So it's going to be really, really good research.
Paul Szmal: And for anybody who doesn't know, Olive Risley is the adopted daughter of Henry and Francis. Well, really just William Henry Seward himself. Francis had passed away by this point. And there is a bit of a controversy surrounding her. She did end up receiving part of the inheritance. So some of the other siblings were not very happy about that. There were also some pretty scandalous rumors between Olive and William Henry Seward. So it'll be very juicy. It'll be a very good story to learn more about.
And also coming up in celebration of June 15th on June 19th, something special.
Kate Grindstaff: Yes. So the way that we are celebrating Juneteenth this year is that we are offering free tours. So it's going to be the same as a regular day. We're going to have our seven tours a day starting at 10. Last one starting at four. But they are all going to be free. We do highly recommend that people make reservations, however, because we can only take a certain number of people on our tours. So we can stay within the capacity of the house.
We are also participating in Civic Season, which is starting on Juneteenth as well. And that is going to be a social media campaign. So follow us, like us on Instagram. You're going to be doing a lot of videos that explore civics and how the Sewards were involved with civics. And that will be going on through June or starting Juneteenth and going through the fourth of July.
Paul Szmal: And I know that you just had a First Friday community event this past Friday. How did that go?
Kate Grindstaff: It went really well. So we again had the Barn and Carriage House open and we had some very lovely musicians and poets, Aduna, the Sova Sisters. They were playing within the barn and people got to enjoy that new space. And then, of course, we also had our regular open rooms at the museum, along with our local artist show, which was by Blake Chamberlain this month. He's got some fantastic cat paintings and he also does some colorful paintings of Tubman Seward and Francis Seward as well. So it went very well.
Paul Szmal: And I know that there won't be a First Friday event coming up in July, but that's because Fourth of July happens to fall on the first Friday of July.
Kate Grindstaff: Correct.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Kate Grindstaff from the Seward House Museum. I wanted to kind of look ahead a little bit into the month of July because there were a couple of interesting things that I saw, one of them being the Ghost Tours of Auburn on July 11th.
Kate Grindstaff: Yes. So normally we just have our Haunted History Tours, which are a big hit in late October, of course, around Halloween. But they are so popular that we were deciding that maybe we should offer some over the summer as well. So this is the first time that we are going to be offering these types of tours at this time of the year. But if anybody is interested, you can come on July 11th. We're also doing it on July 25th. It's going to be $10 for members, $15 for non-members, and reservations are required. And they're going to be starting at 7.30. Normally for Haunted History, we have two tours a night. These are just going to be one tour a night. So if you can come from 7.30 to 8.30, you can learn a lot more spooky stories about Auburn and how the Sewards are related to those spooky stories.
Paul Szmal: And also one of the centerpieces of the July calendar at the Seward House Museum is the Hands-On History Camp.
Kate Grindstaff: Of course, yes. So if anybody is interested in signing their children up, we do offer our annual Hands-On History Camp this year. It's going to be July 21st through 25th. And this is a collaboration with the Cayuga Museum, Seymour Library, and the National Park Service, Harriet Tubman National Historical Park. And it's for children's ages 8 to 10. And we all host different days at different sites and do lots of activities that correlate to each other and also focus on the specific histories of each of our sites.
And then we have a final activity that the kids will be working on all week. This year it is going to be a stop-motion Lego building that will relate to the historical activities at each site. And then the kids will present those to their parents, grandparents, anybody who would like to come on Friday. So it's always a very, very good time. We do still have spots available if anybody would like to sign up. Just a couple more spots.
Paul Szmal: All right. And the specialty tours are still being offered as well on a pre-booked basis, correct?
Kate Grindstaff: Yes, people can always book a specialty tour. It's for 6 to 16 people. They're an hour and a half long. And we have them on most of the subjects that you would ever want to focus on specifically around the Sewards, like his relationship with Lincoln, Francis's story, focuses on other children of the house, the Civil War, slavery, and abolition. Anything you can think of, we probably have a specialty tour on it just for you.
Paul Szmal: And find out more information. Where can people go, Kate?
Kate Grindstaff: Yeah. Well, if you would like any general information or booking tours or purchasing tickets, anything like that, please go to our website at SewardHouse.org. If you're interested in signing a child up for Hands-on History Camp, please email me at outreach at SewardHouse.org.
Paul Szmal: All right, Kate. As always, we appreciate the information and we'll chat with you again next month.
Kate Grindstaff: Thank you.
Paul Szmal: Of course. Thank you. It is 823 on FLX morning.
