“Samplers are one of the most well-preserved pieces of needlework we have.”

That’s what the woman on the left told me – the woman in blue with the kind smile.

She was one of the wonderful historical interpreters at Eppington Plantation’s Spring Festival in Chesterfield, Virginia. 

I trust that this woman knows what she’s talking about. Just look at her needlework 👀 This is the back of her cross stitch sampler – the back, y’all. It’s flawless! 

She said we have so many samplers from centuries ago in excellent condition because families cared for them and passed them down to their children. Why?

• Practical Value: Mothers gave to their daughters to help them learn embroidery patterns. 
• Personal Value: Women were simply proud of their work and left them for their daughters and granddaughters to remember them by. 

The sampler (and everything!) at the Spring Festival got me thinking about legacy and what one generation passes on to the next.

Here are 2 gifts from Virginians of yesteryear that I enjoyed at Eppington Plantation’s Spring Festival – and then, 5 lessons learned.

1. Recipes! 🥧📝

Thanks to Mary Randolph’s 1824 book of recipes (and to the enslaved women who cooked the delicious food in Randolph’s kitchen), a historian in 2024 was able to bake a couple of gorgeous Baked Apple Puddings and include them on this table bursting with bounty.

2. Music. 

Visit my Instagram for musical clips of historical interpreters playing a banjo on Eppington’s back porch, folks playing Revolutionary War era music, and the Richmond Cadet Alumni Band playing “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”

And here for more photos of the Spring Festival.

Maybe it was the orchestra’s brass section or the soulful banjo…Listening to these tunes while strolling through the Spring Festival, a few lessons about legacy rang clear. 

Here are 5 takeaways on what to pass meaningful gifts to the next generation:

(Lesson #1) The future will value our tech differently.

What we pass down may have a different value from one generation to the next. Really, there’s no telling what they’ll do with it. 

I sure enjoyed the carriage ride around Eppington’s front lawn. But it was for fun, not serious transportation like they used it for.

And I’ve always enjoyed the embroidered sampler hanging under the blue clock in my parent’s kitchen. But when I wanted to learn how to cross stitch, I didn’t examine it to learn the different stitches. I practiced with YouTube videos.  

And when I have the occasion to make this baked apple pudding pie, I won’t build a fire and arrange cast iron cookery onto it like this man was doing at Eppington.

As technology advances, future generations may not see things the way we do or use it like we do. But that doesn’t mean they won’t value it.

Still…some things never go out of style.

My toddler loved kicking the antique leather ball and whacking those hoops around with a stick. And that banjo was delightful as ever 🪕 

(Lesson #2) Let future generations test the value of what we give them.

A lot of the historians at Eppington Plantation’s Spring Festival were from the Henricus Historical Park. One of the interesting conversations I had with them was at the tobacco booth. The historical interpreter told me how influential tobacco production was in the early years of settling Virginia. Because tobacco was such a lucrative cash crop, farmers wanted more field hands to harvest more tobacco and make more money. This demand for more workers brought many indentured servants and enslaved people to the colony. 

Tobacco meant immense wealth to some and a lifetime of hard labor to others. Tobacco ruined the health of millions of people, yet it was also a key component in building Virginia and this nation. All of those contradictory realities about tobacco are true.

The tobacco booth at the Spring Festival was a powerful example of why we must allow future generations to reevaluate the things passed down to them. Just as we now see the profound downsides of the tobacco industry despite its historical economic impacts, the next generation may judge some of our current practices or inventions very differently than we do.

As we share our heritage, we need to give future generations the freedom to test what we give them and see if it is worth continuing (like the baked apple pudding pie!) or needs to change (like smoking tobacco). We cannot assume the worth of our legacy will be viewed the same way forever. By letting future generations critically examine what we leave behind, without idolizing it, they can reject the harmful while preserving and remixing the good into something better.

[Note: The Eppington Plantation Spring Festival program also included live African American storytelling from actors portraying Sally Hemmings, which I heard was amazing, but I unfortunately missed.] 

(Lesson #3) Notice and remember what’s important. 

When we share something meaningful with the next generation, we are passing on what truly matters. For Christians, it is our calling as disciples to continually remind others (and ourselves!) the gospel, help them notice God’s goodness, and remember the greatest treasure that never fades – Jesus Christ. My own daughter asks repeatedly why Jesus had to die, showing the importance of keeping the truth of the gospel ever before us. Speak it, call people to notice and remember it.

Lottie Moon learned the Christian faith, at least one cookie recipe 🍪, and a love of learning from the legacy of her parents. She inherited a strength embodied by the women of the Moon and Barclay families. Rather than keeping that heritage to herself, she used it as a foundation and paid it forward, though she had no children to directly pass it to. We still have that cookie recipe, and the church she helped start in Pingtu, China continues on. When we share what has been passed down to us, we multiply its impact beyond our own lives.

(Lesson #4) Heritage is communally shared as much as it is individually inherited.

At one point during the festival, I turned to my daughter and smiled, seeing her waving her American flag, enjoying a Boy-Scout-grilled hotdog, listening to Americana songs and spirituals by banjo at Thomas Jefferson’s brother-in-law’s historic home, Eppington. 

She must have really been feeling the patriotic/community feels because when I drove us home and told her we were in our neighborhood, she said, “It is everyone’s neighborhood because we are all together in this country.”

I suspect her heart was full of what generations had left her in the past–the music, the games, the stories–and she wanted to share it with her neighbors.

(Lesson #5) Appreciate what you had then. Appreciate what you have now.

On the way home from such a historical day, I fired up a story on the “Read Along with Mom” podcast. It so happened to be “The Little House” by Virginia Lee Burton 🏠 Have you read that one? I was captivated right away and charmed by Virginia’s writing about the beauty of life in the country – seeing the stars at night, splashing in nearby brooks, apple trees growing all around – that sort of thing. The slow sort of thing that can calm you down after a hard day of work. The natural sort of thing I pay for and travel to now on vacations from my fast-growing suburb.

I admire the author’s loving portrayal of simple joys. I imagine it might get lonely living out there, and you probably have to watch out for snakes in the brook, and farming an orchard is probably hard work. But it’s good to admire a rose even if it has thorns.

Once we got home and to the library, I got to see the illustrations and watch the city grow up and around the Little House. I see that in my town too. 

There’s a house down the street and across the road that was built almost 70 years ago. It’s a nice little rancher on the lake. They still keep the grass mowed. Twenty years ago, only fields and trees were the Little Rancher’s neighbors, and across the street was a farm with soil so rich, they made money selling bags of their dirt (true fact). Now, a Walmart stands across the street, drawing more neighbors for the Little Rancher. In fact, right next door, a strip mall just moved in with a great burger restaurant and a place where employees help you do stretch therapy or something like that. 

Even since I’ve been here, I’ve felt a touch of that loss– like when a field of wild greenery was mowed and dug to make way for what I assume are apartments, maybe condos. Wild raspberries grew there. I watched neighbors stop on the way home from work and forage. 

Please don’t hear me complain. I shop at Walmart every week. I was just as thrilled as anyone to find out we were getting that burger place. The apartments (or condos) are important because we need more housing for people. But everything comes at a cost. For starters, now we have to pay for our raspberries.

I appreciated the wild raspberries before. And I look forward to appreciating a cheeseburger when that new place opens 🍔

What do you want to give the generation coming up behind you?