Gwen Betor regales a group of Eden Elementary students with stories of what it was like growing up in Greenfield in the mid-1800s. Betor is a longtime docent at the James Whitcomb Riley Boyhood Home & Museum, which recently resumed its popular school tours after a two-year hiatus due to COVID.
Shelley Swift | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD — School tours have resumed at the James Whitcomb Riley Boyhood Home & Museum after more than a two-year hiatus due to COVID.
On Wednesday, tour guide Gwen Betor pulled two white gloves from her pocket and slipped them onto her hands as she prepared for a group of third-graders from Eden Elementary to descend upon the historic home at 250 W. Main St. in Greenfield.
She and fellow docents Mary Greenan, Phyllis Arthur and Linda Comstock-Teel have given sporadic tours over the past two years — with masks and other safety precautions in place — but school tours only resumed this month.
Teachers seemed happy to get back to the hometown tradition, given the fact nearly 325 students had already come through to tour the museum so far this month.
“It’s so important for kids to know the people who lived in their town. Riley was the Hoosier Poet. It’s so important for them to know that he was born right here in Greenfield,” said Betor as she stood in the bedroom where Riley slept as a boy.
Once the students filed up the curved staircase to join Betor upstairs, she regaled them with stories about what life was like growing up in Greenfield in the mid-1800s.
She told them how Main Street used to be a dirt road filled with horses pulling carriages into town, and how a lack of modern plumbing made life a bit more challenging.
“Does anyone see a bathroom in here, or a bathtub?” she asked. “That’s because there aren’t any. On Saturdays, they would bring a bathtub into the kitchen for everyone to take turns in. Men were first, women were second and children were third,” she said, to the chorus of collective moans.
The students giggled and gasped when Betor showed them a chamber pot, which the home’s occupants would use if they didn’t want to make the walk down the stairs and through the backyard to the outhouse.
Their teacher, Erin Cain, has brought countless groups of students to tour the Riley Home in her 20 years of teaching. She was happy to be back touring the home and museum on Wednesday, teaching yet another set of students a bit of local lore.
“I think it’s a great way to teach them about someone significant that grew up right here in their community, and a great way to give them a first-hand lesson in history,” she said. “They get the chance to learn about this person who has such a strong connection to their city, and to the festival that brings the community together each year.”
Cain said many of Riley’s poems — which number over 1,000 — are also incorporated into the students’ lessons on poetry throughout the year.
Ten-year-old Wyatt Barnhart was among the third graders staring wide-eyed at some of Riley’s historic artifacts on Wednesday as the docents led the students around on their tour.
“I like history,” said Barnhart. “Someone related to me helped build the (Hancock County) courthouse, and I think that’s pretty cool.”
