Sometimes One Has To Say No

[Laurie Verge]

As much as Surratt House loves being featured on TV and in films, we recently had to turn down an offer from the Nat Geo Channel. As most of you know, the recent Killing Lincoln docu-drama, produced by our own Erik Jendresen, had the highest audience showing of any program of that sort that the channel had produced.

I'm sure that the interest generated by that program led to my receiving a phone call several weeks ago from a Nat Geo representative who works with their program called Diggers. This deals with the subject of archaeology. Needless to say, the diggers wanted to dig on our property.

Our property has been extensively studied by professional archaeologists who are part of the government agency which owns us. Digs have gone on in the 1970s, again before we added the kitchen wing in the 1980s, again when we acquired the building now used as our visitors' center (the existing lawn became a parking lot, so digs were done before the bulldozers came), and the same thing happened when we acquired the property for our research center. We have boxes and boxes and a showcase filled with artifacts.

Surratt House is a nationally known site and is on the National Register. It also has an easement with the Maryland Historical Trust (which has to grant permission - and that is quite a process). That said, it is standard policy with any such site that no archaeological investigations should be done without a legitimate reason. TV ratings (even though there is an element of education involved) are not legitimate reasons, and archaeological resources are non-renewable.

Needless to say, our archaeologists were not happy at the thought of the crew being here. They even quoted from a position paper that a national organization of professional archaeologists have presented in protest to such programs as Diggers.

I have learned from past experience that, everytime we participated in a ghostly program for some channel, we would be inundated with ghost chasing visitors for the next month or so. The thought of visitors arriving after hours with metal detectors did cross my mind also.

I turned the program down, and they proceeded to go over my head. However, I am happy to report that my superiors stood firm with my decision. In fact, my division chief suggested that, if they wanted to keep the theme of the Lincoln assassination, they might consider the Mudd house or the pine thicket for their project. Whatever it takes to protect one's historic site.