As the museum operations coordinator at Lang Pioneer Village Museum, Hailey Doughty inspires visitors to find their connection to the land and the history of the region.
But after more than 20 years of involvement with Keene’s living history museum, only recently has Doughty discovered her own direct family tie to the museum’s blacksmith shop.
“One thing I love about Lang is no matter what walk of life you’re in, there’s something here that will connect you,” Doughty says. “Especially for my job, it’s all about making sure that Lang is here not only as an education source and tourism attraction, but it’s connecting people to their past and to Peterborough County.”
Even before she was born, Lang played an important role in Doughty’s life as it was where her parents were married and where her maternal grandmother worked until her retirement.
Doughty, herself, began “living the pioneer life” as a volunteer at just five years old before moving into various positions as a youth volunteer, seasonal worker, part-time worker, and into her current full-time role.
Over more than 20 years, the novelty of working at the living history museum has never faded for Doughty.
“Now we’re always glued to our phones and what’s happening on the news, so it’s definitely a brush of fresh air when I go out and step back in time,” Doughty says. “As a kid, I loved the idea that there was someone who built this house or someone who worked in the shop and I got to talk about it in their perspective.”
“I really liked that idea of keeping their memory alive, even as a kid, and I thought it was so neat to talk about people who I’d never known, but I felt a weird connection to.”
Despite her decades of involvement in the museum and her family’s interest in genealogy, it was only earlier this year when Doughty began researching her paternal ancestry.
When she came across the name Rosella Kidd, it rang a bell in her head, but she didn’t immediately recognize the significance. It was only when she was walking past the museum village’s blacksmith shop one day and heard the interpreter refer to Daniel Kidd that she realized she was connected to Lang.
Upon digging deeper, Doughty learned Daniel Kidd, who not only worked in the shop but built it in Warsaw in 1859, is her four-times great uncle. Kidd had begun his apprenticeship at the age of 15 in Keene, but eventually gave the shop to his son who turned it into a mechanic shop.
“It’s funny because I never had given it another look,” says Doughty in reference to the blacksmith shop. “I was always in the buildings with the hearth or the stoves, or I was weaving and printing, but I never really thought about the blacksmith shop until I made that connection.”
When she realized the seasonal blacksmith interpreter was moving on from Lang, Doughty considered it a good opportunity to learn more about the trade herself so she could train the new staff who would come in next season.
After telling her father James Doughty that she was taking a three-day intensive course in Warkworth to learn the trade, he decided to join her on the journey to connect to their lineage.
“I thought it would be such a cool thing to have three generations (of the same family) working in the same blacksmith shop,” she says. “It was almost inspirational to think I’m doing this for my four-times great uncle. If he could do it, then it’s in my blood and that gave me the confidence to try and go for it.”
She admits that getting the hang of the trade wasn’t always easy and says it “made me feel muscles I had never worked before.”
“It was such a good thing to do with my dad because I had those moments where I’m pounding on this metal, but then I look over and there’s my dad having a grand old time,” she says.
“This is not only so cool for him and I to share as father and daughter, but we’re reconnecting with our heritage together.”
According to Doughty, the course also “ignited a passion” in her father.
“He’s always understood Lang is something that was in our family connection but now he’s getting to spark that joy that has always been there for me and my grandma,” she says.
“It’s cool to see your dad be like a little kid. I can’t wait until the spring to get back in the shop and working away. He’s ecstatic, so we’ve got the countdown to when we can be back in the blacksmith shop and do some more creative things.”
Beyond her personal journey in connecting to her ancestry, Doughty explains there’s a lot that can be learned from engaging in a 19th century trade skill.
“We’re so used to a world of instant where you can check your banking right away, and everything is go, go, go,” she says. “So going from that to then going into something that’s from the eighteen and nineteenth century, it takes you a while to learn that you can’t be perfect right off the start.”
Doughty hopes that the discovery of her family connection and the new passion it ignited in her might support museum visitors in finding their own connections to history.
“One thing about Lang is that you’re continually learning,” Doughty says. “Knowing that now I have this family connection and I can speak to that, it’s probably going to inspire a seasonal worker, a volunteer, or a visitor to then go and look into their own family history.”
Lang Pioneer Village Museum was established by Peterborough County in 1967 to commemorate the centennial of Canada’s Confederation and to celebrate and preserve the rural history of the area. The 25-acre site features over 30 restored and furnished historic buildings constructed between 1825 and 1910, as well as several replica buildings.
For more information, visit www.langpioneervillage.ca.
