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Join the Friends of the Owens-Thomas House

An active Telfair Museums Membership is required for eligibility to join/renew our Member Groups.

Select your level below to join or renew your FOT membership:

$100 Individual »

$150 Dual »

$250 Richard Richardson »

$500 George W. Owens »

$1,000 Margaret Gray Thomas »

The Friends of the Owens-Thomas House, or FOT, is a group of Telfair Museums members especially interested in architecture, decorative arts, and history. Their contributions support continued preservation and interpretation efforts at the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters, public programming, and emerging scholarship. Members enjoy special access to tours and lectures, invitations to events like the annual Champagne Garden Party, and exclusive visits to museums, historic homes, and private collections.

Upcoming Events

Join us for these exciting FOT events!

FOT Bourbon Wassail

December 5 at 5:30pm Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters
Come celebrate the holiday season at this annual favorite event presented by The Friends of the Owens-Thomas House. Come celebrate the holiday season at this annual favorite event. Enjoy warm beverages, tasty treats, and local music in the garden at the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters.

Elite Women’s Education at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century with Dr. Lizzie Rogers

The historic house, in town or country, was a perfect resource to a girl, or woman, wanting to learn or gain an education during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Libraries, collections, art, wealth, and people were all at their fingertips: but of course, how accessible were these things to women? This period saw a shift, through the intellectual movement of the enlightenment, in ideas and knowledge practices that led some philosophers, like John Locke, to effectively argue that women were held back by poor education, not by their own state of being. What could a woman learn? What should or shouldn’t she know? Through the words of women from this period, and published writers such as Jane Austen (from whose Pride and Prejudice the title quotation is taken), Mary Wollstonecraft and Maria Edgeworth, this talk explores some of the ways ideas about women’s education in this period were reshaped, how elite women learned and accessed knowledge, and their experiences of doing so.
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Elite Women’s Education at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century with Dr. Lizzie Rogers

The historic house, in town or country, was a perfect resource to a girl, or woman, wanting to learn or gain an education during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Libraries, collections, art, wealth, and people were all at their fingertips: but of course, how accessible were these things to women? This period saw a shift, through the intellectual movement of the enlightenment, in ideas and knowledge practices that led some philosophers, like John Locke, to effectively argue that women were held back by poor education, not by their own state of being. What could a woman learn? What should or shouldn’t she know? Through the words of women from this period, and published writers such as Jane Austen (from whose Pride and Prejudice the title quotation is taken), Mary Wollstonecraft and Maria Edgeworth, this talk explores some of the ways ideas about women’s education in this period were reshaped, how elite women learned and accessed knowledge, and their experiences of doing so.