The group of several dozen children from summer camps in Frayser, Whitehaven and Hickory Hill entered through the front doors of the Woodruff-Fontaine House Thursday in Victorian Village.

Normally, tours of the Victorian-era home begin from a side entrance.

But Elena Williams, president of the Memphis chapter of the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities, wanted the children to get the front-door view of the house and make a connection between the opulence and the wealthy black Memphians of the 19th century they would learn about soon after that.

APTA operates the house, built in 1871, for the city of Memphis. Williams is the first African-American to lead the Memphis chapter.

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“I wanted to bring to life the stories of wealthy African-Americans in the Victorian era,” she said of the exhibit that debuted with Thursday’s tour group from Agape Child and Family Services. “A lot of people don’t know there were wealthy African-Americans.”

And Williams said black Memphians regard the house as being about white history.

“We’ve not been telling the whole story because Victorian life encompassed African-Americans,” she said. “My vision is to expand – 68% of the population of the city is African-American and we would love to have more African-American groups and families to come and see the history.”

Williams began pursuing the exhibit for the city’s bicentennial year after Belle Meade mansion in Nashville, another APTA property, recently opened an exhibit exploring the slave quarters there. Similar attention has been given to the lives of slaves at Monticello and Mount Vernon. It is also a part of the tour of the nearby circa 1852 Mallory-Neely House in Victorian Village.

The Woodruff-Fontaine House has a different story because it was built after emancipation but during the transition from Reconstruction into the Jim Crow era.

African-Americans were being elected to local and state office in Memphis about the time the house was being built. Seven years after it was completed, a black militia group protected the city’s food supply from a mob in Court Square at the height of the worst of the city’s Yellow Fever epidemics in 1878.

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The children on Thursday’s tour found photos and information about Robert R. Church Sr., the South’s first black millionaire, and attorney Josiah Settle, who served as an assistant attorney general and challenged Jim Crow segregation laws in court.

The exhibit also includes Dr. Georgia Washington Patton, a physician born into slavery who was the first black woman to practice medicine in Memphis. She was also the state’s first African-American woman licensed as a surgeon and physician.

The exhibit is from research by Earnestine Jenkins, professor of art history at the University of Memphis.

“We don’t have slave history here. Slaves did not build this house,” Williams said. “The slave story is being told. But the stories of the wealthy African-Americans, even though many of them descended from slavery … are not being told. I thought there was a need for us.”

The children are in an Agape summer program called “Around the World in Six Weeks.”

“We focus on the time period from 1871 to about 1928,” said Jacquelyn Darby of Agape. “This will help them learn more about the history of Memphis. This is something very different for them.”

Some of the children had a different description. “Creepy” was used several times in close proximity to “fun.”

The “creepy” part to some of the children was the old toys of children about their age and learning that people had died in the house.

Past the big trees on the front lawn and the ornate doors, the children looked at the wooden floors and mannequins garbed in elaborate formal wear from a distant time. They made their way up the narrow stairs, pausing just long enough to look up at a large stained glass window. The bright shards of color were made brighter by the summer sun, radiating and spilling onto the stairs landing on their faces.

As imposing as the house seemed to many of the children, their laughter and observations brought to life a house that was home to two families long before Thursday’s visitors or their parents were born.

“I learned more about history and how people were here,” said one girl, who looked over the Victorian dresses and concluded it would take a long time to get dressed.

The tour included explanations for 21st-century children about the architecture and how things worked in the 19th century, “why the ceilings are so tall, reminders of children who lived in the house,” Williams said. “Just basically trying to give them an education, not only on the history but on the lifestyle.”