At National Trust Historic Sites, women’s history is existential. At New Mexico’s Acoma Pueblo, one of the oldest inhabited communities in North America, lineage and inheritance are matrilineal—women are the heads of their households and sole ownership of the houses passes from mothers to their youngest daughters. Mary Weeks’ husband died before construction of The Shadows on the Teche was completed, and she actively stewarded it, as well as the family’s agricultural enterprises, over the next 30 years. The riotous colors of the gardens at Filoli are the work of garden designer Isabella Worn, who developed the plant specifications, supervised the original plantings, and continued to work in the gardens until her death more than 30 years later. And the Farnsworth House, a Modernist icon, is named not for Mies van der Rohe but for the remarkable woman, Dr. Edith Farnsworth—a nephrologist and classically trained violinist—who commissioned and paid for its construction on the banks of the Fox River in Plano, Illinois.

Many of our National Trust Historic Sites were also preserved by women. They were typically motivated not by their own legacies but by the desire to secure the legacies of men—of their husbands, their fathers, or their husbands’ families or of famous men who had occupied or built the homes. By the time she bequeathed Decatur House to the National Trust in 1956, Marie Oge Beale had lived a remarkable life. She travelled to places where few American women had been able to venture in the early 20th century—like Iran and Peru—and became a legendary Washington hostess known for carefully orchestrated receptions for the diplomatic corps and for reprimanding a young Senator John F. Kennedy when he arrived late for dinner at her Lafayette Square home. But it was the legacy of naval hero Stephen Decatur and her husband’s family that she sought to promote and preserve by writing Decatur House and Its Inhabitants; by fighting an executive branch attempt to destroy the residential character of the president’s neighborhood; and ultimately by giving her home to the National Trust to serve as its first formal headquarters and one of its first historic sites.

Villa Finale has just funded a new edition of a book on the prints of Texas artist Mary Bonner, whose work is a part of the National Trust’s collection there. At The Glass House, the photographs of Lynn Davis are represented both in the permanent collection—in pieces selected by Philip Johnson and David Whitney—and in On Ice, a stunning exhibition currently on view at the site that brings her contemporary work into the site’s Painting Gallery.

I sometimes wonder what the women who preserved these places would think of the stories we tell there today. What would Marie Beale think about the fact that Decatur House tells the story of Charlotte Dupuy, who was enslaved in the household of Secretary of State Henry Clay when he rented the home and who sued him for her and her children’s freedom? What would Anna and Helen Gould think of our focus on the women who worked in the laundry? What would Elizabeth Carter think about the fact that her carefully kept diary informs our interpretation of Oatlands? We use it not only to tell the story of Carter, a woman who managed a large Virginia plantation through the Civil War and Reconstruction, but also as the basis of a database that allows researchers to identify the men, women, and children who were enslaved on the property. I am certain these women would be surprised, and I am not entirely sure they would be pleased. Many of them lived very privileged lives, their roles and their worlds narrowly defined and their prejudices often representing the worst of their times.

So we don’t do this for them, we do it for ourselves and, even more so, for those who will come after us. We participate in the continuing evolution of these places in order to support their ongoing relevance. I do hope that the women who played critical roles in preserving these places would be pleased that more than half of our National Trust Historic Sites are led by women directors, not to mention the women board and advisory council chairs, curators, educators, horticulturalists, and preservation directors who work every day to make the sites sustainable and relevant for the long term. And I hope they would also appreciate the men who lead and work at our sites, also committed to ensuring that they tell the full stories of the women who shaped them.