The Hennepin History Museum offers exhibits, an historic mansion setting, and archival collections. Its exhibition and education programs have grown from a focus on original Hennepin County settlers to documenting the wide range of people who make up the county today.
The museum offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, research library access, lectures, and occasional recreational and educational events.
The Association's museum connects you with 5,000 years of human history in southwest coastal Florida by collecting, preserving, and interpreting the objects and traditions significant to the region's past. Visitors to the 30-acre archaeological site can experience prehistory by stepping inside "A Window to the Past," a unique exhibition about the gulf coast region's earliest people. Florida's pioneer life is explored by living history interpreters and by touring a home built in 1901, a citrus packing house, and Mary's Chapel. Strolling through one of the largest butterfly gardens in the region and the early 1900s formal gardens created by Mrs. Potter Palmer as part of her winter estate are a great way for visitors to learn about Florida's natural environments.
Educational offerings include field trips and hands-on activities related to pioneer life and archaeology. These docent led tours have served over 4,000 students per year since 1982.
The History Museum is located in Springfield's Historic City Hall. This impressive structure, built in 1894 and used originally as the U.S. Customhouse and Post Office, allowed the Museum to open its first permanent exhibit on this region's history. Titled "Crossroads at the Spring," it tells the local story from the coming of the first people to southwest Missouri 12,000 years ago up to 1957, when Springfield was voted an All-American City.
The museum offers a short film, exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events.
Kingston, rich in antebellum history, displays its pride through artifacts, scrapbooks, and photographs in two museums maintained by the Kingston Woman's History Club. The newest museum, the Martha Mulinix Annex, opened in April 1998 and displays material about Kingston and the surrounding area. The Civil War museum portrays Kingston's role in the Civil War along with memorabilia from past Kingston Confederate Memorial Day Observances (the oldest such ceremony in the nation).
The museums offer exhibits.
Cason Cottage was built circa 1924 by Reverend and Mrs. John R. Cason. Some of their descendants still live in Delray Beach. Rev. Cason was a Methodist minister and community leader. The Cottage is a vernacular-style house with craftsman cottage details, solidly constructed of Dade County pine. The Society maintains the museum as a permanent exhibit that reflects Delray Beach history and South Florida lifestyle c. 1915-1935. The Society’s Ethel Sterling Williams History Learning Center at 111 N. Swinton Avenue houses the archives documenting Delray Beach history and is open for local history research on Wednesday through Friday from 9:30 to 4:30 and by appointment.
The DBHS offers exhibits, tours, lectures and educational programs. Call for more information.
The escarpment's scenic canyons were home for Indians of several cultures, including the Folsom culture of more than 10,000 years ago. The region's historic era began when Spanish explorer Coronado traveled across the plains in 1541. After Spanish colonies were established in New Mexico around 1600, two-way trade between Plains Indians and New Mexicans began and gradually increased. The Plains Apache acquired horses and became proficient buffalo hunters. They were displaced by the Comanche, who arrived in the early 1700s and dominated northwestern Texas, until they were finally subdued in the 1870s. During the Comanche reign, trade prospered and New Mexican buffalo hunters, known as ciboleros, and traders, known as Comancheros, were frequent visitors to this area. Las Lenguas Creek, a few miles south of the park, was a major trade area, and a site excavated on Quitaque Creek has produced artifacts indicating that it may have been a cibolero camp.
The park offers tours and educational and recreational events and programs.
The Society operates museums housed in several historic buildings, with exhibits and collections interpreting both the history of the buildings and the community. The buildings include the 1901 courthouse, the 1900 Customs House, the 1900 mule barn, the 1901 non-commissioned officers quarters, and the waterwagon shed.
The museums offer exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events.
The Mason County Historical Society Museum presents the history of Mason County, WA, and its people. Exhibit topics include oystering, logging, farming, railroading, and rural life in the 1930s.
The museum offers exhibits. Reservations are required for all group visits.
The San Marcos Historical Society is a local organization dedicated to the archiving and preservation of the history of San Marcos. It operates a museum, as well as a Heritage Park containing two restored historical structures: the 1888 Cox House and the 1890 Bidwell House.
Both the museum and the park offer tours and exhibits.
When the 13 colonies first rebelled against England, they called on the help of established nations—including France and Spain—to succeed. After the Revolutionary War, the newborn United States gradually began to take part in world affairs itself, making payments and treaties, waging war, and withholding or offering aid. Today, the U.S. maneuvers its way through a constant web of decisions. Who does it choose to help and how? What kind of aid should it offer? Military? Economic? Social? When and why does it withhold aid? How have the choices it makes today grown out of those made in the past?
Following the March 11 earthquake that rocked Japan, your students may have questions about the U.S. and international aid. Or maybe they're curious about the uprisings in the Middle East, a part of the world with which the U.S. has a complicated history of trade, war, and aid.
A good place to start learning about U.S. aid history is, appropriately enough, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Established in 1961 in an effort to separate non-military and military aid, USAID combined the social and economic aid efforts of a number of smaller initiatives under one "roof." Though the website's history page is dense, it provides a sense of the complexity of aid issues. If you want to dig a little deeper (and read a little more), download the primer on USAID. (The section on "Responding to Crises" may be particularly relevant right now.)
For statements on current events, check out the Senior Staff Speeches and Testimony section. Press releases also feature current information. For a broader view, search by location to learn more about USAID's work in Haiti, Egypt, Thailand, and other nations. Browse issues of USAID's newsletter, FrontLines, starting in 2003, to see what's been given the most press in the past few years.
Ready to head further back in time? In our Ask a Historian feature, look at aid in the Middle East, both non-military and military, during the 1950s.
Skip back a few years more and learn about the Marshall Plan, a well-known precursor of USAID designed to help Europe rebuild following World War II. USAID's small online exhibit on the Plan features audio, visual, and text primary sources, while the Library of Congress hosts an exhibit on the Plan. If you need more primary sources, try the document collection Truman & the Marshall Plan at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.
Of course, U.S international aid didn't begin with the 20th century and isn't limited to the federal government. Read up on the history of the American branch of the Red Cross, an organization founded by Clara Barton in the late 19th century. (The bibliography in the "Students" section recommends American author Pearl S. Buck's 1948 children's novel The Big Wave for learning about tsunamis. You might consider introducing this novel to students as a primary source itself, reflective of Buck and the context in which she wrote.)
Consider having students trace the U.S.'s relationship with a particular country or region back in time. For instance, what part is the U.S. playing in events in Libya now? What is our stance on the country and events there? What was it back in the early years of the U.S.? (For an idea, listen to historian Christine Sears describe the First Barbary War, one of the U.S.'s early overseas conflicts.) Between then and now, how has our position changed and evolved? Have we given aid or taken it away? When and how?
As it has grown in power, the U.S. has shifted in its relationship to other parts of the world again and again. Exploring the history of international aid might help you (or your students) follow these shifts through time and gain a better understanding of responses and relationships today.