Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society and Museum [NY]

Description

The Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Western New York. The society's headquarters is the only permanent structure created for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Society holdings include more than 100,000 artifacts. Highlights include the largest collection of Pan-American Exposition artifacts, the Pierce Motorette, pacemaker prototypes, and the Red Jacket Peace Medal. Other artifacts can be classified as relevant to the Iroquois, War of 1812, Erie Canal, U.S. Presidents, industrialization, glass, ceramics, paintings, textiles, aviation, or immigration.

The society offers exhibits, 30-minute exhibit tours for students, outreach presentations, and research library access. Four weeks advance notice is required for student tours. A fee is charged for use of the library by non-members. The website offers virtual exhibits, slide presentations and videos for rental, resource kits for rental, and a Buffalo timeline.

Casey Farm

Description

This mid-18th-century homestead overlooking Narragansett Bay was the center of a plantation that produced food for local and foreign markets. Located near Newport, Casey Farm had access to material goods imported from England, enabling its early owners to live in a fashionable manner. Today, resident farm managers raise organically grown vegetables, herbs, and flowers for subscribing households in a Community Supported Agriculture program. The guided tour includes the farmyard and cemetery, where six generations of Caseys are buried.

The farm offers tours and educational and recreational programs.

Steuben House [NJ]

Description

Built in 1752 by merchant Jan Zabriskie, the Steuben House witnessed the crossing of George Washington and the garrison of Fort Lee across the Hackensack River during their infamous November 1776 retreat. Because of this strategic position on the banks of the river at the New Bridge, the Steuben House survived throughout the American Revolution and was used by both Colonial and British soldiers. The confiscated mansion once served as a military headquarters for General Washington and was later presented to Major General Baron von Steuben as thanks for his efforts during the War for Independence.

The house offers tours and educational programs.

Chippokes Plantation State Park and Museum [VA]

Description

The 1,683-acre Chippokes Plantation State Park contains a working plantation site, founded circa 1619. The site's main residence is known as the Jones-Stewart Mansion. The plantation grounds house gardens and the Chippokes Farm and Forestry Museum, which presents circa 1850 Virginian farming life. Exhibits include farm building, soil preparation, planting, cultivating, harvesting, blacksmiths' tools, wheelwrights' tools, cobblers' tools, coopers' tools, farm animals, processing, preserving, small tools, and house ware. Many exhibits depict the evolution of tools used for a particular task. Collection highlights include a wooden tooth cultivator and a plow, designed to be pulled by oxen.

The park offers exhibits, mansion tours, an interpretive forestry trail, guided group museum tours, curriculum-based museum educational programs, recreational trails, outdoor activities, overnight facilities, a snack bar, and a picnic complex. Mansion tours and museum access are available April through October. Picnic shelters can be reserved. The snack bar operates Memorial Day through Labor Day. The museum can customize educational programs.

Salmon Brook Historical Society and Museums [CT]

Description

The Salmon Brook Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Granby, Connecticut. To this end, the society operates four museum buildings. The circa 1732 Abijah Rowe House has been restored to an early 1800s interior appearance. It also houses a collection of Victorian toys. The circa 1790 Weed-Enders House houses the society research library and a Victorian parlor. The circa 1870 Cooley School House has been furnished and styled to a 19th-century appearance. The circa 1914 Colton-Hayes Tobacco Barn offers a recreated Shaker meeting house; town microcosm; and exhibits on vernacular items, Native American artifacts, and the Civil War.

The society offers exhibits, period rooms, and library access. The museum buildings are open between June and September. Reservations are required for groups.

Fort Toulouse / Fort Jackson State Historic Site [AL]

Description

History is alive and outside at Fort Toulouse-Fort Jackson. Here Native Americans, Spanish explorers, French soldiers, English and Scottish traders, American settlers, and modern archaeologists have all left their mark. Frequent living history events showcase a recreated 1751 French fort, recreated Creek Indian houses, and the partially restored 1814 American Fort Jackson. A 3,000-year-old Mississipian Indian mound, the William Bartram Nature Trail, and an early 19th-century house weave even more strands into this colorful tapestry of Alabama's earliest days.

Two other websites for the site exist: a second general website here and a website for the site's living history programs here.

The site offers exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Gilman Garrison House [New Hampshire]

Description

From the first English settlements of the 1630s to the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the frontier towns of New England lived with the threat of Indian attack. The 1709 Gilman Garrison House, described in 1719 as "the old logg house," was built as a fortified house, strategically sited to protect the valuable sawmills and waterpower sites owned by John Gilman. The interior of this unusual building reveals walls constructed of massive sawn logs and a pulley above the main entrance that was used to operate a portcullis, or reinforced door. In the mid 18th century, Peter Gilman substantially remodeled the house, adding a wing with elegantly paneled rooms.

The house offers tours.

Newport Restoration Foundation: Rough Point, Whitehorne House, and Prescott Farm [RI]

Description

The Foundation maintains and operates historical sites throughout Newport, including Rough Point, the Whitehorne House, and Prescott Farm. Frederick W. Vanderbilt built the English Manorial house Rough Point in 1889 on a dramatic, windswept promontory on Newport's Cliff Walk, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The Whitehorne House, housed in a Federal period mansion, features some of the best examples of Newport and Rhode Island furniture from the late 18th century. Prescott Farm offers the visitor a glimpse of early New England buildings and landscape. The farm buildings and land trace their origins to the early 18th century.

The foundation offers tours; Rough Point offers exhibits and tours; the Whitehorne House offers tours; Prescott Farm offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Strawberry Banke Museum [NH]

Description

The Strawberry Banke Museum is a living history museum of one of New Hampshire’s oldest neighborhoods and its history that dates back to the 1600's. The outdoor museum contains 42 historic buildings, the earliest build in 1695, and many contain live demonstrations of craftsmanship, cooking, and other forms of daily life at work.

School groups can tour the neighborhood on their own and partake in a Time Travel Workshop that includes hands-on activities lasting about 90 minutes on a specific, curriculum-based topic. Other programs on architecture, archeology, cooking, Early America, Trade and Maritime history, and the Industrial revolution meet New Hampshire education standards for many grade levels. The site also offers programs for home-schoolers and holiday programs.

Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion Historic Site [NH]

Description

The Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion is the former home of New Hampshire's first royal governor, Benning Wentworth. The rambling, forty-room mansion which overlooks Little Harbor is one of the most outstanding homes remaining from the Colonial era. Its stateliness and impressive interior and furnishings reflect aristocratic life in Portsmouth in the 1700s.

The site offers tours and exhibits.