Amish Country Homestead

Description

The Homestead is the home of the fictional Old Order Amish family of Daniel and Lizzie Fisher. Inside the Homestead, visitors learn of Amish traditions and practices, including Sunday church services held in the home. They tour the nine rooms on the first and second floors and learn up close how the Fisher family lives from day to day.

The homestead offers the "experiential theater" film Jacob's Choice and tours.

Columbia County Historical Society, Museum, and Historic Houses [New York]

Description

The Society is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the history of Columbia County, NY. The Society owns and operates three historic properties, open to the public during the summer season, and a museum, open year-round. The Columbia County Museum, open to the public since 1985, was originally built as a Masonic Temple in 1916. Today it houses the Society offices, research library, collections storage, and exhibit space. Volunteers and staff organize educational programs and aid in genealogical research as well as many other activities. The Society also operates the 1820s James Vanderpoel House and the 1737 Luykas Van Alen House.

The museums offer exhibits, tours, and research library access; the society offers lectures and educational and recreational programs.

El Camino Real International Heritage Center [NM]

Description

The newest State Monument tells the fascinating story of more than three centuries of trade and commerce that traversed the trail, linking Spain, Mexico, and the United States at a time when mules, trains, and horses were the only means of land travel. The award-winning building is set amidst the pristine Chihuahuan Desert north of the Jornada del Muerto and houses an exhibit that takes visitors on a virtual journey along the historic trail from Zacatecas, Mexico to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Visitors can discover the indigenous people encountered by the Spanish and the impact the arrival of the Spanish had on the formation of New Mexico. Remnants of the early journey remain today in hand-hewn carts, tools, leather water jugs, and religious altars and objects that accompanied the travelers into the northern territory. Visitors experience the journeys of Native Americans, Spaniards, and Mexicans; the military fort period; and the first Anglo settlers from the Eastern United States, through first-person stories and the art and objects they brought with them.

A second website, maintained by the El Camino Real International Heritage Center Foundation, can be found here.

The center offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, workshops, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Saugerties Historical Society and Kiersted House Museum [NY]

Description

The Society operates the historic Kiersted House as its headquarters and museum. The Kiersted House is architecturally significant as an example of early-18th and 19th-century local building craft and practices. The original builder is still unknown, but the first recorded owner of the homestead was Hiskia Dubois in 1724, and it was purchased by Dr. Christopher Kiersted in 1773. The House displays changing exhibits on local history.

The society offers occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events); the museum offers exhibits.

Central Insurance Fire Museum [OH]

Description

Central Insurance started out in 1876 as a fire insurance company. The threat of a disastrous fire was always very real and the equipment used to fight fire primitive. F. W. "Bill" Purmort, Jr., President of Central from 1964 to 1994, first took an interest in collecting fire equipment in 1969. He gradually built Central's museum into one of the finest privately owned collections in the U.S. The museum exhibits a collection of leather fire buckets dating back to the 1700s; over 600 antique fire toys consisting of cast-iron, rubber, glass, tin, and wood construction; a large display of fire extinguishers and glass fire "grenades" dating from the 1850s; a rare and valuable collection of "firemarks" dating back to 1720; a wardrobe of antique fireman helmets and uniforms; Van Wert's first hand-drawn pumper used in 1871; an Ahrens horse-drawn steam pumper which was purchased new in 1907 by the city of Van Wert and restored by Central; and a 1926 Ahrens-Fox pumper, the Rolls Royce of firetrucks.

The museum offers exhibits and tours.

Stanley-Whitman House [CT]

Description

Stanley-Whitman House is a living history center and museum that teaches through the collection, preservation, research, and dynamic interpretation of the history and culture of early Farmington. Programs, events, classes, and exhibits encourage visitors of all ages to immerse themselves in history by doing, acting, questioning, and engaging in Colonial life and the ideas that formed the foundation of that culture. Located in the historic village of Farmington, the museum facility is centered on a ca. 1720 National Historical Landmark house, furnished with period antiques to reflect the everyday activities of Colonial life in Connecticut. Surrounding the house are period raised bed gardens, an apple orchard, and heritage stone walls. The public service areas of the museum include a modern classroom, a period tavern room, post-and-beam Welcome Center, research library, and exhibit gallery.

The house offers exhibits; tours; workshops; lectures; educational programs; research library access; and other educational and recreational events, including living history events.

Hammond-Harwood House Museum [MD]

Description

The Hammond-Harwood House was built in 1774 for the 25-year-old tobacco planter Matthias Hammond of Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Collecting since 1938, the museum now housed in it has long been the home of some of the finest decorative and fine arts the state of Maryland has had to offer. Today, the museum houses one of the largest collections of paintings by Charles Willson Peale and furniture by John Shaw in the area.

The house offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, occasional lectures, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Drayton Hall [SC]

Description

Drayton Hall, on which construction began in 1738, is the oldest surviving example Georgian Palladian architecture in the U.S. and one of the only pre-Revolutionary houses that remain in close-to-original condition today.

The house offers exhibits, tours, and educational and recreational events and programs.

Ganondagan State Historic Site [NY]

Description

Ganondagan is the site of a Native American community that was a flourishing, vibrant center for the Seneca people. Visitor to this site, where thousands of Seneca lived 300 years ago; can tour a full-size replica of a 17th-century Seneca Bark Longhouse; walk miles of self-guided trails; climb the mesa where a huge palisaded granary stored hundreds of thousands of bushels of corn; and learn about the destruction of Ganondagan, Town of Peace, in 1687.

The site offers exhibits, tours, and educational and recreational events.