Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum [MO]

Description

The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum properties includes eight buildings: six historically significant buildings and two interactive museums whose collections include 15 original Norman Rockwell paintings. A self-guided tour of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum properties gives visitors the chance to explore the Hannibal of Samuel Clemens's childhood and experience the beloved stories he created as Mark Twain through the power of his imagination.

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

Blue Ridge Institute and Museum [VA]

Description

Ferrum College's Blue Ridge Institute & Museum showcases the heritage and folkways of the Blue Ridge Mountains and western Virginia. Through rotating gallery exhibitions, engaging hands-on activities, and an 1800 living-history farm museum, students explore not just the past but also folk traditions in modern form. Tailored to the teacher’s specific needs, BRI school-group offerings include farm life tours with games and crafts, cornbread tours with hands-on open hearth cooking, Jack Tales tours with live theater, and Day on the Farm tours with costumed students cooking, driving oxen, blacksmithing, and gardening. BRI tours meet a variety of Virginia Standards of Learning at all K-12 grade levels. Outreach classroom visits by BRI museum interpreters are available. The BRI also offers a wealth of online resources for educators including online exhibitions and nearly 5,000 musical performances and photographs.

Bellamy-Ferriday House and Garden [CT]

Description

The Bellamy-Ferriday House and Garden embodies the dramatically different passions of two individuals. Bethlehem pastor Joseph Bellamy, a renowned leader of the Great Awakening, the emotional religious revival of the 1740s, built the house around 1754. In 1912, New Yorkers Henry and Eliza Ferriday acquired it as a summer residence. Around 1915, Mrs. Ferriday designed a formal garden with historic roses, peonies, lilacs, and other flowers. The Ferridays' daughter, Caroline, restored the house, furnished it with Litchfield County antiques, and maintained the magnificent garden, refining the property as a combination of natural and manmade beauty.

The house offers tours.

Lakeshore Museum Center [MI]

Description

The main Museum showcases exhibits on local natural and cultural history. The Hackley and Hume Historic Site preserves the homes of Muskegon's most famous lumber baron, Charles H. Hackley, and his business partner, Thomas Hume. The site envelops the visitor in a unique living space, bringing late 19th-century craftsmanship to life. The Fire Barn Museum serves as a living memorial to the brave men and women who have served as Muskegon County firefighters and exhibits firefighting equipment. The Scolnik House recreates the lifestyle of a Depression-era family.

The museum offers exhibits, educational programs, research library access, and occasional recreational and educational events; the Hackley and Hume Historic Site offers tours; the Fire Barn Museum offers exhibits; the Scolnik House offers tours.

Historic Richmond Town [NY]

Description

Historic Richmond Town is New York City's living history village and museum complex. Visitors can explore the diversity of the American experience, especially that of Staten Island and its neighboring communities, from the colonial period to the present. The village area occupies 25 acres of a 100-acre site with about 15 restored buildings, including homes and commercial and civic buildings, as well as a museum.

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

County of Los Angeles Fire Museum [CA]

Description

One of the museum's first donated pieces was the famous Squad 51 from the hit television show Emergency! Since then, the collection has grown from a dozen or so antique fire engines to more than 40 dating back to the 1860s. Additionally, uniforms, badges, helmets, photographs, and many other artifacts are being resurrected and preserved as lucent examples of the County fire service.

The museum offers exhibits, but is only open to the public on a few days over the course of the year.

William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum [OH]

Description

The Stark County Historical Society is dedicated to collecting and preserving the significant materials and records related to the history of Stark County and the presidential history of William McKinley. Through the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum, the Society serves as an educational center of history and science and offers interpretive exhibitions and educational programs for the local community and its expanding global audience.

The museum offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, lectures, planetarium shows, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Rhode Island Historical Society, John Brown House Museum, and Museum of Work and Culture

Description

The Society operates the John Brown House Museum and the Museum of Work and Culture. The John Brown House museum was one of America's grandest mansions when completed in 1788, for John Brown, a businessman, patriot, politician, China Trade pioneer, and slave trader who participated in the debates and practices that shaped the new nation and the world. Today this building serves as a place in which the public can learn about the men and women who lived here from the late 18th through early 20th centuries. The Museum of Work and Culture presents the story of immigrants who came to find a better life in the mill towns along the Blackstone River. The exhibits recreate immigrant life at home, at church, and at school, and present the unique Woonsocket labor story of the rise of the Independent Textile Union, which grew to dominate every aspect of city life.

The society offers tours, research library access, educational programs, and recreational and educational events; the House offers tours and educational programs; the Museum offers exhibits, tours, and educational programs.