Sully Historic Site was the home of Richard Bland Lee, Northern Virginia's first Congressman and uncle of Gen. Robert E. Lee. His home reflects the history of Fairfax County, emphasizing the Early Republican period.
The site offers school tours and hands-on educational programs designed with Virginia SOLs in mind. Outreach programs and teacher activities and resources are also available.
The Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site preserves the cabin in which Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), widely known as Mark Twain, was born. The site presents Twain's life. Exhibit highlights include furniture which once belonged to Twain; first editions of his works; and a handwritten manuscript of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Another of Twain's definitive works is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As an author, Clemens is lauded for his sharp observational skills and intense satire.
The site offers exhibits and a public reading room.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is operated as an historical and cultural site, focusing on Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The site also includes a look into the family, friends, and colleagues of the Beecher-Stowe family; Lane Seminary; and the abolitionist, women's rights, and Underground Railroad movements in which these historical figures participated in the 1830s to 1860s, as well as African-American history related to these movements. The house was home to Harriet Beecher Stowe prior to her marriage and to her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, and his large family, a prolific group of religious leaders, educators, writers, and antislavery and women's rights advocates. The Beecher family includes Harriet's sister, Catherine Beecher, an early female educator and writer who helped found numerous high schools and colleges for women; brother Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, a leader of the women's suffrage movement and considered by some to be the most eloquent minister of his time; General James Beecher, a Civil War general who commanded the first African-American troops in the Union Army recruited from the South; and sister Isabella Beecher Hooker, a women's rights advocate. The Beechers lived in Cincinnati for nearly 20 years, from 1832 to the early 1850s, before returning East.
The house offers exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational programs and events.
The Rankin House was an important stop on the Underground Railroad in southern Ohio through which many slaves escaped from the South to freedom. John Rankin was a Presbyterian minister and educator who devoted much of his life to the antislavery movement. In 1826 he published his antislavery book, Letters on American Slavery. In 1834 he founded the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in Zanesville. From 1825 to 1865, Rankin and his wife Jean, with their Brown County neighbors, sheltered more than 2,000 slaves escaping to freedom, with as many as 12 escapees being hidden in the Rankin home at one time. The house, a National Historic Landmark, is included in the National Underground Railroad to Freedom Network. Outside is a reconstruction of the stairway used by slaves to climb from the Ohio River to the Rankin House.
The house offers tours and educational programs.
The 19th-century mill and its neighboring covered bridge offer a glimpse of now-rare Americana that once might have been expected around many turns in a Missouri road. The present mill, dating to the Civil War period, is a massive four-story stone and brick building where visitors can still observe corn being ground into meal by water power—just as it was done long ago. The succession of three mills that have stood on this site represent more than 200 years of milling history. The Burfordville Covered Bridge standing alongside stretches its 140-foot span across the Whitewater River, which powers the mill. Begun in 1858, it is the oldest of only four remaining covered bridges in Missouri.
The site offers exhibits, tours, demonstrations, and occasional recreational and educational events.
The Piqua Historical Area State Memorial celebrates 2,000 years of Ohio's rich history from prehistoric Indians to Ohio's canal era. The focal point of the peaceful 200-acre park is John Johnston—farmer, public official, and United States Indian Agent for western Ohio from 1812 to 1829. Today, visitors enjoy the home and farm of this most extraordinary man much as it appeared in 1829. Preserved and furnished structures include Johnston's two-story mixed Dutch Colonial/Georgian style farmhouse, a unique two-story spring house, and a cider house. Costumed interpreters and craft demonstrators provide farm tours and display activities in the summer kitchen and fruit kiln areas. A mammoth double-penned log barn, constructed in 1808, is reputed to be the oldest and largest of its type in Ohio, and is still in use on the grounds. Nearby a ring-shaped mound earthwork discovered and preserved by Johnston was constructed by people of the Adena culture over 2,000 years ago. Not far from Johnston's farm is a modern museum, which was constructed to resemble the blockhouse style of Fort Piqua, General Anthony Wayne's 18th-century supply post. In 2001 the museum was renovated with updated exhibits that trace the story of the Eastern Woodland Indians of Ohio and the newly acquired Fort Pickawillany site. Artifacts from Ohio's canal era are also on exhibit. The patio portion of the museum building allows visitors the opportunity to view a restored mile-long section of the Miami and Erie Canal, which extended the length of Ohio from Toledo to Cincinnati. An array of outdoor interpretive panels explore Johnston's later role as a state canal commissioner and provide an introduction to how canals helped in the development and expansion of frontier Ohio. Afterwards, guests may enjoy a ride aboard the General Harrison of Piqua, a replica 70-foot-long mixed cargo canal boat often used for transportation of passengers and cargo in the 19th century. Costumed guides direct the mule-drawn boat to provide an authentic and memorable experience for all.
The site offers exhibits; tours; demonstrations; boat rides; and recreational and educational events, including living history events.
Marietta, Ohio is proud of its riverboat heritage and at the Ohio River Museum visitors can discover the golden age of the steamboat, and learn more about the ecology of the Ohio River system. The Ohio River Museum consists of three exhibit buildings, the first of which houses displays depicting the origins and natural history of the Ohio River. The history of the steamboat on the Ohio River system is featured in the second building, along with a video presentation on river steamboats. The last building features displays about boat building, mussels in the Ohio River system, and tool sand equipment from the steamboat era. Outside the museum, on the Muskingum River, visitors can take an escorted tour of the W.P. Snyder Jr.—the last intact steam-powered "pool-type" stern-wheeled towboat in the United States. Other exhibits on the museum grounds include the pilothouse from the steamboat Tell City as well as a full-scale reproduction of a flatboat from Ohio's early settlement period. Also on site are a series of poles showing the heights of some of the worst floods to hit the area in its recorded history: the 1884 flood at 54.5 feet, the 1898 flood at 49.6 feet, the 1907 flood at 52.1 feet, the flood of 1913 at 60.3 feet, and the 1937 flood at 55 feet.
The museum offers exhibits, a short film, tours, and educational programs.
This three-story brick building was erected in Mount Pleasant in 1814 and was the first yearly Quaker meeting house west of the Alleghenies. Capable of holding 2,000 persons, the building contains an auditorium with a balcony. The auditorium can be divided into two rooms by lowering a wooden partition; when the building was actively used by Quakers, men and women met separately. Jesse Thomas and Robert Carothers laid out Mount Pleasant in 1803. It soon became an important market for Quaker settlers. The Mount Pleasant meeting house was used regularly until 1909.
The house offers tours.
The Grant Boyhood Home was the home of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States, from 1823, when Grant was one year old, until 1839, when he left to attend West Point. Ulysses Grant lived in this home longer than any other during his lifetime. Jesse and Hanna Grant, the parents of young Hiram Ulysses Grant, built the original two-story brick section of the Grant Boyhood home in 1823, when they moved to Georgetown from Point Pleasant in Clermont County, where Ulysses had been born the year before. Grant attended the Schoolhouse from the ages of about six to 13. The building, built in 1829, consisted of only one room at that time.
The site offers tours.
Boone, youngest child of the famous Daniel Boone, carried his family's legacy deep into the Missouri Ozarks and the American West. Boone's last home, a simple but comfortable log house, invites exploration into the life of this second-generation frontiersman. Boone's three sons and two of his slaves built the house in 1837. It was the hub of a 720-acre Ozark farm. He, his wife, Olive, and other family members are buried near the house. Another cemetery, just a short distance from Boone's grave, contains the graves of at least 16 men, women, and children kept as slaves on the farm.
The site offers tours and occasional demonstrations and living history events.