Hillborough Historical Society and Franklin Pierce Homestead [NH]

Description

Franklin Pierce (1804–1869), the seventh of nine children, spent a happy childhood in attractive surroundings of gardens and trees. The stately home has spacious rooms with vividly painted walls and exquisite stenciling. The house has a grand ballroom and a parlor decorated with imported French wallpaper—symbols of the elegance of the age.

The house offers tours and occasional recreational and educational events.

Audubon State Historic Site [LA]

Description

The Audubon State Historic Site is located in St. Francisville, LA, and is the site where noted artist John Audubon stayed for four months while teaching art to Eliza Pirrie. The Pirries lived in the Oakley House, which is a fabulous example of colonial architecture in the deep south. The Oakley House is listed on the national register of historic places.

The site offers guided tours of the Oakley House, galleries of Audubon's art, and exhibits regarding Audubon's stay. The website offers a brief history of the site and visitor information.

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.

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).

Walpole Historical Society [MA]

Description

The Walpole Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Walpole, Massachusetts. The society is located within the 1826 Deacon Willard Lewis House. Artifacts on view include historic furnishings; military items; and children's books, toys, and clothing.

The society offers exhibits and archival access.

Old State House Museum [AR]

Description

The Old State House Museum, housed within the 1842 Greek Revival former state capitol building, presents the history of the state of Arkansas and its residents. The structure served as the state capitol until 1911; both a Confederate and Union capitol; a medical school and research site; and a popular campaign site of Bill Clinton (born 1946), 42nd President of the United States. Period rooms include a 1901 through 1906 parlor, 1870 through 1900 parlor, a 1750 through 1800 library, an 1860 through 1870 Rococo Revival parlor, an 1836 through 1860 library, and 1836 through 1885 House of Representatives chamber. Permanent exhibits address 19th- and 20th-century women's lives, the building's construction, Bill Clinton, hands-on 1930s artifacts, early 19th-century life, Arkansas governors and their families, and 1819 through 1919 Arkansas political history.

The museum offers exhibits, period rooms, hourly guided tours, self-guided tours, eight thematic tours for students, outreach programs for students and adults, educational programs for students or adults, living history characters, a summer camp, teacher's workshops, and traveling trunks. Groups of 12 or more must make reservations for guided tours. Living history characters can be scheduled into tours with advance notice. The website offers virtual exhibits, lesson plans, activities, games, and crosswords.

Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands [NY]

Description

The Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands seeks to preserve and share the history of the Newburgh area, New York. To this end, the society operates the 1830 neoclassical Captain David Crawford House, once home to an major local maritime entrepreneur. The house presents 19th-century upper class life and the histories of Newburgh and the Hudson River Valley. Society collections include furnishings, decorative arts, archival documents, and fine arts. Highlights include 18th-century furnishings, a Duncan Phyfe settee, and Hudson River School paintings.

The society offers tours and research library access. Appointments are required for library access.

Old Island Restoration Foundation and the Oldest House [FL]

Description

The Old Island Restoration Foundation is primarily concerned with architectural preservation within Key West, Florida. However, the organization also operates the 1829 Oldest House museum. The residence was once home to a customs inspector, lightship captain, and wrecker. Wreckers were men who would race to shipwrecks in order to save the crews and to collect a portion of the cargo as their own. The museum holds furnishings, maritime artifacts, wrecker artifacts, ship models, and items once lost at sea. The structure itself is the oldest in South Florida, hence the name.

The museum offers exhibits and gardens.

Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation and the Hunt-Morgan House [KY]

Description

The Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation advocates preservation of historic architecture within Lexington, Kentucky. The trust operates the 1815 Federal-style Hunt-Morgan House, restored to period appearance. The upper floor contains the The Alexander T. Hunt Civil War Museum.

The trust offers exhibits, period rooms, tours of the Hunt-Morgan House, traveling exhibits for rental, monthly brown bag lectures, preservation resources, a local history curriculum, walking tours of Gratz Park, and self-guided walking tours.

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.