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.

Starr Family Home State Historic Site [TX]

Description

Starr Family Home State Historic Site preserves the 150-year-old history of the Starr family in Texas and four generations of adaptations to the site by successive family members. Maplecroft, the centerpiece of the park, was built in the 1870s. Over the years, the home was modified, modernized, and enlarged to accommodate the changing lifestyles of its occupants. Among the innovations was the installation of a carbide gas lighting system. Today, visitors can tour the stately home with the Starr's furnishings and see the nearby outbuildings.

The site offers tours.

Jarrell Plantation Historic Site [GA]

Description

The Jarrell Plantation Historic Site is a historic cotton plantation. The main plantation residence was built in 1847, and many of the furnishings within are those made by the original owner, John Fitz Jarrell. Jarrell's descendants later transitioned the plantation's industry to wood products.

The site offers period rooms, tours, and summer camps.

Wicomico Historical Society and Museums [MD]

Description

The Wicomico Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Wicomico County, Maryland. To this end, the society operates several museums. The Heritage Center is a museum of local history is located within a reproduction 18th-century tobacco barn. Pemberton Hall depicts 1741 daily life. The 1872 Rockawalkin School presents education history. The 1938 Nutters Election House holds Presidential, campaign, and political artifacts.

The Heritage Center, Rockawalkin School, and Nutters Election House offers exhibits. Pemberton Hall offers period rooms and guided tours. These two museum are located within a park which hosts a naturalist who offers educational programs. The election house is open by appointment only.

George Ranch Historical Park [TX]

Description

The George Ranch Historical Park presents living history interpretation of the history of Fort Bend County, Texas and neighboring areas. The site consists of a 23,000-acre working ranch, which interprets the periods between 1824 and circa 1940. Sites include the 1830s Jones Stock Farm, 1860s Ryon Prairie Home, a sharecropper's farm, chuck wagon camp, blacksmith shop, the 1890s Davis Victorian Mansion, a family cemetery in use between the 1820s and 1916, and the 1930s George Ranch House.

The park offers period rooms; hands-on activities; guided group tours; self-guided tours; 11 educational program options for students, including two role-playing programs; a homeschool day program; demonstrations; home tours; living history interpreters; period lunches; a tram; and a cafe. Groups desiring guided tours must include at least 15 individuals. Meal options are available for groups.

Junipero Serra Museum [CA]

Description

The Junípero Serra Museum is one of the most familiar landmarks in San Diego. As a major symbol of the city, it stands atop the hill recognized as the site where California began. It was here in 1769 that a Spanish Franciscan missionary, Father Junípero Serra, with a group of soldiers led by Gaspar de Portolá, established Alta California's first mission and presidio (fort). On July 16, 1769, near the site where the museum now stands, Serra founded the Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Often confused for the Mission, the Serra Museum was built between 1928–1929 for the purpose of housing and showcasing the collection of the San Diego Historical Society, which was founded in 1928. The structure was designed by architect, William Templeton Johnson, using Spanish Revival architecture, to resemble the early missions that once dominated the landscape of Southern California.

The museum offers exhibits, tours, and educational programs.

Oak Creek Historical Society and Museum [WI]

Description

The Oak Creek Historical Society operates a museum complex. The complex includes the 1840s Hughes Log Cabin, which depicts Wisconsin pioneer life; an 1890 summer kitchen, displaying the history of textile cleaning techniques; the 1874 Oak Creek Town Hall; an 1886 blacksmith shop; a farm shed with farming implements from the 1830s through 1950s; and a print shop.

The society offers period rooms, exhibits, and guided tours.

Hearst San Simeon State Historic Monument and Castle [CA]

Description

La Cuesta Encantada, "The Enchanted Hill" high above the ocean at San Simeon, was the creation of two extraordinary individuals, William Randolph Hearst and architect Julia Morgan. Their collaboration, which began in 1919 and continued for nearly 30 years, transformed an informal hilltop campsite into the world-famous Hearst Castle—a 115-room main house plus guesthouses, pools, and eight acres of cultivated gardens. The main house itself, "La Casa Grande," is a grand setting for Hearst's collection of European antiques and art pieces. It was also a most fitting site for hosting the many influential guests who stayed at Hearst's San Simeon ranch. Guests included President Calvin Coolidge, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Lindbergh, Charlie Chaplin, and a diverse array of luminaries from show business and publishing industries.

The site offers exhibits, tours, a 40-min. film, living history presentations, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Levine Museum of the New South [NC]

Description

The Levine Museum of the New South presents the history and culture of the New South, the Southern United States after 1865. At the beginning of this period, southerners were forced to determine new ways of life, as the institution of slavery, so long a major component of the economy, had been abolished. The museum's permanent exhibit uses the Charlotte area to describe the development of the South after the end of the Civil War. The interactive exhibit includes six experiential environments, as well as oral histories, film, music, and more than 1,000 artifacts.

The museum offers interactive exhibits, self-guided tours, guided exhibit tours, guided walking tours, curriculum-based programs for students, traveling trunks, outreach programs, discussions, and lectures. Reservations are required for all group tours or programs, and must be made at least two weeks in advance.

Beauport House, the Sleeper-McCann House

Description

Beauport, the 1907–1934 summer home of the collector and interior designer Henry Davis Sleeper, is a fantasy house built on the rocks overlooking Gloucester Harbor. Crowned by towers, dormers, and dovecotes, the structure encloses a labyrinth of rooms decorated to evoke different historical and literary themes. Every nook and alcove holds a composition of curiosities, folk art, china, or colored glass. The settings—playful variations on subjects like the early American kitchen, an English cottage, or the sea captain's retreat—are arranged to amuse and to stimulate the imagination.

The site offers tours and educational and recreational programs.