Darnall's Chance House Museum [MD]

Description

Darnall's Chance House Museum is dedicated to the interpretation and study of the history and culture of 18th-century Prince George's County, MD, with special emphasis on the lives of mid-18th-century women. The Museum interprets the story of the widow Lettice Wardrop Thomson Sim, who lived at Darnall's Chance in the decades just prior to the American Revolution. The house and grounds reflect 1760, the year Lettice Wardrop's first husband died and a room by room inventory was taken of the contents of the house. Darnall's Chance also strives to accurately reflect the African-American community on the site and town life in mid-18th-century Upper Marlboro, MD.

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

Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park [CA]

Description

In August 1908, Colonel Allen Allensworth and four other settlers established a town founded, financed, and governed by African Americans. Their dream of developing an abundant and thriving community stemmed directly from a strong belief in programs that allowed blacks to help themselves create better lives. By 1910, Allensworth’s success was the focus of many national newspaper articles praising the town and its inhabitants. Today a collection of restored and reconstructed early 20th-century buildings—including the Colonel's house, historic schoolhouse, Baptist church, and library—once again dots this flat farm country.

The park offers a short film, exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events.

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.

Montgomery County Historical Society and Museums [MD]

Description

The Society maintains three historical properties, including the Beall-Dawson House, the Stonestreet Museum of 19th-century Medicine, and the Waters House History Center. Visitors can learn about the county's beginnings at the historic 1815 Beall-Dawson House, an elegant federal style townhome that features period rooms and changing exhibits. The museum tour highlights the culture and daily life of both the upper-class Beall family as well as the enslaved African Americans who labored in the house and on the adjacent property. The Stonestreet Museum offers an insider's look into the developments in medical science that occurred during the career of Dr. Edward E. Stonestreet. Built in 1852, this unique one-room Gothic Revival doctor's office features medical artifacts and implements that demonstrate the fascinating changes that occurred in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Waters House History Center is housed in oldest house in Germantown—built in three parts, the oldest dates to the mid-1790s. It offers exhibits related to local history.

The Society offers educational programs and lectures; the Beall-Dawson House offers exhibits, tours, and occasional educational and recreation events and programs; the Stonestreet Museum offers exhibits and tours; the Center offers exhibits and occasional recreational and educational programs.

Dover Historical Society and J.E. Reeves Victorian Home and Museum [OH]

Description

This 17-room Victorian home, topped by a third-floor ballroom, has been carefully restored by the Society to its original turn-of-the-century splendor and features the unique treasures of the original furniture and antiques that were the property of Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah E. Reeves, arranged as they would have been 100 years ago. These beautiful family furnishings can be viewed up close, as there are no ropes or barriers prohibiting entrance into the rooms. The Carriage House Museum, located behind the home, contains an interesting collection of vehicles—the family's handsome, horse-drawn carriage, along with the family sleigh, a rare electric car, and a newly restored doctor's buggy. Throughout the carriage house are numerous displays and artifacts that trace Dover's past, a past quite typical of many small towns in America.

The house and museum offer exhibits; tours; occasional lectures; and occasional educational and recreational events, including living history events.

Glensheen: Congdon Historic Estate [MN]

Description

Along the shore of Lake Superior, a 7.6-acre expanse of wooded land enfolds the 39-room Jacobean Revival mansion that is Minnesota's premier historic house museum. The interiors of the mansion have endured, boasting nearly all of the same furnishings and décor that graced the rooms when the Congdons' estate was completed in 1908. Even the formal gardens and naturalistic landscape retain much of their original design. Here, visitors are given a look at life in an affluent family home from the turn of the last century.

The site offers tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational 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.

Talcott Mountain State Park [CT]

Description

The Farmington River Valley landmark of Heublein Tower sits atop Talcott Mountain, a long, precipitous wooded ledge named after the Talcott family. The 165-foot structure was built as a summer home in 1914 by Gilbert Heublein. In the early '50s, two future presidents were guests of the Hartford Times, then General Dwight D. Eisenhower (who was asked to run for office there) and Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors' Guild. Following a period of ownership of the property by the Hartford Times during WWII and the early 1950s, it was slated for residential development by a private corporation when the 557 acres of Talcott Mountain came under public ownership in 1965 through the cooperative efforts of private conservationists and state and federal governments.

The park offers tours.