Old Barracks Museum [NJ]

Description

Built in 1758 by the Colony of New Jersey during the French and Indian War, the Old Barracks was a witness in 1776 to the Battle of Trenton, the turning point of the American Revolution. Today, the Old Barracks serves as an educational center for Colonial and American history, and stands as the last remaining structure of its kind. The Old Barracks staff provides daily tours and interpretations of American colonial life. The building offers a museum of artifacts and weapons.

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

Varnum Memorial Armory Museum [RI]

Description

The Varnum Continentals built their armory in 1913 in the medieval architectural style. The armory is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A 1984 State Historical Building Survey described the Varnum Memorial Armory as remaining in perfect original condition. Among the key architectural details are the towers, the massive double doors, the multiple arched windows, and the crenellated parapet along the roofline. The armory serves contains an extensive military and naval museum which has been acquired through donation and purchase.

The museum offers exhibits and occasional recreational and educational events.

El Rancho de Las Golondrinas [NM]

Description

This historic rancho, now a living history museum, dates from the early 1700s and was an important paraje, or stopping point, along the famous Camino Real, the Royal Road from Mexico City to Santa Fe, NM.

The site offers demonstrations, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history 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.

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.

Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Jamestown Settlement, and Yorktown Victory Center [VA]

Description

The Foundation operates the Jamestown Settlement and the Yorktown Victory Center, two living-history museums that explore America’s beginnings. Through film, artifact-filled galleries, and outdoor living history, these museums engage visitors in nearly two centuries of the nation's history—from the founding of America's first permanent English settlement in 1607 to the decisive Revolutionary War victory in 1781 and implementation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Today at Jamestown Settlement, the story of the people who founded Jamestown and of the Virginia Indians they encountered is told through film, gallery exhibits, and living history. New gallery exhibits and a new introductory film trace Jamestown's beginnings in England and the first century of the Virginia colony and describe the cultures of the Powhatan Indians, Europeans, and Africans who converged in 1600s Virginia. Outdoors, visitors can board replicas of the three ships that sailed from England to Virginia in 1607, explore life-size recreations of the colonists' fort and a Powhatan village, and tour a riverfront discovery area to learn about European, Powhatan, and African economic activities associated with water. In the outdoor areas, costumed historical interpreters describe and demonstrate daily life in the early 17th century. Today at the Yorktown Victory Center, America's evolution from colonial status to nationhood is chronicled through a unique blend of timeline, film, thematic exhibits and outdoor living history. An outdoor exhibit walkway details events that led American colonies to declare independence from Britain.

A second website for the organization can be found here.

The sites offer short films, exhibits, tours, demonstrations, lectures, educational programs, and recreational and educational programs.

Shawnee Indian Mission State Historic Site

Description

In the 19th century, Americans wanted more land and settlement moved west. For countless Indians, the American thrust for land meant the end of their traditional way of life. The Shawnee Mission was one of many missions established as a manual training school attended by boys and girls from Shawnee, Delaware, and other Indian nations from 1839 to 1862. Visitor to this 12-acre National Historic Landmark can learn the stories of those who lived there.

The site offers exhibits, a short film, and occasional educational and recreational programs.

Cottonwood Ranch State Historic Site

Description

John Fenton Pratt had no idea when he started building his ranch that it would someday tell the story of his family and his native Yorkshire, England. Visitors can tour the grounds and house of this relatively unchanged rural ranch set in the South Solomon River Valley of the High Plains. Through Pratt’s photo collection, stained glass windows, and examples of Yorkshire architecture, visitors will learn about businessman and sheep rancher Pratt, other early Kansas ranchers, and their stories.

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

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park [CA]

Description

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park presents the opportunity to experience the history of early San Diego by providing a connection to the past. Visitors can learn about life in the Mexican and early American periods of 1821 to 1872, as converging cultures transformed San Diego from a Mexican pueblo to an American settlement. The core of restored original historic buildings from the interpretive period are complemented by reconstructed sites, along with early 20th-century buildings designed in the same mode. The Historic Plaza remains a gathering place for community events and historic activity. Five original adobe buildings are part of the historic park, which includes museums, unique retail shops, and several restaurants. La Casa de Estudillo is a mansion built around a garden courtyard. La Casa de Machado y Stewart is full of artifacts that reflect ordinary life of the period. Some of the other historic buildings include the Mason Street School (California's first public schoolhouse), La Casa de Machado y Silvas, the San Diego Union Printing Office (site of the city's oldest surviving newspaper office), and the first brick courthouse. The Seeley Stables Museum, with newly rehabilitated exhibits on overland transportation, houses one of the finest wagon and carriage collections. Visitors can experience a working blacksmith shop, enjoy music, see or touch the park's burros, and engage in activities that represent early San Diego.

The park offers exhibits, tours, living history events and programs, and other recreational and educational events.