Aurora Colony Historical Society and Museum [OR]

Description

The Society's Museum
The Old Aurora Colony Museum displays and preserves artifacts recounting the history of the Aurora Colony communal society and presents the history, families, and crafts of Oregon's Aurora Colony. The colony was a Christian communal society, consisting nearly entirely of Swiss and German immigrants, which lasted from 1856 to 1883. The museum is located within several structures, including the circa 1860 Ox Barn, 1876 Steinbach Cabin, Will Family Summer Kitchen, Kraus boot and shoe shop, blacksmith shop, and the circa 1864 Kraus House. The Kraus House, Steinbach Cabin, and summer kitchen are furnished to period.

The museum offers exhibits, period rooms, one-hour guided tours, self-guided tours, educational programs for students, a fourth grade farm program for students, outreach speakers, and weekly programming related to quilting. Reservations are required for guided tours, student educational programs, and outreach speakers. The farm program includes a curriculum-based teacher's notebook and pre-visit video. The website offers original Aurora Colony musical scores.

The museum offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Eureka Heritage Society and Romano Gabriel Garden [CA]

Description

The Eureka Heritage Society provides leadership, education, and advocacy to preserve and enhance Eureka's irreplaceable historic structures and neighborhoods so as to ensure a legacy for future generations. It maintains the Romano Gabriel Garden, fashioned from discarded crates and boards by Romano Gabriel, a carpenter turned sculptor. The garden has been "transplanted" and is now housed in a glass exhibit area for viewing.

The society offers occasional recreational and educational events; the garden is open to the public as a viewable exhibit.

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.

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.

Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park

Description

Dallas Heritage Village is a living history museum portraying life in North Texas from 1840–1910. The museum is composed of 38 historic structures and boasts a working Civil War era farm, a traditional Jewish household, elegant Victorian homes, a school, a church, and commercial buildings.

The village offers tours, exhibits, living history demonstrations and reenactments, workshops, and other educational and recreational events.

American Irish Historical Society [NY]

Description

The Society, founded in 1897 to inform the world of the achievements of the Irish in America, is today a national center of scholarship and culture. From its home on New York's Fifth Avenue, the Society serves as a focal point of the contemporary transatlantic Irish experience, a place where current public issues are explored, and where the great renaissance in Irish culture is celebrated in lectures, concerts, art exhibits, and a literary journal.

Does not appear to be affiliated with any specific historical sites.

Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum

Description

With 16 historic buildings in its main complex, which occupies most of a square block in downtown Decorah, Iowa, and two National Register sites just outside the city, Vesterheim houses over 24,000 artifacts, which include large samplings from the fine, decorative, and folk arts, and the tools and machinery of early agriculture, lumbering, and other immigrant industries. Vesterheim also acts as a cultural center dedicated to preserving living traditions by offering classes in Norwegian folk art and culture, Elderhostels, and special programs for preschool, elementary, secondary, and college students.

The museums offers exhibits, classes, tours, research library access, and other educational and recreational programs.