Ash Lawn-Highland, Home of James Monroe [VA]

Description

Ash Lawn-Highland is an historic house museum, 535-acre working farm, and performing arts site. President James Monroe and his wife, Elizabeth Kortright Monroe of New York, owned Ash Lawn-Highland from 1793 to 1826 and made it their official residence from 1799 to 1823. After the Monroes' death, the name of their farm was changed from "Highland" to "Ash Lawn"; today both names are used.

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

Historic Alexandria [VA]

Description

Seven of the city's premier historic sites are owned and operated by the City of Alexandria and fall under the administration of the Office of Historic Alexandria, the department of City government charged with the conservation, interpretation, and promotion of these links to the past. The sites are listed individually in the historical site database here at the National History Education Clearinghouse.

The organization offers tours, educational programs, research library access, 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.

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.

Alamance Battleground State Historic Site and Allen House [NC]

Description

On this site in 1771, an armed rebellion of backcountry farmers—called Regulators—battled against royal governor William Tryon's militia. Visitors can tour the 18th-century Allen House and battlefield monuments. These features, together with the visitor center's new DVD orientation program, offer a vivid account of this colonial battle, as well as the oppressive British colonial policies that sparked the revolt.

The site offers a short film, exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture [MD]

Description

The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture is dedicated to sharing the courageous journeys toward freedom and self-determination made by African-American Marylanders.

The museum offers tours, exhibits, educational programs, research library access, and recreational and educational events.

Historic Annapolis Foundation, HistoryQuest, and Paca House [MD]

Description

The Foundation operates several historic sites, including HistoryQuest and the Paca House. HistoryQuest features a comprehensive welcome center, offering tickets and reservations for tours, excursions, venues, and other events. Exhibits tell the stories of those who have lived and worked in Annapolis through the decades. The Paca House, restored home of William Paca, signer of the Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary-era Governor of Maryland, stands today as one of the most elegant landmarks in Annapolis.

The foundation offers tours and recreational and educational events; HistoryQuest offers tours and exhibits; the Paca House offers tours and occasional recreational and educational events.

Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society and Hatton Ferry

Description

Founded in 1940, the Society seeks to study, preserve, and promote the history of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia. The Society's museum collection contains over 1,500 artifacts of historical significance to Charlottesville and Albemarle County. The Society also maintains and operates the Hatton Ferry, one of only two poled ferries still operating in the United States; a small exhibit explores the history of the ferry, and visitors may ride across the river at no charge if water levels permit.

The society offers lectures, tours, exhibits, research library access, and occasional recreational and educational events.