Frontier Culture Museum [VA]

Description

The Frontier Culture Museum presents the story of the men and women who came to the United States prior to its existence as a country. The most common origin points of these people were England, Germany, Ireland, and West Africa. Reproductions and actual rural structures moved from these locations represent the various homelands, while another set of exhibits depicts their new life in North America in the 1740s, 1820s, and 1850s. Other topics discussed at the museum include food ways, woodworking, and fiber processing.

The museum offers exhibits, interpretive signage, hands-on activities, living history demonstrations, day camps, three outreach presentations, a teacher institute, a picnic area, a field trip grant application, and a non-lending library with more than 5,000 volumes. The website offers pre- and post-visit discussion topics. All educational programs meet state educational standards.

The Susan B. Anthony House [NY]

Description

The Susan B. Anthony House presents the life and impact of Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), one of the strongest voices for women's right to vote, abolition of slavery, and temperance. Anthony was closely involved with the political programs of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass. The structure was Anthony's home between 1866 and 1906 and the site of her 1872 arrest for voting despite her sex. In addition to displaying Anthony's own possessions, the house offers an exhibit on women's suffrage.

The house offer exhibits, period rooms, lectures, tours, and an educational program on women's suffrage which meets state education standards. Groups of more than 12 require reservations.

Historical Society of Talbot County [MD]

Description

The Historical Society of Talbot County seeks to preserve and share the history of Talbot County, Maryland. To this end, the society operates a museum and three historic residences. The residences are the circa 1795 cottage of cabinetmaker Jospeh Neall, the 1805-1810 Federal-style townhouse of Joseph's brother James, and a partial reconstruction of an early homestead. The townhouse contains period furnishings. The society collections include more than 10,000 artifacts, archives, and at least 100,000 photographs. Roughly 15 percent of the artifact collection is on view at any given time. Collection highlights include the sign of a local suffrage group, local packing labels, illustrated journals by Quaker William E. Bartlett (1793-1865), and a lithograph by artist Ruth Starr Rose (1887-1965).

The society offers exhibits, historic home tours, a self-guided tour of Easton's downtown, a self-guided driving tour of Frederick Douglass' life in the area, gardens, and period rooms. Reservations are required for group tours.

Bluegrass Heritage Museum [KY]

Description

The Bluegrass Heritage Museum presents the history of central Kentucky from the time of Eskippakithiki and European contact to the present day. Topics include agriculture, building history, quilting, Clark County, the military, and telephones. This is the only museum in the U.S. to discuss the history and impact of burley tobacco farming. The museum is located within a Romanesque Revival former clinic.

The museum offers exhibits. The website includes a word find activity.

Sandy Spring Slavery Museum and African Art Gallery [MD]

Description

The Sandy Spring Slavery Museum and African Art Gallery promotes cross-cultural communication, and presents the history of African Americans—from their ancestral ways of life in Africa, their cross-Atlantic voyages, and the Underground Railroad to the Civil Rights Movement and their accomplishments in the United States. Collections include a cross-section of a slaving clipper ship, textiles, instruments, furniture, and a cabin which depicts the living conditions of African Americans circa 1850 to 1870.

The museum offers exhibits and 90-minute tours. At least one week advance notice is required for admission.

American Jazz Museum [MO]

Description

The American Jazz Museum showcases the sights and sounds of a uniquely American art form through interactive exhibits and films; the Changing Gallery; the Blue Room jazz club; and the Gem Theater, a 500-seat performing arts center. The collections include artifacts related to jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Charlie Parker, as well as over 100 recordings. Other highlights include the Charlie Parker Memorial and a major collection of more than 5,000 jazz films.

The museum offers exhibits, films, performances, educational programming, and 16 interactive listening and mixing stations.

Historic Charleston Foundation, Nathaniel Russell House, and Aiken-Rhett House [SC]

Description

The Foundation maintains two historic houses, the Nathaniel Russell House and the Aiken-Rhett House. Set amid spacious formal gardens, the 1808 Nathaniel Russell House is widely recognized as one of America's most important neoclassical dwellings. The house is furnished with period antiques and works of art that evoke the gracious lifestyle of the city's merchant elite. Today the Nathaniel Russell House interprets the lives of the Russell family, as well as the African-American slaves and artisans who were responsible for maintaining one of the South's grandest antebellum townhouses. The Aiken-Rhett House stands alone as the most intact townhouse complex showcasing urban life in antebellum Charleston. Built in 1818 and greatly expanded by Governor and Mrs. William Aiken, Jr. in the 1830s and 1850s, the house has survived virtually unaltered since 1858.

The foundation offers occasional recreational and educational events; the Nathaniel Russell House offers tours; the Aiken-Rhett House offers tours.

Slave Relic Museum [SC]

Description

The Slave Relic Museum presents the history of the U.S. African American population via artifacts made and used by slaves between 1750 and the mid-19th century.

The museum offers exhibits. The website offers audio interviews; a video tour of slave dwelling ruins in the Bahamas; and several primary source documents, including 63 pages of documents relating to the Amistad and William E. Channing's "The Duty of the Free States."

Historic Rosedale Plantation [NC]

Description

Rosedale, originally part of a 911 acre plantation, was built in 1815 by Archibald Frew, merchant, postmaster and tax collector. In the 1830s, a doctor occupied the residence. He oversaw both his practice and the plantation work, carried out by two slave families. Rosedale exemplifies Federal period architecture (1780–1830) and is noted for its faux grain woodwork and the original French wallpaper that survives in three rooms. On a broader scope, the plantation is motivated by the preservation, exhibition, interpretation, and preservation of the architecture, decorative arts, and lifestyle of the 19th–century Catawba River Valley region.

The plantation offers guided tours (both in modern and period dress), hands-on activities, role playing, and educational activities (with listed corresponding state
standards) specifically for field trips.