Lloyd Manor [NY]

Description

Lloyd Manor, built in 1766, is a handsome structure with fine interior woodwork by Connecticut craftsmen. Located in a spectacular setting overlooking Lloyd harbor, the grounds contain a formal garden. The house is furnished to the 1793 inventory of John Lloyd II. Lloyd Manor was the home of Jupiter Hammon, a slave who became the first published black poet. Interpretive exhibits provide the history and documentation for the installation.

The site offers exhibits, tours, and educational programs.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic Park [FL]

Description

Visitors to this Florida homestead can walk back in time to 1930s farm life. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings lived and worked in the tiny community of Cross Creek. Her cracker-style home and farm, where she lived for 25 years and wrote her Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Yearling, has been restored and is preserved as it was when she lived here.

A second website for the site, maintained by the Friends of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Farm, can be found here.

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

Willa Cather State Historic Site [NE]

Description

Willa Cather, Nebraska's Pulitzer Prize-winning author, spent her formative years in Red Cloud. Many of the scenes and characters in her writings are based on the people, streets, and landscapes Cather encountered here in her youth. Visitors to the site encounter eight period structures that influenced her writing, including her childhood home; the Catholic and Episcopal churches; the Garber Bank; the Burlington Depot; and the Pavelka Farmstead, home of Annie Pavelka, the basis for the title character of Cather's most famous novel, My Antonia.

A second website for the site, maintained by the Cather Foundation, can be found here.

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

Alex Haley House and Museum [TN]

Description

Originally known as the Palmer House, this 10-room, turn-of-the-century bungalow home was built in 1919 by Will E. Palmer, the maternal grandfather of Alex Haley (1921–1992). From 1921 to 1929, and during some subsequent summers, Haley lived here with his grandparents. The front porch was often the place where young Haley heard the oral accounts of family history, including stories of Kunta Kinte, the young Mandingo man captured near his West African home. These stories inspired Haley to write about his ancestry in a book called Roots. This 1976 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel has been translated into over 30 languages and has had great influence in stimulating the study of genealogy. Roots was adapted for an eight-part television series, which became one of the most popular programs in television history. On December 14, 1978, the Alex Haley House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It has attracted scholars and other visitors from around the world. Haley is buried on the grounds.

The house offers exhibits and tours.

Walt Whitman House [NJ]

Description

Visitors to this site can step back in time to the humble dwelling of the "Good Gray Poet," Walt Whitman. Constructed in 1848, this modest wooden-framed structure built in Greek-revival style was the only home ever owned by Walt Whitman. Here is where Whitman grew to international fame as the author of Leaves of Grass, hosted visitors from around the world, and completed his last comprehensive volume of poetry before his death in 1892. Today, as a New Jersey State Historic Site and a National Historic Landmark, the restored Whitman House welcomes visitors from around the world who come to experience the last worldly surroundings of America's great "Poet of Democracy."

The house offers exhibits, tours, and occasional educational and recreational events.

Sarah Orne Jewett House

Description

Writer Sarah Orne Jewett spent much of her life in this stately Georgian residence, owned by her family since 1819. The view from her desk in the second-floor hall surveys the town's major intersection and provided her with material for her books, such as The Country of the Pointed Firs, which describe the character of the Maine countryside and seacoast with accuracy and affection. In decorating the house for their own use, Miss Jewett and her sister expressed both a pride in their family's past and their own independent, sophisticated tastes. The result is an eclectic blend of 18th-century architecture, antiques, and old wallpapers with furnishings showing the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement.

The house offers tours and educational and recreational programs.

John G. Neihardt State Historic Site [NE]

Description

Visitors to this site can discover the story of John G. Neihardt, Nebraska's Poet Laureate and author of Black Elk Speaks. John G. Neihardt called Bancroft, Nebraska home from 1900 to 1920. Visitors can see the study where the famous poet wrote many of his works or visit the interpretive center and walk in the Sioux Prayer Garden. Among the many objects on exhibit in the memorial room are items Lakota Holy Man Black Elk gave to Neihardt over the course of their friendship, including the sacred hoop of the world, a drum, and a pipe. The Neihardt Center has a library of secondary sources exploring Neihardt's life and legacy available to researchers for inhouse use.

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

Carl Sandburg State Historic Site

Description

The Carl Sandburg State Historic Site is the birthplace of Carl Sandburg (1878-–1967), a Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet and Lincoln biographer, a children's author, and folk song collector. The small frame home, architecturally significant as a "workingman’s cottage," contains three rooms—parlor, bedroom, and kitchen. Carl Sandburg was born here January 6, 1878. Several original family items are on display, along with other simple, utilitarian furnishings typical of the era. Also on the site is a two-story Greek Revival frame house built in 1858. The house currently serves as the site visitor center. On the main floor are a small video theater, the site office, and small exhibit gallery.

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

Robert Frost Farm State Historic Site [NH]

Description

The Robert Frost Farm was home to Robert Frost and his family from 1900–1911. Frost, one of the nation's most acclaimed poets whose writings are said to be the epitome of New England, attributed many of his poems to memories from the Derry years. The simple two-story white clapboard farmhouse is typical of New England in the 1880s.

A second, individual website for the site can be found here.

The site offers exhibits, tours, lectures, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Jack London State Historic Park [CA]

Description

Jack London State Historic Park is a memorial to writer and adventurer Jack London, who made his home at the site from 1905 until his death in 1916. The park was once part of the famous writer's Beauty Ranch. The park contains the cottage residence where he wrote books, short stories, articles, and letters while he oversaw various agricultural enterprises. After London's death, his wife, Charmian, continued to live in the cottage until her death in 1955. It was her wish that the ranch be preserved in memory of Jack London and his work. There is a museum in "The House of Happy Walls," which Mrs. London built in a redwood grove.

The park offers tours and exhibits.