Buffalo Gap Historic Village [TX]

Description

The Buffalo Gap Historic Village preserves and presents the history and heritage of the last 50 years of the Texas frontier (1875–1925). The living history village contains at least 12 original building; a museum; collections of arrowheads, frontier weapons, and medical instruments; and two Model T hacks.

The village offers exhibits, lectures, audio wand tours, a school day utilizing 1925 curriculum, a curriculum guide, and vintage baseball.

Prescott Farm [RI]

Description

Prescott Farm presents Revolutionary War era rural life in Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island. The site consists of public access areas, as well as several historic structures rented to tenant stewards. Historically, General Richard Prescott, commander of the 4,000-strong British occupying force on Aquidneck Island, took the house owned by Loyalist John Overing (the circa 1730 Nichols-Overing House) as his rural headquarters. On July 10, 1777, American Colonel William Barton, under cover of darkness, led a party of 30 or more men in longboats to the farm, where they absconded with Prescott and his aid. Structures on site include the 1812 Robert Sherman Windmill; the Hicks House, built circa 1715 and now called The Country Store; the mid–1700's guard house; and the Sweet-Anthony House, built circa 1730. Prescott Farm’s kitchen and herb gardens are living laboratories that showcase period horticulture as well as contemporary gardening practices. The plant varieties grown in the gardens represent what many Aquidneck Islanders may have used for food, medicine and other utilitarian purposes in the colonial era.

The farm offers exhibits, guided tours, and educational programming.

Schroeder Saddletree Factory Museum [IN]

Description

For 94 years, workers at the Ben Schroeder Saddletree Company crafted tens of thousands of wooden frames for saddle makers throughout the United States and Latin America. It was the nation's longest lasting, continually operated, family-owned saddletree company. John Benedict "Ben" Schroeder, a German immigrant, started his business in a small brick workshop in 1878, though it grew to include a woodworking shop, boiler room and engine shed, a sawmill, a blacksmith shop, an assembly room, the family residence, and several outbuildings. After his death, Ben's family kept his dream alive by adding stirrups, hames for horse collars, clothespins, lawn furniture, and even work gloves to their line of saddletrees. The factory closed in 1972 and was left completely intact. Recognized by historians as one of America's premier industrial heritage sites, the Schroeder Saddletree factory has been restored to allow visitors to Madison to tour through this vintage workplace. Belts turn and the original antique woodworking machines spin into action. Sawdust is whisked from machines into the boiler room, where it once fueled the steam boiler that powered the equipment. Saddletree patterns hang, cobweb covered, from the ceiling.

The museum offers tours, demonstrations, and exhibits.

Burritt on the Mountain: A Living Museum [AL]

Description

The 163-acre Burrit on the Mountain: A Living Museum consists of the 1936 mansion of Dr. William Henry Burrit, physician and inventor; a historic park with restored 19th-century houses and period crops; a barnyard; and animals. Exhibits cover the history of the land and people of Tennessee and Alabama's Southern Cumberland region. Living history demonstrations include blacksmithing, spinning, and cooking over an open hearth.

The museum offers exhibits, period rooms, living history interpreters, demonstrations, nature trails, educational programs, summer camps, Field Trip Fridays, monthly home school programs, traveling trunks for rent, and in-classroom outreach programs. Reservations are required for Field Trip Fridays.

California Citrus State Historic Park

Description

This park preserves some of the rapidly vanishing cultural landscape of the citrus industry and tells the story of this industry's role in the history and development of California. The park recaptures the time when "Citrus was King" in California, recognizing the importance of the citrus industry in southern California. In the early 1900s, an effort to promote citrus ranching in the state brought hundreds of would-be citrus barons to California for the "second Gold Rush." The design of the park is reminiscent of a 1900s city park, complete with an activity center, interpretive structure, amphitheater, picnic area, and demonstration groves. The land contained within the park still continues to produce high-quality fruits.

The park offers exhibits, tours, demonstrations, educational programs, and recreational and educational events.

Fulkerson Mansion and Farm Museum [IL]

Description

The Fulkerson Mansion and Farm Museum presents the cattle farm—Hazy Dell—and Southern-style Victorian mansion which became the home of Lt. Colonel William H. Fulkerson after his stint with the Confederate Army. Hazel Dell is virtually unchanged today; and the Farm Museum contains many rare agricultural items and equipment with emphasis on farm steam traction engines—utilized for plowing the prairie, threshing grain, and for powering early sawmills. The museum features Reeves steam engines and plows, while the 1866 mansion is furnished with antiques and artifacts of the period, with a special display of the Fulkerson's personal Civil War items, Lafayette Baker's Civil War artifacts, and the Thomas Lincoln Anvil. The building is in an Italianate style—with a low pitched roof and tall, narrow windows—popular between the 1850s and 1880s.

The site offers exhibits and tours of the mansion.

Rock Ford Plantation [PA]

Description

Rock Ford Plantation is the 17th-century home of Edward Hand. He purchased the 177 acres in two portions, in 1785 and 1792, and added a Georgian-style brick mansion circa 1794. Rock Ford's four floors conform to the same plan—a center hall and four corner rooms—typical of the period, and the original 18th-century floors, rails, shutters, doors, cupboards, paneling, and windowpanes remain. Furnishings were selected based on Hand's own estate inventory. During Hand's life, the property served as a tenant farm with fields, livestock, and orchards. Today, Rock Ford is one of the most important examples of Georgian domestic architecture surviving in Pennsylvania and the most intact building predating 1800 in Lancaster County.

The plantation offers living history interpretation, hands-on activities, open-hearth cooking demonstrations, guided tours, educational programs for specific grade levels, and a pre-visit education packet.

The Fort at No.4 Living History Museum [NH]

Description

The Fort at No.4 Living History Museum presents the experience of life as a settler in the 1740s, the time during which the original fort was settled. Daily demonstrations include hearth cooking, musket firing, and military drills. The site includes 12 reconstructed homes; a reconstructed great chamber and watch tower; and exhibits on the Abenaki, members of the Algonquin. Smaller divisions of the Abenaki include the Sokoki, Panacook, and Cowasck.

The museum offers tours by guides in period dress, exhibits, hands-on activities, demonstrations, docents depicting actual period figures, and period rooms. The website offers printable student activities, lesson plans, curriculum resources, and a post–visit activity.

Hagley Museum and Library [DE]

Description

Hagley Museum and Library collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. Hagley is the site of the gunpowder works founded by E. I. du Pont in 1802. This example of early American industry includes restored mills, a workers' community, and the ancestral home and gardens of the du Pont family.

The museum offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, research library access, demonstrations, and recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Rural Hill: Center of Scottish Heritage [NC]

Description

Rural Hill consists of the 265-acre farmlands of John Davidson, Revolutionary War soldier and son of Scottish immigrants. The site contains a reconstruction of the Davidson home, as well as two historic schoolhouses (built 1890 and circa 1898) and the original ash house, chicken shed, granary, barn, well house, and smoke house. Today, the property operates as a working farm.

The center offers educational programs, walking trails, hayrides, and guided tours on period farm life and Rural Hill's involvement in the American Revolution. The website offers activities and suggested reading for educators.