November 2010

The Vermont Historical Society engages both Vermonters and "Vermonters at heart" in the exploration of the state's rich heritage. Their purpose is to reach a broad audience through outstanding collections, statewide outreach, and dynamic programming. They believe that an understanding of the past changes lives and builds better communities.

Their permanent exhibit, Freedom and Unity: One Ideal, Many Stories, opened in March 2004. The multimedia exhibit, which represents Vermont's history from 1600 to the present, fills 5,000 square feet in the Pavilion building in Montpelier. Visitors walk through time and experience a full sized Abenaki wigwam, a re-creation of the Catamount Tavern where Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys gathered, a railroad station complete with a working telegraph and a WWII living room furnished with period music and magazines.

Among the Marquis' enterprises were a beef packing plant, a stagecoach line, a freighting company, refrigerated railway cars, cattle and sheep raising, land ownership, and a new town which he called Medora, in honor of his wife. This 26-room, two-story frame building was built in 1883 as the summer residence of the Marquis's family. The Chateau is now a historic house museum and contains many of the original furnishings and personal effects of the de Mores family.

Hagley Museum and Library houses important collections of manuscripts, photographs, books, and pamphlets documenting the history of American business and technology. The museum is home to the world's largest private collection of 19th century patent models, as well as artifacts pertaining to DuPont Company history and du Pont family history. It is also 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. Main exhibits at the museum cover the DuPont Company history and Hagley's 19th century industrial community. Other places run by the museum include Eleuthrian Mills, the first du Pont home, the Hagley Powder Yard, which dates back to the time of water power, and Workers' Hill, which looks at social and family histories of workers at the powder mills.

Once home to prehistoric Native Americans, Pond Spring is the post-Civil War home of Gen. Joseph Wheeler, a Confederate major general, a U.S. congressman, and a Spanish-American War general. Following the Civil War, Wheeler became a national symbol for reunification and reconciliation. Wheeler’s daughter, “Miss Annie Wheeler,” served in three wars as a Red Cross nurse.

The 50-acre site includes a dogtrot log house built around 1818, a circa 1830 Federal-style house, the 1880s Wheeler house, eight farm-related outbuildings, two family cemeteries, an African-American cemetery, a small Indian mound, a pond, a boxwood garden, and other garden areas.

In the 19th century, the United States' movement westward caused many issues with the Native Americans. The Sand Creek Massacre is an example and is today being rembered as a National Historic Site. Estimates account for hundreds of Native Americans and fifteen to twenty militia men killed in the attack. The site offers trails, a visitors center, and other outlets for research on this topic.

Cahawba was once Alabama's state capital (1820-1826) and a thriving antebellum river town. It became a ghost town shortly after the Civil War. Today it is an important archaeological site and a place of picturesque ruins.

Nature has reclaimed much of Old Cahawba, but historians and archaeologists from the Alabama Historical Commission are working hard to uncover Cahawba's historic past and to create a full time interpretive park.

Nationally significant as the boyhood home of Spanish-American War hero and U.S. Congressman Richmond Pearson Hobson, Magnolia Grove is a Southern archetype – what many tourists expect to see in the Deep South. As Hobson’s house, however, it presents a more fully-rounded interpretation of our complex regional history. In addition to his military fame, he was a Progressive-era politician who championed women’s rights and civil rights, as well as a national leader in the fight against alcohol and drug abuse.

Magnificent magnolia trees and a beautiful boxwood garden surround the home. The mansion is filled with original family furniture and the walls are lined with portraits of the Croom and Hobson families. The site includes a detached kitchen and a slave house.

The facilities include Spacedome Theater, Rocket Park, the Education Training Center, which houses NASA's Educator Resource Center, and more.

The Davidson Center for Space Exploration is like no other in the country. In its 476 foot long, 90 foot wide and 63 foot high structure, suspended 10 feet above the floor, is a national historic treasure, the mighty Saturn V, restored to its Apollo era readiness.

Visitors to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center will experience Huntsville's role in the making of the moon rocket, the space race, the Apollo missions, learn about the Space Shuttle program, the International Space Station and onto the next beginnings with NASA's Constellation project. Visitors may trace the evolution of mankind’s ventures into space and watch as tomorrow's potential engineers, scientists and astronauts train in one of the Space Camp or Aviation Challenge Programs.

The life size German V-2 Rocket is on display. The V-2 rocket was the first man made object capable of leaving the Earth's atmosphere and was used as the basis of the rockets of the American space program that went to the moon.

Its architecture, with lines modeling the simplicity of traditional Pennsylvania Mennonite meetinghouses, points towards the spiritual center of Mennonite life. The concept was that "church" was congregation, not the building in which they "met." The building also suggests rural images of mill, barn and house, while exhibits show the movement toward a more urban society, giving contemporary expression to a deep-rooted heritage.

Headquarters of the Morris County Historical Society are located at this historic, Victorian-Era home.

Acorn Hall, named for one of the largest and oldest red oak trees in New Jersey, symbolizes the Victorian Era in Morris County. This Italianate Victorian mansion built in 1853 housed two families--the Schermerhorns and the Cranes, who like many others, moved to Morristown to escape the noise and congestion of New York City.  Today Acorn Hall remains the most intact and authentic Victorian House in Morristown. 

Acorn Hall, headquarters of the Morris County Historical Society since 1971, includes a Victorian Research Library, the only one of its kind in New Jersey. Gardens designed and maintained by the Home Garden Club of Morristown feature flowers and shrubs typical of nineteenth century landscapes.