Living History
While bringing the past to life is the mission of any good historical museum, some of New England’s best-loved attractions stand out for offering a true immersion in the world of yesteryear. These living history museums are fun and engaging, but they are also places where research and new discoveries continue to inform our understanding of the past. As you interact with interpreters dressed in period clothing, try your hand at traditional crafts, and get up close with heritage farm breeds, you’ll experience life as it was lived in New England’s early settlements, seafaring villages, working farmsteads, and architecturally rich towns.
CONNECTICUT
At Mystic Seaport Museum, visitors can wander the streets of a re-created maritime village typical of 19th-century New England, stopping along the way to watch carpenters restore antique boats at the Preservation Shipyard, learn about blacksmithing and other trades that served the shipbuilding industry that flourished here, and step aboard historic vessels that include the Charles W. Morgan, the world’s last surviving wooden whaling ship. The museum’s tour boats, including the 1908 coal-fired steamboat Sabino, provide the opportunity to see the entire Seaport Village from the water, while Schaefer’s Spouter Tavern on the waterfront serves up Moby Dick–inspired nostalgia along with sandwiches, locally brewed beers, and, of course, New England clam chowder.
RHODE ISLAND
Early American farmers weren’t peasants, but many weren’t the rugged individualists of popular myth, either. Those who worked as tenant farmers had to pay to raise crops on land they didn’t own, and they could often be evicted without warning. This tenuous way to make a living is explored at the Coggeshall Farm Museum, a living history museum established on the site of a former salt-marsh tenant farm in Bristol. Fields and restored farm buildings dating to the 18th century are populated by costumed interpreters, who will invite you to try your hand at old-time crafts. Kids love visiting the heritage-breed pigs and sheep.
In Lincoln, the Great Road Heritage Campus features four 19th-century structures: a blacksmith shop, a mill, a schoolhouse, and Hearthside House. The last one is a circa-1810 stone mansion known as “the house that love built,” with a backstory that is romantic yet heartbreaking. All four sites have docents dressed in period clothing who demonstrate everything from domestic chores to the workings of an early machine shop. In the one-room schoolhouse, you’ll even see the classroom stove where teachers used to cook potatoes for students’ daily lunches.
MAINE
Seen through the story of one prominent local family, life in rural Maine is the focus at Norlands in Livermore, where tour guides educate and entertain visitors while keeping a working farm humming using 19th-century methods. Formerly home to a family that included governors, congressmen, and other luminaries, the restored Washburn estate is a sprawling property graced by a circa-1867 mansion as well as a Gothic Revival library built in 1883. This being New England, there is also a white-steepled church—the 1828 Universalist meetinghouse—along with a one-room schoolhouse and various farm buildings. The Norlands tradition of lending quilts so visitors can enjoy a picnic on the mansion lawn means you’ll want to bring lunch along.
A lighthouse keeper’s life may seem idyllic, but tending to a lighthouse was a difficult and sometimes dangerous job in the 1800s. Maintaining a whale-oil-powered beacon around the clock to warn mariners away from dangerous shores required constant vigilance, including during serious storms. The immersive living-history experience at Burnt Island Lighthouse in Boothbay Harbor starts with getting there: Like many early lighthouses, it can be reached only by boat. Once ashore, lively tours of the 200-year-old beacon are led by volunteers from the Keepers of Burnt Island Lighthouse—all former lighthouse keepers themselves.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Visit Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, and you’ll experience more than four centuries of history in a single preserved neighborhood, called Puddle Dock. English settlers established a permanent presence in this area in the 1600s, and an interactive exhibit will introduce you to the indigenous people who hunted and fished here for some 12,000 years before then, too. History is brought to life by role-playing guides, who share insights as you explore 32 historic buildings dating back as far as 1695, plus six historic gardens, including a World War II–era “Victory Garden.” While Strawbery Banke’s main season runs from May through October, winter visitors can enjoy the festive Candlelight Stroll on select December evenings and ice skating during the frozen-weather months. Gliding across Puddle Dock Pond, surrounded by buildings from bygone eras, is a uniquely memorable winter experience.
It’s hard to imagine now, but until 1760, Charlestown, New Hampshire, was the northwesternmost settlement in England’s American colonies. The Fort at No. 4 re-creates life at what was then a frontier outpost, where European settlers traded, interacted, and occasionally clashed with the surrounding Native American communities. Within the stockaded walls of this 18th-century fort, you’ll see docents in period attire demonstrating daily activities such as cooking and medicine-making. An annual reenactment of French and Indian War battles, held in May, is a highlight of the museum’s living history offerings, which also include visits with modern members of the Abenaki tribe.
MASSACHUSETTS
In central Massachusetts, Old Sturbridge Village is arguably New England’s most complete living history museum. You’ll feel transported to the 1830s as you explore both a working farm and a re-created village. Streets surrounding the town common are lined with historic homes and commercial buildings that were gathered from across the region and relocated here. Step inside the pottery, furniture making, and print shops, where authentically attired historians demonstrate their crafts. A carriage ride and perhaps a draft beer at the Bullard Tavern help complete the back-in-time experience.
A dozen restored 18th- and 19th-century houses in the heart of Deerfield are now Historic Deerfield, which offers a glimpse of life in the Connecticut River Valley from the Colonial period through the town’s revival as a center of the American Arts and Crafts Movement in the early 20th century. The elegant homes, filled with period furnishings, are all open for tours. Docent demonstrations run the gamut from gunsmithing to cooking to gravestone carving.
For a religious sect that counted celibacy as one of its main tenets, the Shakers were a remarkably successful part of the religious landscape in 18th- and 19th-century New England, establishing societies across the region to preach a message of devotion, pacifism, and egalitarianism. Hancock Shaker Village, near the New York–Massachusetts border in Hancock, is a testament to Shaker industry and ingenuity, highlighted by a massive round stone barn built in 1826 to house dairy cattle. The adjacent Dairy Ell is still home to a herd of cows, milked daily as part of the ongoing operation of the oldest working farm in the state. Docents in period clothing demonstrate and teach Shaker crafts and tasks, such as forging farm tools and making straw brooms.
VERMONT
With its tidy central green, wooden covered bridge, and mix of historic architecture, Woodstock is one of Vermont’s most beautiful villages. Walk from the center of town to visit the sheep and Jersey cows at Billings Farm & Museum, where exhibits, demonstrations, and animal encounters whisk you back to life on a 19th-century dairy farm. The restored 1890 Farm Manager’s House gives an idea of what it took to run such an operation, containing the business office for former farm manager George Aitken, his family’s private living space, a creamery for the production of butter, and an adjoining ice house. Visitors here are greeted by interpreters who take you back in time, answering questions about the house and its occupants; depending on the time of year, there are also programs featuring 1890s artifacts and pastimes, cooking demonstrations and tastings, and more. Before you leave, pick up a hunk of Billings Farm cheese, which makes a tasty snack while you’re road-tripping in New England.
