I have twice visited Strawbery Banke, an amazing living history museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The organization is named after the original village founded in New Hampshire by English colonists in 1623, and its ten-acre property was a community called Puddle Dock until the 1950s. In some ways, Strawbery Banke is similar to other living history museums that I have visited, like Plimoth Patuxet Museums (formerly Plimoth Plantation), Colonial Williamsburg, and Old Sturbridge Village (OSV). All of these museums have a collection of historic houses, along with some reproduction buildings, with a mix of costumed interpreters and 21st century guides providing information to visitors.
However, Strawbery Banke has a major difference in approach. Most living history museums focus on a specific decade — 1630s in Plimoth, 1770s in Williamsburg, 1830s in OSV — and base characters, scripts, and programming around a single time period. But at Strawbery Banke, every house is its own time capsule, telling the story of Portsmouth from the arrival of the Wabanaki around 12,000 years ago, English colonialism in the 17th century, the early United States in the 18th century, the changes of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, the World Wars of the 20th century, and climate change today. This comprehensive approach allows visitors to explore over forty buildings without the self-guided tour becoming repetitive (visitor center is pictured at top).
Strawbery Banke hosts an astonishing range of furnished houses and exhibits. The museum featured homes of wealthy families, like Goodwin Mansion and Chase House. A unique building was the home of the Shapiro family, Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in 1908. During my first visit, a partially reconstructed wigwam was part of the People of the Dawnland exhibit, which describes the culture and history of Wabanaki people.
A fun stop, especially for older visitors, is the Marden-Abbott General Store & House. This World War II era general store is filled with vintage goods, including Campbell’s soup, a Coca-Cola freezer, and a Texaco oil tank. A costumed interpreter plays the role of Bertha Abbott, the store owner. My favorite part of the store was a poster featuring a young shopkeeper, who pledges to sell goods at “no more than top legal prices”. Throughout the grounds are gardens planted with techniques from different historical eras. Many of my flower pictures come from the beautiful Goodwin Garden, a Victorian era landscape and greenhouse which has won a Preservation Award from the New England chapter of Victorian Society in America in 2004. Another fun feature were the heritage breed chickens and Victory Gardens celebrating American ingenuity during the World Wars.
Among many excellent choices of Strawbery Banke was the decision to have ongoing restorations viewable by the public, such as Goodwin Mansion, Walsh House, Sherburne House, and Aldrich House & Gardens, which were in the process of repair during my first visit in 2022. However, during my second visit earlier this year in 2024, I could see the entire first floor of Walsh House. I was impressed by an exhibit featuring the table settings of the early 19th century. Motion sensors attached to dishes and silverware triggered an audio recording of a voiceover actor playing Mrs. Walsh explaining each piece. Sherborne House, the oldest building on the property, looked fresh with its new siding despite the original section being built around 1695, with the other half of the building added in 1703. Newly opened Aldrich House celebrated author Thomas Bailey Aldrich who onced lived in the property with his grandparents and wrote a children’s book based on the experience, The Story of a Bad Boy, launching a subgenre of stories about naughty children. In contrast to their meticulous restoration work, the museum leaves Jackson House unrestored as an opportunity to share the lives of the people who lived at Puddle Duck.
The technology and analog demonstrations in the exhibits are incredible, particularly in the Water Has a Memory exhibit inside Rowland Gallery. A touchscreen kiosk displays select objects from the collections linked to a timeline of river usage. Also in the exhibit is the interactive wall “Think Blue! What can YOU do?”, which encourages visitors to lower their carbon footprint through everyday actions. I noticed a significant change to this interactive between my first and second visit. Previously, colorful yarn accompanied a large printed sign of a house, encouraging visitors to wrap yarn over the various pegs attached to points of water waste. I imagine yarn was also wrapped around the necks of playing school children and carried away in tiny pockets, resulting in a major redesign of the interactive. Now, a series of QR codes directs phones to brief videos demonstrating water waste prevention. I would have preferred a solution without screens, but at least this alternative is safer and less messy.
The North and South Cotton Tenant Houses provide more interactive opportunities. The North house focuses on the use of plants throughout human history in Portsmouth. A touch screen highlights farming practices, medical usage, and economics over four time periods. Squeeze-and-sniff bottles allow visitors to smell six different plants grown in the nearby Ethnobotanical Garden. The South house focuses on textiles from Colonial Times to the Industrial Revolution. The house is full of small looms that visitors can try. While this interactive was in its early days during my first visit, the museum hired a professional fiber arts instructor by the time of the second visit, and she was an excellent teacher.
Strawbery Banke Museum was an outstanding experience as an historian. Its depth and breadth of knowledge, combined with the thought put into the restorations, exhibits, and interactives, was phenomenal. While not all buildings can be accessed for those with low mobility, as is common for historic house tours, the museum’s emphasis on inclusivity, accessibility, and family-oriented outlook makes it well worth the visit for anyone going to the Greater Portsmouth area.
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Abigail Epplett leads a dual life as a freelance digital marketing consultant for small humanities-focused organizations and as a customer experience design creative specialist at lab equipment manufacturer Waters Corporation. She holds an MA in Museum Education from Tufts University, where she researched the history of New England from Plymouth to the Civil War. To learn more about her adventures with museums, visit her current blog at abbyeppletthistorian.blogspot.com.
Abigail is Historian-In-Residence at the National Museum of Mental Health Project: https://www.nmmhproject.org/