Donations to the Museum have preserved irreplaceable evidence about generations of ordinary Americans. Objects from the Copp household of Stonington, Connecticut, include many items used by a single family from 1740 to 1850. Other donations have brought treasured family artifacts from jewelry to prom gowns. These gifts and many others are all part of the Museum's family and social life collections.
Children's books and Sunday school lessons, tea sets and family portraits also mark the connections between members of a family and between families and the larger society. Prints, advertisements, and artifacts offer nostalgic or idealized images of family life and society in times past. And the collections include a few modern conveniences that have had profound effects on American families and social life, such as televisions, video games, and personal computers. |
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Selected Objects |
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Daguerreotype of Mary Ann Warren
This beautiful daguerreotype by Boston-area photographer George K. Warren (1832–1884) is of the photographer's wife, Mary Ann Warren. The Photographic History Collection has a collection of letters, scrapbooks, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, ...
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Family Photo Album
Family photograph albums hold the history of generations, preserving the memories of birthdays, holidays, travels, and all general aspects of life. African American Mary Taylor used her 35mm Bell and ...
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Game Boy
The Nintendo Game Boy was released in 1989. It was a handheld video game console that combined aspects of Nintendos successful Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) television video game console with ...
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Hart House Architectual Elements from Ipswich, Mass.
The largest artifact in the museum, this Georgian-style, 2 ½-story timber-framed house was built in the 1760s and stood at 16 Elm Street in the center of Ipswich, Massachusetts, until ...
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Health Food: Macrobiotic Brown Rice
Brown rice became popular in the United States as part of the whole and organic foods movement that began in the 1960s and 1970s. Health food stores sprang up to ...
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Mourning Picture
This embroidered mourning picture was embroidered in Lititz, Pennsylvania, about 1816, using silk thread, silk chenille, gold spangles, watercolor, and ink on silk fabric. In a gilded wood frame, it ...
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National Carbon Co. "Eveready" Radio Receiver With Speaker
Radios, like this Eveready model 2, provided many families of the 1920s with a new form of home entertainment. Amateurs began making home radios to transmit and receive messages early ...
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Silver Teapot made for Abigail Robinson of Newport, RI
This silver teapot was made by Samuel Casey of Little Rest (later Kingston, R.I.), about 1750, for Abigail Robinson, probably about the time of her marriage to John Wanton of ...
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Toy Fire Engine
Cast-iron toys, such as this fire engine from about 1900, reflect many commonplace but often forgotten aspects of everyday life. The strength of the Museum's toy collection is an outstanding ...
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Watercolor Painting Depicting the Bennet Family Record
The practice of recording family likenesses predates the 1839 invention of photography by thousands of years, as seen in sculptures and paintings. Illuminated family records commemorated births, deaths, and marriages. ...
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