In Message Tue, 13 Sep 1994 12:50:57 +1000,
  Linda Young <[log in to unmask]> writes:
 
>Tim Daniels asked about the history of house museums, a topic that
>interests me too...For re-created houses, specially interiors, the origin
 seems to be in the
>great exhibitions of the 19thC - I think the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial
>Exposition was the first, with its colonial kitchen.  However, I seem to
>recall that there is a slightly earlier room re-creation in the town museum
>at Deerfield (not Historic Deerfield), which has displayed much the same
>contents (except for fashionable re-arranging) since the early 1870s.
 
The early period rooms in Deerfield, Mass., are in the Memorial Hall Museum.
David Proper, the librarian at Historic Deerfield (Deerfield, MA 01342), has
written an article about their origins which eludes me at the moment--it may
be in one of the Dublin Seminar proceedings.
 
Some other useful material on the history of historic house museums may be
found in:
     Rossano, Geoffrey, ed.  Creating a Dignified Past:  Museums
     and the Colonial Revival.  Savage, Md.:  Rowman and Littlefield
     for Historic Cherry Hill, 1991.
 
     Marling, Karal Ann.  George Washington Slept Here:  Colonial
     Revivals and American Culture, 1876-1986.  Cambridge:
     Harvard University Press, 1988.
 
     Giffen, Sarah L., and Kevin D. Murphy, eds.  "A Noble and
     Dignified Stream":  The Piscataqua Region in the Colonial
     Revival, 1860-1934.  York, Maine:  Old York Historical Society, 1992.
 
     Axelrod, Alan, ed.  The Colonial Revival in America.  New York:
     W. W. Norton, 1985.
 
And since this question has brought me out of the woodwork, a word of
introduction:  I've been at the State Historical Society here since early
1993, having previously worked at the USS Constitution Museum, Gore Place
in Waltham, MA and the Webb-Deane Stevens Museum in Wethersfield, CT.  This
past May I finished a Ph.D. in American & New England Studies at Boston
University, with a dissertation on the colonial revival as manifested in
Wethersfield, CT (including but not limited to its historic houses).  Some
current professional interests include computerized collections management,
the housework/household technology dynamic and the arts & crafts movement in
Wisconsin.
Doug Kendall, Curator of Domestic Life, Museum Division
State Historical Society of Wisconsin
816 State St., Madison, WI 53706
(608)-264-6552; e-mail: [log in to unmask]