Hagley Museum

I had all intentions to go back to Winterthur when I left the house this morning.  Lauren was a little bummed that we went without her last time and since Winterthur is one of the places we can visit on our Brandywine Treasure Trail Passport we get to go again.  I figured I was somewhat of an expert at Winterthur now.  After all, I was just there a few weeks ago plus I was there this past spring for Zach's field trip.  Visiting two times in one year makes me an expert right?  So we pack up the car with another picnic lunch and head off this morning, all 5 of us.  We get all the way there and at the entrance is a big sign, CLOSED on Mondays.  Lauren says to me, "um, mom, didn't you check the website?"  Being an expert I didn't think I had to!  Definitely not one of my finer moments.

I salvaged the day though.  We can visit various museums on that pass so I start to think about what other place we could visit instead.  We've already visited the Delaware Museum of Natural History which is right down the street so we couldn't go there.  "I know, let's go to the Delaware Art Museum, that's not far.  Lauren, check their website and make sure they're open."  She checked and would you believe that they're closed on Mondays too?  Oh geez, now what?  Hagley was on the list and that wasn't far away so after checking their website and finding them open I drove to that museum and we spent our day there. 

I haven't been to Hagley since I was little and on a field trip.  As far as I can remember none of my kids have gone there on field trips so this place was new for us.  We start out at the Visitor Center which has 3 floors.  The kids are watching a short clip about someone in the Civil War:

 Standing by a flag that was used for mourning:

 Zach loved looking in Jeff Gordon's race car.  This was on the third floor which was very kid oriented. 

 My little miss scientist.   There were slides you could put under the microscope to compare natural materials to ones that duPont came up with. 

 After leaving the visitor center we boarded the bus that took us through Hagley and rode it all the way to the end which was "Eleutherian Mills."  We took a tour of the very first duPont home in America which was interesting at first but a little too long for us, Megan and Zach got bored.  Here's Megan and Lauren while we wait for the bus to come. 

 Lauren, Megan and Zach wanted to go eat our picnic lunch but I kind of wanted to check out the Sunday School which was near one of the bus stops before heading back.  We almost didn't get off the bus but I asked Kristin what she wanted to do and she said she didn't care so I took that opportunity to go see the Sunday School so off the bus we go. 

They call it a Sunday School because the children of mill workers could only attend on Sundays because during the week they had to do chores.  So basically it was just a schoolhouse, no church involved whatsoever.  The kids practiced writing with a quill dipped in ink. 

(Megan was being grumpy and opted to sit on a bench outside instead of coming in.  She changed her mind later and joined us but I wasn't taking another picture.) 

We toured the Gibbons House too but only because it was next door and saw how they cooked and did their laundry.  After coming out of there we were all starving and we saw the bus coming so we went back to the bus stop to take it back to the visitor's center.  We found the picnic tables at the end of the parking lot and set up our lunch.

We did miss doing some of the things like the millwright and machine shop which I would have loved to have seen but I had 3 of the 4 kids begging to go home (the 3 to the right in the picture above.)  So guess what we did?  After our picnic we went home. 

It was a very educational trip and I learned more than I wanted to know about the duPont family. It's in a beautiful area right along the Brandywine River and I'm very glad that my goof this morning brought us there.  I would definitely recommend this place to anyone that likes early American history.