Huzzah! Colonial reenactors; a colonial-era shop (complete with sutler!); spirited fife-and-drum music; a nationally renowned New Haven Etch-a-Sketch artist; historic herb garden tours and colonial games will provide a full afternoon of fun at the Pardee-Morris House (PMH) during Family Day 2024, on Sunday, August 25, 2024, from 12 – 4 p.m. All PMH events are free. Visitors are welcome to bring picnics and chairs and spend the afternoon.

Schedule
12:00 p.m.
Reenactors from the 6th Connecticut Regiment will demonstrate a Revolutionary War soldier’s life, showcasing traditional drills and demonstrating the cleaning and firing of their muskets. A lieutenant will detail the contents of a continental soldier’s knapsack, and kids can join in a mock drill with wooden muskets.

Steve Salisbury, proprietor of the Big Bear Trading Company, will don his top hat and spectacles and set up shop as an 18th-century sutler, offering soldiers and modern-day visitors some of the tools, trinkets, eating utensils, and miscellaneous goods that were popular in that period.

1:00 p.m.
Lancraft Fife and Drum will play tunes dating from pre- American Revolution, through the Civil War to modern compositions. Fife-and-drum music was used for military calls during drills and battles as well as recreation for troops. Lancraft Fife and Drum was founded in 1888 and named for its early benefactor Ed Lancraft, owner of an oyster company along the Quinnipiac River in Fair Haven. Lancraft donated uniforms, drums and equipment to the group and an oyster shack in which to practice in. In the 1960s the group built a hall in North Haven in which they still practice today.

2 p.m.
Tour the PMH Colonial Herb Garden with Master Gardener Giulia Gambale inviting guests to touch and smell clippings of herbs, and discussing each of the four garden beds of the historic Herb Garden on the Pardee Morris House grounds, including:
· How the garden was researched, and plants were selected
· How guests can easily maintain their own herb garden
· Early and modern-day uses of the herbs

Gambale and master gardener Rachel Heerema have been maintaining the historic herb garden of the Pardee Morris House since 2017. Gambale is a member of the Mutual Aid Growers, a group delivering produce to people who are undocumented and ineligible for food stamps and unemployment. She writes on gardening and other topics and runs businesses consulting and instructing on entrepreneurship.

3.p.m.
Professional Etch-a-Sketch artist Bryan Madden will capture the likeness of the historic Pardee-Morris House on a full-size Etch-a-Sketch while visitors watch on a flat-screen television. Madden has been a professional Etch-a-Sketch artist for 10+ years with appearances on The Today Show and Good Morning America. Huffington Post called him “The Etch a Sketch Picasso.” His work has connected him with some of his own personal heroes, such as Smokey Robinson and Iggy Pop, who have shared Madden’s work online. Madden’s watercolors of New Haven area pizzerias are currently on view in the rotunda of the New Haven Museum.

The Museum thanks its community partners: WSHU 91.1 FM, The Howard Gilman Foundation, Avangrid /UI Lighting Up the Arts, CT Humanities, and Alder Salvatore E. DeCola for supporting the 2024 summer season.