Today we celebrated the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Day by visiting The Maitland Historical Society's Waterhouse Residence Museum. If you're going to get in for free, why not check out a museum you didn't even know existed? The Maitland Historical Society's museums are located on lovely Lake Lily in Maitland, and we enjoyed a walk around the lake after our tour. I believe we can call Museum Day a hit; everyone in our almost-crowded tour had brought web-printed admission passes, and for most of us the museum was a new experience.
Since Mr. Waterhouse came originally from "the north," I can't help wondering if he was a descendant of my eighth great grandfather, Jacob Waterhouse, who immigrated from England to New London, Connecticut in 1676. He had a nice house, much more so than would be expected for a middle class family, because he was a carpenter and buit much of it himself. Part of the museum is his shop, which is filled with antique tools. "Antique," I'm sure—but it let us know how old we are when we found ourselves giving a sotto voce commentary throughout the tour: "This house is the same age as the one I grew up in," "My aunt had a stove like that," and "Those tools look just like the ones in my dad's workshop."
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