Delaware museums to offer special programs beginning Jan. 3
During January, the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs will be offering 12 special programs at sites across the state. All programs are free and open to the public. For more information, call 302-744-5055.
Highlights of the month include Delaware’s Heroes of the Forgotten War, guided tours exploring how three of Delaware’s military figures - Commodore Thomas Macdonough, Col. Allen McLane and Commodore Jacob Jones - helped keep the young country safe during the War of 1812, and how a Delaware statesman, James A. Bayard Sr., helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the conflict. Tours will take place Saturday, Jan. 3, between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., at The Old State House, 25 The Green in Dover.
The Dover Public Library at 35 Loockerman Plaza in Dover will host “Lost By One Vote,” a re-enactment in which Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs historical interpreters Tom Welch and Dennis Fisher take on the personas of prominent Delaware congressmen Nathaniel B. Smithers and James A. Bayard Jr. as they debate President Abraham Lincoln’s Compensated Emancipation Plan of 1862 that would have abolished slavery in Delaware. The presentation will be at 11 a.m., Saturday, Jan. 10.
The Zwaanendael Museum, 102 Kings Highway in Lewes, will present “Delaware’s Decades - the 1980s: Salvage of His Majesty’s Sloop DeBraak,” a lecture by Claudia Leister, executive director of the Milford Museum, on the 1986 recovery of the British warship DeBraak, which sank off the Delaware coast May 25, 1798. The event will take place at 2 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 17. Admission to the lecture is free but, due to space restrictions, reservations are required by calling 302-645-1148 no later than Jan. 5.
