Maryland Historical Society Museum, Baltimore

Bet you didn’t know Maryland is historically one of the most interesting states in the country. Seriously. Virginia and Massachusetts get all the attention for their colonial-era history, but look at Maryland. It founded the first real religious freedom acts, and tried to live, for a time, peaceably with local Native Americans. Maryland gave votes to black men and women in its earliest colonial legislatures and uneasily straddled, as it does today, the porous cultural line between North and South—between landowning rural communities supported by slavery and the mercantilism and commerce that would evolve into American industry. The Historical Society explains this saga in extremely thorough but easily accessible detail—you’ll find their museum is kid friendly enough for your children, but cerebral enough for major history nerds.

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