Julian H. Sleeper House Museum

04/01/2026

April Fools Day greetings from the Julian H Sleeper House Museum

03/17/2026

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from the Julian H Sleeper House Museum

02/17/2026

The Julian H Sleeper House Museum is all prepared for Mardi Gras.

02/13/2026

Happy Valentines Day from the Julian H Sleeper House

People like to complain that Valentine’s Day is too commercial, that it’s all an excuse to make us buy overpriced chocolate and flowers. Well buck up—we may be wasting our money, but at least we’re not traumatizing our loved ones! Because based on these Valentine’s cards from the 1940s and...

01/03/2026

Happy New Year from the Julian H Sleeper House

12/23/2025

Happy Holidays from the Julian H Sleeper House Museum

11/25/2025

Happy (Thomas Nast) Thanksgiving from the Julian H Sleeper House Museum.

10/27/2025

A fun Halloween tradition from the Gilded Age

Happy Halloween from the Julian H Sleeper House Museum.

07/28/2025

Something you probably didn’t expect to see as part of the collection in a museum devoted to the Guilded Age….Baseball Memorabilia.

There is so many surprises at the Julian H. Sleeper House Museum beyond what you might anticipate finding there.

Go Ichiro!

07/27/2025

Beachwear in the 1880’s. How scandalous! You can almost see her ankles!

05/24/2025

A reminder from the Julian H Sleeper House Museum about “Decoration Day,” the precursor to Memorial Day, commemorating the sacrifice of those who died fighting for freedom from slavery.

Decoration Day was organized by freedman's relief organizations and formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. One of a series of celebrations in the destroyed city to mark the end of the war, this event was orchestrated by the African American citizens of Charleston to mark and decorate the graves of the 257 Union prisoners who died at the Charleston Race Course, which had been converted to a Confederate prison.

Thousands of freedmen, including almost 3,000 black schoolchildren, gathered to decorate the graves with flowers and beautify the graveyard, building an enclosure and an arch labeled, "Martyrs of the Race Course" in what is now Hampton Park.

Scholar David Blight has christened this event the first Memorial Day: "What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the War had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.”

Image below is a vintage postcard from that era.