On Sunday, June 11th, the historic sites at Lincoln’s Great Road Historic Campus will host guided tours at all four 19th century properties, some with some special features on this day. The tours offer something of interest to everyone and all ages.

The restored 1850 one-room Pullen’s Corner Schoolhouse will hold a special celebration of Flag Day to revisit the historic reasons for celebrating our country’s flags. Historic American flags, as well as regimental flags and state flags, will be displayed inside and outside the schoolhouse. Historian Kirk Hindman will provide the background and history of the flags. For kids and adults, there will be a special scavenger hunt involving the pictures and designs on the flags. During the late 1800s and into the 1900s, Flag Day was celebrated in schoolhouses across the country with songs and poetry. The school, also known as the “Hot Potato Schoolhouse,” was Lincoln’s last operating one-room schoolhouse, closing in 1922. Visits to the schoolhouse are $5/family payable in cash upon arrival, or included as part of the general admission for tours of the full Campus. The schoolhouse opens at 12:30 and will accept the last visitors at 3:30 p.m.

At Hearthside, the special exhibit “Woven Time: A History of the Talbot Family,” details the period from 1904-1926 that the Talbot family lived here and brought national prominence to the house they named Hearthside and the superb hand weaving that they did in the attic. The same year that the Talbots moved to Hearthside, it had been the model for the design of the Rhode Island Building at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The Talbots were at the forefront of the Arts & Crafts movement in this country, as well as the Colonial Revival. Famous photographers used the house and family as their model for producing popular hand-colored photographs. The family also collected miniature furniture and toys which filled the home. When they moved out of Hearthside in 1926, the miniatures were donated to the RISD Museum. In 2021, those same miniatures returned to Hearthside. Learn the stories of this fascinating family plus see the special exhibits of hand-colored photographs, weaving equipment, pattern examples, and many of the miniatures which have returned to Hearthside, as well as displays of world events during that time period that they lived here. The first tour begins at 12:30, with staggered admissions up to 2:30.