Our Museum as Host: A Visit from Enterprising Explorers

The Middlesex Elementary School’s Coordinator of Gifted Education, Science and Social Studies, Ms. Macy McNamee, brought a fourth-grade class on an expedition to our museum and its mapping collection. They explored the world of our early native American residents and deciphered maps and their nautical ciphers.

Additionally, they looked at artifacts of Natives encountered by John Smith and explored their lifestyles and skills these peoples had: discussed the food, natural resources that explorers found during their visits to our area when they created the maps. To finish the visit, each student located an artifact in the museum collection, sketched it, and wrote about it in their journals.

The museum has spent time collecting maps that include Middlesex County, and we have a nice selection. Our earliest map is from the late 1500s, and we progress forward in time, through multiple centuries. It makes for a great study of how our early county was depicted and the details that cartographers captured in the drawings and illustrations they included.