Portland Museum
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
The Portland Museum is a local history museum in a neighborhood of Louisville that was once an independent town. It details the history of Portland and the neighborhood through walking trails as well as indoor exhibits. The growing collection includes artifacts, costumes, paintings, drawings, photographs, documents, oral histories and vernacular objects such as: cobblers tools, cooking utensils, quilts, amuseument park prizes, opera glasses, chimney pots and various architectural details, business ledgers and advertisements, bottles and crocks, a collection of beer paraphernalia, and handmade cast nets for fishing and net making tools. The collection is informed by a body of research.
Images
Portland's Captain Mary Millicent Miller, a robotic mannequin, tells how she became "a lady steamboat man," the first woman licensed as a steamboat master in America.
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
Founded in 1978 by elementary school teachers, Portland Museum grew from a single classroom to its present location in Beech Grove, an antebellum “country seat” on the old road between Portland and Louisville. The Museum also owns, and is restoring, the Squire Earick House, an American Treasure, that may be the oldest house in Portland.
The collection is not currently available to the public for research but the staff will process requests for information on an as-time-allows basis. Please contact 502-776-7678
The collection is not currently available to the public for research but the staff will process requests for information on an as-time-allows basis. Please contact 502-776-7678