Pardee-Morris House Family Day 2025
Huzzah! Spirited fife-and-drum music by the Second Company Governor’s Foot Guard (chartered in New Haven in 1775!), a colonial-era retail shop, herb-garden tours and colonial games will provide a full afternoon of fun at the Pardee-Morris House (PMH) during Family Day 2025, on Sunday, August 24, 2025, 12 – 4 p.m. Bring picnics and chairs and spend the afternoon at this free NH250 event. For weather updates check FB/IG or our website: newhavenmuseum.org.
The Second Company Governor’s Foot Guard will perform throughout the afternoon. The use of field music, (utilizing short, shrill flutes called fifes, and traditional, rope-tension snare drums), has continued in the Second Company since its inception, 250 years ago. These instruments were integral in the past for regulating the daily life of a soldier. Today, the field music of the Second Company Governor’s Foot Guard keeps the histories of the unit and martial music alive with parades, educational performances, and historic reenactments.
Reenactors from the 6th Connecticut Regiment will demonstrate a Revolutionary War soldier’s life—showcasing traditional drills and demonstrating the cleaning and firing of their muskets. A lieutenant will detail the contents of a continental soldier’s knapsack, and kids can join in a mock drill with wooden muskets.
Steve Salisbury, proprietor of the Big Bear Trading Company, will don his top hat and spectacles and set up shop as an 18th-century sutler, selling to modern-day visitors some of the tools, trinkets, eating utensils, and miscellaneous goods that were popular in the 1700s.
Families will enjoy crafts, creating lavender sachet bags and paper tri-corn hats. Colonial games for all ages include rolling hoops, graces, and cup-and-ball.
Visitors may also tour the PMH Colonial Herb Garden. University of Connecticut-certified Master Gardener Giulia Gambale will invite guests to touch and smell clippings of herbs and discuss the Pardee Morris House Herb Garden. Visitor’s will hear how the garden was researched, and plants were selected, early and modern-day uses of the herbs, and how they can easily maintain their own herb garden. Visitors will be able to take home select cuttings such as lemon balm, oregano and thyme. Gambale maintains three community gardens throughout New Haven and teaches gardening workshops at New Haven Free Public Library and the Stratford Library.
New Haven Museum thanks the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut for supporting the 2025 Family Day program, and community partners WSHU 91.1 FM and The Howard Gilman Foundation for supporting the 2025 summer season.
