2 Best Sights in Brandywine Valley, Pennsylvania

Becoming Chester County, the center's excellent permanent exhibition, uses its collection of 70,000 historical objects and modern interactive displays to tell compelling stories of the challenges and opportunities Delaware Valley inhabitants faced from the late 1600s to today. Galleries address the Lenape people, the American Revolution, slavery, industrialization, women's suffrage, immigration, and other issues, often using the examples of local residents. The collections are gorgeous, including furniture, quilts, period clothing, tall-case clocks, and cross-stitch samplers. A hands-on history lab lets kids try some old-style tools and dress up in a hoop skirt, and the center's library has extensive records and photographs. The society's two-building complex includes a former horticultural hall that was the site of the first women's rights convention in Pennsylvania.

Proximity to the Mason-Dixon Line helped make Kennett Square particularly active in the Underground Railroad: slavery was legal in nearby Delaware, so Pennsylvania was the first free state encountered by many escaping enslavement. Among the area's abolitionists were Quakers and members of the local African American community. The Kennett Underground Railroad Center, based in one room in the Kennett Heritage Center, preserves this history, offering a two-hour guided bus tour of related sites on one Sunday a month most of the year. The tours are family-friendly and stop at historic houses, Quaker meetinghouses, and documented Underground Railroad sites. The Kennett Heritage Center ( kennettheritagecenter.org), located downtown in a 1901 house, presents town history with modern, information-packed panels and also has some photographs and artifacts. The focus is on the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, the Underground Railroad, and agricultural history.