Dover, New Hampshire - Four-Legged Chicken and Lincoln's Saddle

We went to the Woodman Institute to see the four-legged chicken (it is there! a little chick, so cute...) but there were many other fascinating parts to the museum. The 400 year old garrison house is well-preserved and the tour was well done. In the second house there is a wide collection of donated items and our ancient and elderly tour guide was the grandson of the man who had donated much of the exhibit; some of the items, including the 1895 wooden air-powered BB gun, he had played with as a child! The main house (recently renovated) has beautiful collections of preserved sea life and semi-precious gems and minerals which should not be missed. I found the taxidermied animals, other than the chicken, rather depressing and not really striking when compared to your average natural history museum. [Stephen Karpf, 08/01/2004]

The Woodman Institute exhibits range from local history items (Mind you. Dover is the seventh oldest settlement in the US) to downright bizarre animal oddities (can you say four legged chicken?) all of which were found by, shot by, owned by, and native to someone who lived in Dover. The admission fee is low if they haven't raised it since I was last there. It includes three museums, one of which is the Garrison House, still standing after almost 400 years. The caretaker will gladly let you walk around inside (even upstairs, but I recommend against that. It is about 400 years old with no restoration work done) and give you a brief but colorful history of the house's experiences. [Kellie C., 04/30/2000]

[RA: According to Jason Hindle, Annie E. Woodman Institute Museum staff: "We have Abraham Lincoln's saddle used to view the Union troops a few days before his assassination, the John Parker Hale House, home of Lucy Hale, fiancee to John Wilkes Booth, circus material from the Cushing Circus, the FIRST U.S. Circus to travel across the Atlantic. Stuffed animals such as a Polar Bear, Moose, two-headed snake and a four-legged chicken."]