Tuckerton Seaport & Baymen’s Museum
At Tuckerton Seaport, local students will conduct oral history interviews with cultural bearers to reveal how everyday objects tell the story of South Jersey’s “sense of place.”
At the Tuckerton Seaport & Baymen’s Museum on the Jersey Shore, history is told through the lived knowledge of the people who know the place best. As part of the Seaport’s This is the Place! onsite and traveling exhibits, a multigenerational oral history series invites visitors to consider a simple but powerful prompt: “Tell us where you are from without telling us where you are from.” Through conversations centered on meaningful objects, these stories will explore how everyday folklife expresses ingenuity, resilience, and community, and how a “sense of place” is shaped by memory, environment, and shared experience.
What makes this project distinctive is who is asking the questions. Students from Tuckerton Elementary School will interview local cultural bearers, such as blacksmiths, basket makers, decoy carvers, musicians, and other tradition keepers, learning firsthand how objects reflect the character of South Jersey. With guidance from Seaport staff, students will record and help archive these interviews for public access, contributing to the museuem’s StoryCorps oral history collection and becoming active participants in preserving local heritage.
The resulting stories will support both the Seaport’s core exhibit and a traveling version that will visit libraries and community spaces across New Jersey, expanding the conversation statewide. By connecting people, objects, and place, the project invites New Jerseyans of all ages to consider what from today’s everyday life should be remembered by future generations—and reminds us that history is happening right here, in the places we know best.
