You probably weren’t expecting to meet Betty at Strawbery Banke Museum.

The teenager sits on the floor in front of an old episode of the “Honeymooners,” legs crossed under a vintage polka-dot dress, hair done up in a ribboned ponytail, plain white tennis sneakers on her feet. A pack of crushed Camel cigarettes sits in the ashtray next to her.

In response to a question about her favorite movie, she says, “The only movie I’ve ever seen in color is the ‘Wizard of Oz.’ I loved it.” She also enjoys going over to her neighbor’s house to watch television because it is “the first and only TV in the neighborhood.”

Betty is one of a new crop of roleplayers—Junior Roleplayers, in fact—helping to bring the historical museum’s story up to date.

When most people think about Strawbery Banke, they picture neatly kept Colonial homes and figures dressed in Revolutionary War-era garb, weaving baskets and spinning wool. While educating visitors on the colonial era is an important part of the museum’s mission, there’s more. Immigration, women’s suffrage, and two world wars took place while the Puddle Dock area was still a functioning neighborhood, before the creation of Strawbery Banke Museum in the late 1950s.

Michelle Moon, director of education, says that former residents sometimes drop by the museum to see their old houses or those that their parents grew up in. “A man and his mother came by on July 4. She wanted to sit outside of Hough House, where she used to live in 1931,” she says.

The decision to showcase more recent history didn’t happen overnight. The museum is constantly updating itself and extending its historical lens. “Strawbery Banke is unlike any other museum in this area,” Moon says. “It’s an actual historic neighborhood with most of its original houses. People can really connect with that, because they’ve heard stories from their parents and grandparents or have even experienced it themselves.”

The American fascination with the “good old days” can be explored fully at the 1943 Abbott Corner Store, the 1955 Shapley-Driscoll House and the 1919 Shapiro House. In addition, a discovery center at the Wheelwright House showcases 1940s toys and games. Each house at the museum now also comes complete with a bag of toys and games from its time period. The 20th-century houses contain items like Raggedy Ann Dolls, Doctor Seuss books and wooden airplanes.

The Junior Roleplayers program helps access that history while allowing teenagers ages 12 to 16 to explore early and mid-20th century American life. Called “A Century of Progress,” the program focuses on researching the history of the neighborhood and the real people who lived in it. This year’s 10 participants (all female, though boys are welcomed as well) learned how to make Jell-O and bake cakes, grow their own vegetables, and knit and crochet. They also learned about the evolution of clothing and recorded an old-time radio show called “The Last Leaf,” which aired on WSCA-LP, 106.1 FM, on Aug. 1. Participants also learn how to care for old items like clothing and books. Beth Ann Schmitt, education program coordinator, says, “When they leave here, they become keepers of their own personal history.”

Crafty Kids is a summer camp for younger children, who produce a silent film, make Depression-era toys like wooden airplanes and work in the restored World War II Victory Garden. They also learn about Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. Both programs have been very successful, and Schmitt says people have been asking her, “Do you have a camp for adults?”

For the Junior Roleplayers, research at the museum and the public library builds a foundation for the second week of the program, when they dress and act like neighborhood characters for museum visitors.
Each group of junior roleplayers has an adult mentor. Over at the 1919 Shapiro House, adult roleplayer Sarah Shapiro talks to her daughter and two nieces about their garden. Sarah explains that she carried the seeds from Ukraine, sewn into the hem of her dress, and the girls tend the garden with care. The seriousness with which they undertake their weeding adds even more to their characters, the daughters of Russian Jewish immigrants who recite plays and do their knitting during free time away from school. The long-haired girls truly look the part in white muslin dresses and dark, earth-colored pinafores.

The roleplayers cannot break character, but admit that it is hard not to when family and friends come through the museum. Some of the girls in the program are based on real people, like Rachel Bailey, who plays 15-year-old Fanny Shapiro in 1919. Others create “composite characters” out of scraps of biographical information they’ve found in their research, combined to create someone like “Dot Frisbee,” a 1943 teenager. Dot wears a plain cotton dress with ruffled sleeves. She sits outside of Abbott Store, quietly knitting and chatting with a friend about school.

Some visitors try to trick the roleplayers into saying something from the present day, and sometimes don’t understand that the girls aren’t merely dressed up but are actually playing characters. “It’s hard to know what to say when someone asks where the bathroom is,” one of the girls says. “We usually just tell them to check at the neighbor’s house.” The sentence is followed by a roomful of giggling that echoes off the walls of Stoodley’s Tavern, Strawbery Banke’s center for education. Girls will always be girls. Other visitors have asked if the roleplayers climb over the Plexiglass display walls to get to their beds at night, to which they might respond, “What is Plexiglass?”

While answering those questions might be tough, the girls know exactly what to say when visitors ask about their characters’ lives.

At the 1943 Abbott Store, the girls lead visitors to the Victory Garden and explain that they grow many vegetables themselves instead of buying them in tin cans, which were rationed because tin was needed to make airplanes and weapons. They also grow flowers to keep up morale on the homefront. One girl talks about how her cousin “draw(s) lines on the backs of her legs to make it look like she’s wearing stockings and goes down to the filling station and stands between the gas pumps to catch the sailors’ attention.” Little details like this transform girls into characters and turn the museum into a neighborhood once more, where “everyone knows everything about everybody else,” as Helen Jalicki, a character from 1955, says. The girls talk about the scrap metal yards that used to litter Puddle Dock and tell stories about taking trolley cars to Hampton Beach.

It’s plain to see that relics of the recent past really can bring people together. Grandparents telling their grandchildren about Coke in bottles and soap flakes while visiting Abbott Store creates an intergenerational bond that can’t be experienced otherwise.

Overall, nationwide attendance at history museums has fallen since Sept. 11, 2001, as Americans tightened their belts and stayed closer to home. However, according to its own figures, which it keeps private, Strawbery Banke has been holding its own with steady numbers. This year, even more families with children are visiting the museum, taking advantage of the new programs and learning about a century of American innovation. Connecting with the South End’s rich 20th century history will surely ease its transition into the new millennium.