On June 3, several of the historic house museums around the Seacoast will celebrate the start of a new season with free tours of their historic properties, featuring stories of the people who settled, prospered and struggled in the region over the last 350 years.

In Exeter, visitors will be welcomed to what was once John Gilman’s “Logg house by the bridge.” Built in 1709, the home was later gentrified by his son around 1770, then restored in the 1950s by direct descendant William Dudley, who opened the house to the public as a private museum.

In Portsmouth, visitors to the c.1664 Jackson House will likely be surprised to find themselves in the midst of an old two-acre apple orchard overlooking the North Mill Pond and downtown. Near Market Square, the 1784 Governor Langdon House was home to John Langdon, a signer of the United States Constitution and three-term governor of New Hampshire. The house boasts a reputation for the finest interior wood carvings north of Boston, and the garden features a 180-foot rose and grape arbor as well as expansive lawns edged by a colorful perennial border and an intimate shade garden hidden among a stand of mature evergreens.

The Rundlet-May House, built by merchant James Rundlet on Middle Street in 1807, is a Federal-style mansion filled with most of its original, locally crafted furniture and a variety of “modern” technologies of its day. The formal garden blooms all spring and summer with fruit trees, trellised roses, fragrant peonies, abundant hollyhocks and vibrant poppies scattered along narrow pathways original to the 1812 garden plan, which survives in the house.

All of these houses, owned by regional preservation organization Historic New England, will open at 11 a.m., with tours on the half-hour, with the last tour at 4 p.m.

Other museums in Portsmouth will be open June 3 for free tours. The Moffatt Ladd house (which will also host a plant sale in its historic garden), the Warner House, the Portsmouth Historical Society at the John Paul Jones House, the Wentworth Gardner House and the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion will be open for free. For locations and hours of these museums, visit www.portsmouthhistoric-houses.org or call 603-436-3205. Strawbery Banke Museum will also be open, but free to Portsmouth residents only.  

Outside of town, the c.1718 Sayward-Wheeler House will be open in York, Maine, and the 1774 Sarah Orne Jewett House, where the famous 19th century writer spent most of her life, will be open in the heart of downtown South Berwick. Also in South Berwick is the c.1785 Hamilton House on a high bluff overlooking the Salmon Falls River, restored at the turn of the century into a romantic summer retreat that draws from the house’s Georgian design and colonial past. All three will open at 11 a.m. with tours on the half-hour, the last tour starting at 4 p.m. For more information, visit www.historicnewengland.org or call 603-436 3205 in New Hampshire or 207-384-2454 in Maine.

Visitors to South Berwick can also visit the Counting House Museum, home of the Old Berwick Historical Society, on the corner of Route 4 and Liberty Street. The Counting House museum will be open for self-guided tours from 1 to 4 p.m.