The Forbes House Museum in Milton, Mass. houses artifacts from brothers Captain Robert Bennett Forbes and John Murray Forbes, both China Trade merchants, and a replica of Lincoln's birthplace.

The oldest house in Boston, the Paul Revere House is where Revere started his midnight ride in 1775. It shows a historically significant place, as well as what life looked like in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Gropius House features a sophisticated balance of shape. Built by the founder of the radical early-20th-century architectural mode Bauhaus, the house also features furniture by modernist Marcel Breuer.

The Nichols House Museum allows visitors to revel in the traditional image of a high-society Beacon Hill home.

House of the Seven Gables in Salem, which is actually five house museums together, inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel.

The red-brick Gothic home of Mark Twain in Hartford, Conn. is where he wrote “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court."

The home of poet Emily Dickinson on Main Street in Amherst, Mass. is where she began to write seriously.

Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, lived in Hildene in Manchester, Vt. It remained in their family until 1975.