2 Best Sights in Houston and Galveston, Texas

Housed in the carriage house of the historic Ashton Villa, one of the city's historic Victorian-era mansions, the exhibit ("And Still We Rise . . .") tells the story of the origin of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 (June 19, 1865 to be exact), when Union general Gordon Granger and others read General Order No. 3, announcing that the formerly enslaved residents of Texas had been emancipated 2½ years earlier by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (Confederate general Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Union general Ulysses S. Grant in April of that year). June 19 has since been declared a federal holiday in the United States to commemorate this event.

Aboard the restored 1877 tall ship Elissa, detailed interpretive signs provide information about the shipping trade in the 1800s, including the routes and cargoes this ship carried into Galveston. Inside the museum building is a replica of the historic wharf and a one-of-a-kind computer database containing the names of more than 133,000 immigrants who entered the United States through Galveston after 1837.