History Commons^™

"A Nice, Beautiful, Active, & Faithful Friend": Horses & Emotion In The Civil War Letters Of Two Union Officers, Allen F. Horn Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Horses are the unsung heroes of the American Civil War. Both armies relied heavily on equines for a variety of tasks. They carried cavalry soldiers on the battlefield and pulled wagons for artillery and military supply chains. Horses could also serve as companion animals. Soldiers formed friendships with their horses as a way to heal from the trauma of combat and stave off the monotony of camp life. Writing about animals in letters to their families enabled soldiers to explain their experiences in more palatable terms to their families. As over 1.2 million horses and mules died in the conflict, …

Bound By Print: The Baptist Borderlands Of Maine And The Canadian Maritimes, 1770-1840, Brittany P. Goetting

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Asynchronous communication was essential for the development of the cross-border and global identities of Baptists in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes between 1770 and 1840. Religious print, especially published association meeting notes and periodicals, extended the reach of itinerant preaching and molded a cross-border community in the Northeast Borderlands between 1790 and 1810. It allowed Baptists to discuss theology, share news about local churches, and expand their community. American Baptists formed international institutions focused on the spread of Protestantism after the War of 1812, and Maine Baptists actively engaged this more global community through financial donations to the new institutions …

Where Do I Belong In The United States Public School System?, Christiana R. Becker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I seek to inquire about the world as it relates to my identity as a first generation descent of the Penobscot tribe living in the United States by utilizing four methodologies in my research: life histories/autobiographies, narrative inquiry, a/r/tography and practice-based and practice-led. Through coupling my artistic practice with those four methodologies I am able to creatively show the information I have unearthed in hopes that others will benefit from a fresh and augmented understanding of what it historically and culturally means to be a part of a community that makes up a very small percentage of the United States …

A Concealment Shoe As Ritualistic Grieving Gesture: A Case Study In An Early 20th Century Maine Finnish Immigrant Community, Anne Bardaglio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The widespread practice of ritually concealing shoes as apotropaic devices to protect liminal spaces such as walls, thresholds, windows, and chimneys, most often in private homes, dates to the 14th century. The practice also has roots in pre-Christian, pan-European traditions of domestic spirits and can sometimes function as a commemorative gesture to memorialize deceased loved ones. This study analyzes an early 20th-century concealed shoe deposit discovered in Long Cove, Maine and locating it within the cultural context of Long Cove’s history as a Finnish immigrant community within an approximately twenty-year period (c. 1890-1910). The study explores ways in which the …

Land Tenure In Acadian Agricultural Settlements, 1604-1755: Cultural Retention And The Emergence Of Custom, Carol A. Blasi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Starting in 1755, the British began the process of not only expelling some eleven thousand Acadians from their homes and farms, but also of uprooting a culture that had survived for over one hundred and twenty years. This dissertation applies a legal historical approach to elucidate a crucial feature of that culture, namely Acadian land tenure. In particular, it traces the way in which seigneurialism, and the French law supporting it, were central to property formation in Acadian agricultural settlements from their inception to their destruction in 1755.

Scholars have been at best ambivalent, and at worst hostile to the …

Wabanaki Access To Sweetgrass (Hierochloe Odorata) Within Coastal Maine's Diminishing Open Land Tradition, Amanda Marie Ellis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nontimber forest products (NTFPs), refer to a class of resources (i.e. moss, fungi, mushrooms, plants, etc.) gathered in both rural and urban landscapes. NTFPs are utilized by a variety of cultures all over the world and are a critical part of medicinal, spiritual, dietary, and economic practices. In fact, some NTFP species are so critical to people that they are considered ‘cultural keystone species’ (Garibaldi and Turner 2004). This designation means that without access to the NTFP, cultural survival is at risk. This is the case in Maine where the Wabanaki, a confederacy of four tribes (Passamaqouddy, Penobscot, Mikmaq, and …

Reverend Jonathan Fisher: One Thread In The Web Of Early American Education, 1780-1830, Brittany P. Cathey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jonathan Fisher was a remarkably gifted man with a passionate interest in the education of the future generations of Maine citizens. No historian, however, has yet to examine Jonathan Fisher’s connection to American educational trends. Primary and secondary schools had existed in colonial America since the 1630s. Fisher witnessed and participated in the transformation of American schooling through his involvement in the local schools, libraries and education within his home, his establishment and maintenance of the Blue Hill Academy and the Bangor Theological Seminary and the publication of his juvenile works The Youth’s Primer and Scripture Animals.

The first …

L'Identité Et L'Altérité Dans Les Programmes Et Quatre Oeuvres Didactiques D'Histoire Du Canada Destinés Aux Écoles Secondaires De Langue Française Du Québec : 1955-1967, Paul Franklin Buck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the manifestation of identity and otherness in the programs and four didactical works in Canadian History for French secondary schools in Quebec from 1955 to 1967. To carry out this research, a diverse number of primary and secondary sources were consulted in order to determine if the expression of identity and otherness in the programs and four didactical works in use corresponded to two forms of clerico-nationalism and to Quebec autonomism of the period. The main primary sources of this study consisted of four didactical works in Canadian History, whose textual analysis on the theme of identity …

An Analysis Of The Morphological Variability Between French Ceramics From Seventeenth-Century Archaeological Sites In New France, Kevin Mock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the seventeenth century, France was not one homogenous country but instead was comprised of many culturally distinct regions; it was as politically divided as it was socially. Two regions that typify this distinction are Normandy and Saintonge, which also produced ceramics exported to France’s New World colonies. A morphological comparison of the these ceramics found in early North American sites will enable a comparison of the trade networks between France and New France. In this study, Saintonge and Normandy ceramic artifacts have been examined from the seventeenth century archaeological sites of Ste. Croix Island, Champlain’s First and Second Habitation, …

Stories Of Canada: National Identity In Late-Nineteenth-Century English-Canadian Fiction, Elizabeth Hedler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The search for a national identity has been a central concern of English-Canadian culture since the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867. In the late nineteenth century, English-Canadian concerns about Canadian identity and the need for distinctively Canadian stories resulted in the creation of a body of fiction that attempted to define Canadian nationhood and identity by depicting Canadian scenes, people, and situations. In the late nineteenth century, writers of fiction focused on defining the impact of Canada's unique land and heritage upon Canadian identity. Based on an extensive reading of these novels, this dissertation explores the way …

Seeing The Past: Jesse James And American History In Motion Pictures, Clinton S. Loftin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An Abstract of the Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (in History) May, 2000 Historically-based films often reveal more about the time in which they were made than about their historical subjects. Three motion pictures about Jesse James made in three very different eras reveal more about contemporary history than they do about the facts surrounding the legendary outlaw’s life. While each film, in some way, purports to tell the “true” story of Jesse James’ life, each offers a different history of that life. In order to understand the reasons for …

British-American Rivalry For The Support Of The Indians Of Maine And Nova Scotia, 1775-1783, Richard I. Hunt Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the American Revolution, the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy-Malecite and Micmac Indian tribes were, a potentially powerful force in Maine and Nova Scotia. The white population of the region was small and scattered, and colonial leaders feared that the tribes would repeat their actions of the past wars, during which they had seriously harassed the frontiers. The officials of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts accordingly embarked upon a program to win the support of the Indians and to spare colonial settlements from attack. Both governments were sure that their opponents were trying to promote Indian warfare, and the resulting rivalry fed upon itself …