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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in History

Benevolent Chaos: Nurse Harriet Eaton’S Relief War For Maine, Jane E. Schultz Jan 2014

Benevolent Chaos: Nurse Harriet Eaton’S Relief War For Maine, Jane E. Schultz

Maine History

Harriet Eaton, Portland citizen and Civil War nurse, kept a daily journal of two tours of duty with Maine regiments in the Army of the Potomac. The journal reveals the mistrust that local aid organization workers had regarding the sweeping benevolent objectives of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. The Maine Camp Hospital Association, a local aid society established in Portland in 1862, resisted absorption by the Maine State Relief Agency early in the war, but, in time, the two groups came to cooperate effectively with one another, despite Eaton’s continuing critique of the efficacy of federal benevolence. Jane E. Schultz is …


Glimpses Into The Life Of A Maine Reformer: Elizabeth Upham Yates, Missionary And Woman Suffragist, Shannon M. Risk Jul 2013

Glimpses Into The Life Of A Maine Reformer: Elizabeth Upham Yates, Missionary And Woman Suffragist, Shannon M. Risk

Maine History

Raised in a religious family in Bristol, Elizabeth Upham Yates spent much of her adult life as a reformer. While in her twenties, Yates spent six years in China serving as a Methodist missionary trying to spread the gospel and Western culture. Upon returning to the United States she became involved in two domestic reform movements, temperance and women’s suffrage. She was active in the women’s suffrage movement from the 1890s until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 and ran for lieutenant governor of Rhode Island in the election of 1920. Yates was never a nationally renowned figure …


“Mr.Editor, Have We Digressed?” Newspaper Editor John Neal And The Woman Suffrage Debate, Shannon M. Risk Oct 2011

“Mr.Editor, Have We Digressed?” Newspaper Editor John Neal And The Woman Suffrage Debate, Shannon M. Risk

Maine History

In May and June of 1870, Portland newspaper editor and reformer John Neal sparked a debate over women’s suffrage that elicited strong views on women’s place in society. Neal posted a call in the Daily Eastern Argus to like-minded women and men to meet to discuss how to bring about the women’s vote. His post led to a debate in Portland’s newspapers about the idea of women’s suffrage. Several respondents expressed outrage at women’s participation in politics, fearing it would lead to society’s downfall. Although the debate died down in June, Neal’s efforts gave renewed energy to Maine suffragists. The …


“Taking Up The Slack”: Penobscot Bay Women And The Netting Industry, Nancy Payne Alexander Dec 2010

“Taking Up The Slack”: Penobscot Bay Women And The Netting Industry, Nancy Payne Alexander

Maine History

Between 1860 and 1900 the economy of Penobscot Bay communities changed dramatically, from the steady growth and prosperity of their natural resource-based economy to the decline in population and a painful transition to manufacturing and service industries. Both men and women had enjoyed independence in their labor in the old economy. The new cash economy made it necessary for them to seek out new ways of supporting their families, with home manufacture, or putting out work, one way of earning an income. They remained independent from an employer’s direct supervision and earned cash payment, a change from the face-to-face economy …


“Friendship, Sweet Soother Of My Cares!”: Women, Religion, And Power In The Diary Of Sarah Connell Ayer, Shannon M. Risk Apr 2009

“Friendship, Sweet Soother Of My Cares!”: Women, Religion, And Power In The Diary Of Sarah Connell Ayer, Shannon M. Risk

Maine History

The diary of Sarah Connell Ayer (1791-1835) reveals the motivations of a woman caught up in the Second Great Awakening that spread across New England in the early nineteenth century. Ayer arrived in Portland in 1811 and immediately sought out a circle of female friends who espoused the same desires as did she. She joined with other church women in challenging the boundaries of Republican Motherhood ,and under the veil of the church, helped to minister in the greater Portland society.This female church culture helped women like Ayer get through the many pitfalls of womanhood in the early nineteenth century, …


Gender, History, And Nature In Sarah Orne Jewett’S Country Of The Pointed Firs, Sarah Hamelin Apr 2002

Gender, History, And Nature In Sarah Orne Jewett’S Country Of The Pointed Firs, Sarah Hamelin

Maine History

Sarah Orne Jewett's beautifully crafted stories of life on the Maine coast helped make this section of our state a nationally recognized landscape icon. Her characters, however; are not what we would expect to find in a state renowned for male-dominated pursuits like deep-sea fishing, logging, and river-driving. Jewett's people— the inhabitants of Dunnet Landing—are generally old and female. Jn describing them, she presents us with a picture of coastal life as a gentlewoman’s world. Jewett accents gender and age by setting her characters against a backdrop of nature and history. Sarah Hamelin is a student at the University of …


The Life Of Mother Marie-Joseph De L’Enfant Jesus, Or, How A Little English Girl From Wells Became A Big French Politician, Ann M. Little Jan 2002

The Life Of Mother Marie-Joseph De L’Enfant Jesus, Or, How A Little English Girl From Wells Became A Big French Politician, Ann M. Little

Maine History

In 1703 seven-year-old Esther Wheelwright was kidnapped from her home by the Wabanaki during an attack on the town of Wells, Maine. Ultimately sold to a French missionary and taken to Quebec, she converted to Catholicism, entered the Ursuline convent, and rose to become their first and last English-born Mother Superior. Her biographers have seen Esther Wheelwright/Mother Esther de L’Enfant Jesus as a passive instrument of religion and politics and have rendered her nothing more than an antiquarian curiosity. This study instead explores how her ability to cross many borders— national, religious, and linguistic—enabled Mother Esther to become both an …


The Persis Sibley Andrews Black Diaries, William David Barry, Stephanie Philbrick Jan 2002

The Persis Sibley Andrews Black Diaries, William David Barry, Stephanie Philbrick

Maine History

No abstract provided.


Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat And The Expanding Female Sphere, Connie Burns Oct 1993

Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat And The Expanding Female Sphere, Connie Burns

Maine History

This article outlines the life and accomplishment of Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat with a focus on the role of American women in the 19th century.