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Articles 1 - 19 of 19
Full-Text Articles in History
The Improved Acre: The Besse Farm As A Case Study In Landclearing, Abandonment, And Reforestation, Theresa Kerchner
The Improved Acre: The Besse Farm As A Case Study In Landclearing, Abandonment, And Reforestation, Theresa Kerchner
Maine History
From the vantage of the twenty-first century, it seems remarkable that farmers, working with only hand tools and farm animals, converted over half of New England’s “primeval” forests to tillage and pasture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This period was marked by transitions as farmers responded to new markets, changing family values, and declining natural resources. These forces brought an end to agrarian expansion and caused New England’s iconic pastoral landscape to begin to revert to forestland. A case study based on the former Jabez Besse, Jr. farm in central upland Maine provides a link to New England’s agricultural …
A Letter From Joshua Cushman, Matthew Mason
Burnt Harvest: Penobscot People And Fire, James Eric Francis Sr.
Burnt Harvest: Penobscot People And Fire, James Eric Francis Sr.
Maine History
The scientific and ethnographic record confirms the fact that in southern New England, Indians used fire as a forest management tool, to facilitate travel and hunting, encourage useful grasses and berries, and to clear land for agriculture. Scholars have long suggested that agricultural practices, and hence these uses of fire, ended at the Saco or Kennebec, with Native people east of this divide less likely to systematically burn their forests. This article argues that Native people on the Penobscot River used fire, albeit in more limited ways, to transform the forest and create a natural environment more conducive to their …
Farms To Forests In Blue Hill Bay: Long Island, Maine, Kristen Hoffman
Farms To Forests In Blue Hill Bay: Long Island, Maine, Kristen Hoffman
Maine History
Disturbance histories are important factors in determining the composition and structure of today’s forests, and not least among these disturbances is the human use of the land. Land clearing in Maine peaked in 1880 at six and a half million acres, beginning on the coast and lower river valleys and spreading northward and eastward. The forests of Maine’s coastal islands have endured a longer period of clearing than any other in the state. Long Island, located in Blue Hill Bay, was first settled in 1779, primarily by farmers. Sheep-herding, lumbering, fishing, and granite quarrying provided supplemental livelihoods. By 1920 all …
From Agriculture To Industry: Silk Production And Manufacture In Maine 1800-1930, Jacqueline Field
From Agriculture To Industry: Silk Production And Manufacture In Maine 1800-1930, Jacqueline Field
Maine History
Sericulture or silk production is an agricultural activity that involves mulberry cultivation, raising silkworms, and reeling (unwinding) filament (raw silk) from cocoons. Silk manufacture involves a mechanical means of throwing (spinning) raw silk into usable threads and making textiles. This article examines Maine’s role in the American silk industry from early sericulture, mulberry growing, and small-scale hand production to twentieth-century industrialized manufacturing and the production of hitherto unimaginable quantities of silk fabrics. Most specifically, the objective is to show that although Maine’s participation in this effort may not have been as dominant or as well-documented as that of other New …
John Williams Daniels' Paintings Of North Anson, Holly Hurd-Forsyth
John Williams Daniels' Paintings Of North Anson, Holly Hurd-Forsyth
Maine History
Five small oil paintings of the village of North Anson were given to the Maine Historical Society in 1999. They meticulously illustrate a rural Maine village in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and as such are important additions to our painting collection, which is comprised predominately of marine subjects and portraits. The paintings are attributed to John Williams Daniels (1845-1933), who married North Anson native Alice Steward (1846-1921), in 1876.
Book Reviews, Polly Welts Kaufman, Christian P. Potholm, Jean F. Hankins
Book Reviews, Polly Welts Kaufman, Christian P. Potholm, Jean F. Hankins
Maine History
Reviews of the following books: The Penobscot Dance of Resistence: Tradition in the History of a People by Pauleena MacDougall; Maine’s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of its People by H. H. Price and Gerald E.Talbot; Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783-1820 by Joshua M. Smith.
From The Fair To The Laboratory: The Institutionalization Of Agricultural Science And Education In Maine, Thomas Reznick
From The Fair To The Laboratory: The Institutionalization Of Agricultural Science And Education In Maine, Thomas Reznick
Maine History
Up until the mid-nineteenth century, agricultural science and education in Maine were primarily local affairs. Meeting in farm clubs and attending agricultural fairs, the Maine farmer performed most research by trial and error and by meeting on common ground with other farmers to discuss what worked and what did not. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the farm clubs and county fairs waned and succumbed to the growing political influence of the Grange, which supported burgeoning agricultural scientific and educational institutions, such as the College of Agriculture and the Experiment Station. Through the auspices of the Grange, such institutions took the …
Charlotte Perkins Gilman In Maine, Denise D. Knight
Charlotte Perkins Gilman In Maine, Denise D. Knight
Maine History
On the eve of her twenty-second birthday in 1882, American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman visited Maine for the first time. She was immediately captivated by the rugged beauty of the Ogunquit shoreline, the therapeutic quality of the fresh air, and the primitive power of the roaring sea. Over the next forty-three years, Gilman would return to Maine on several occasions. While her early visits provided Gilman the freedom to contemplate her thorny emotional entanglement with her fiancee, Charles Walter Stetson, whom she would marry in 1884, her connection to the Pine Tree State was complex. Maine represented not only the …
William King, First Governor Of Maine: His Known Portraits And Their Stories, Deanna Bonner-Ganter
William King, First Governor Of Maine: His Known Portraits And Their Stories, Deanna Bonner-Ganter
Maine History
This article studies the known studio portraits of William King (1768-1852), first governor of Maine, finding that the leader’s personal life and professional travels led to sittings with such noted master painters as Gilbert Stuart, Edward Greene Malbone, and Chester Harding. These living portraits reflect period styles, while later likenesses require a broad understanding of formal state portraiture and its historical elements. One portrait, having resurfaced recently, was found to have hung in the Hall of Flags in the State Capitol for almost thirty years; others required considerable research to determine their provenance. The Honorable James G. Blaine played an …
Good Roads For Whom? Farmers, Urban Merchants, And Road Administration In Maine, 1901-1916, Richard W. Judd
Good Roads For Whom? Farmers, Urban Merchants, And Road Administration In Maine, 1901-1916, Richard W. Judd
Maine History
The arrival of the automobile challenged Maine to rethink a road system that dated back to colonial times. But as auto advocates soon discovered, this was an immensely controversial issue, bringing years of political turmoil as contending groups questioned matters of road location, financing, and administration at every juncture. As key players in this drama, farmers fought for a road system that linked them to local markets or rail depots; tourist advocates, on the other hand, envisioned a system of “trunk lines” — well-constructed thoroughfares that would carry travelers from one end of the state to the other. Isolation, parochial …
Book Reviews, Stanley R. Howe, Ed Cass, William Barry David, Joyce K. Bibber
Book Reviews, Stanley R. Howe, Ed Cass, William Barry David, Joyce K. Bibber
Maine History
Reviews of the following books: A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the American-Canadian Boundary, 1783-1842, by Francis M. Carroll; Mayflower Hill: A History of Colby College, by Earl H. Smith; Sea Struck, by W.H. Bunting; and Imperial Maine and Hawai’i: Interpretive Essays in the History of Nineteenth- Century American Expansion, by Paul T. Burlin
Combating The ‘Social Evil’: Masculinity And Moral Reform In Portland, 1912-1914, Howard M. Solomon
Combating The ‘Social Evil’: Masculinity And Moral Reform In Portland, 1912-1914, Howard M. Solomon
Maine History
This article examines the role of prostitution in Portland in 1912-14, and the unsuccessful efforts of a Progressive-inspired Citizens’ Committee to wipe it out.More broadly, however, it analyzes changing social and gender roles and the specifically masculinist rhetoric with which the Citizens’ Committee— especially its two leaders, Rt. Rev. Robert Codman, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine, and Dr. Frederic H. Gerrish, dean of Maine’s medical community — made sense of those changes. For Codman, Gerrish, and other Anglo-American men of their generation, the campaign against the “social evil” became a template upon which to project their anxieties about …
Journal Cover And Toc
Maine History
Cover, Editors and editorial board, and table of contents with authors' names.
Dr. John George Gehring And His Bethel Clinic: Pragmatic Therapy And Therapeutic Tourism, William D. Andrews
Dr. John George Gehring And His Bethel Clinic: Pragmatic Therapy And Therapeutic Tourism, William D. Andrews
Maine History
During the first quarter of the twentieth century, Dr. John George Gehring treated hundreds of patients for stress, anxiety, and depression at his home in Bethel,Maine. Employing a pragmatic mix of hypnotism, medication, talk therapy, and behavior modification, Gehring attracted famous writers, academics, philanthropists, politicians, and socialites from around the U.S. Although he wrote and spoke about his methods, Gehring did not found a school of therapy or have a great deal of professional influence, but he had a sizeable impact on the state of Maine through the philanthropy of one of his patients, William Bingham II, whose visits to …
“Home And All It Meant”: Bowdoin College, Nostalgia, And Morale In World War Ii, Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai
“Home And All It Meant”: Bowdoin College, Nostalgia, And Morale In World War Ii, Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai
Maine History
Why would hundreds of young men fighting in World War II maintain correspondence with their college president and dean? Based on letters between former Bowdoin students, President Kenneth C. M. Sills, and Dean Paul Nixon, this article argues that Bowdoin College, and institutions like it, helped strengthen and maintain soldiers’ resolve in wartime as a nostalgia-based intermediate motivator. Instead of professing strong ideological beliefs or noting their attachment to their closest comrades, these former students openly discussed their longing for their alma mater and all the peace-time comforts it represented. For many of them Bowdoin, the “home” they had left …
The Banner Of The Calais Frontier Guard, William David Barry
The Banner Of The Calais Frontier Guard, William David Barry
Maine History
The Banner of the Calais Frontier Guard is one of seventeen banners in the collection of the Maine Historical Society. Ranging from an 1805 Stroudwater militia standard to a 1960s Black Power banner, each is a graphic statement about time, place, and values. The Calais militia banner, dating from Maine’s Northeast Boundary dispute era (1839-1842), provides an excellent example of how such an object can be used to document various themes in state and national history.
Nineteenth-Century Industrializing Maine: The Way Life Really Was: Paul Rivard’S Made In Maine, Howard Segal
Nineteenth-Century Industrializing Maine: The Way Life Really Was: Paul Rivard’S Made In Maine, Howard Segal
Maine History
“Made in Maine” is about nineteenth-century manufacturing in a state usually associated with forests, potatoes, seacoasts, and tourists. The exhibit provocatively challenges the conventional wisdom about what Maine was like in the years slightly before and mostly after statehood in 1820.
“Seal Harbor’S Patron Saint”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., And The Mount Desert Larger Parish, John R. Muether
“Seal Harbor’S Patron Saint”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., And The Mount Desert Larger Parish, John R. Muether
Maine History
The Mount Desert Larger Parish (1925-1984) was the brainchild of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who sought to apply modern industrial models to meet the religious needs of towns on the island where he established his summer home. Beyond his personal philanthropy, Rockefeller’s active involvement in the Parish extended to fund-raising and staff recruitment. Rockefeller was persuaded that Mount Desert was the perfect setting for this experiment in interdenominational cooperation, and he imagined its success would generate similar partnerships that would reshape American Protestantism. The challenges the Parish experienced through its six decades reveal the tensions between the island’s “summer people” …