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Full-Text Articles in History

Under His Own Flag: John Baker’S Gravestone Memorial In Retrospect, George L. Findlen Jul 2002

Under His Own Flag: John Baker’S Gravestone Memorial In Retrospect, George L. Findlen

Maine History

John Baker is an enigmatic figure, half hero and half scoundrel His actions in raising the American flag on the north shore of the St. John River in July 1827, in defiance of British authorities, contributed to the tensions that resulted in the “Bloodless” Aroostook War in 1839, and this in turn provided the impetus for settling the U.S.-Canadian boundary along the St. John River according to the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. Jn 1868 the State of Maine erected a monument of sorts to the memory of John Baker in a cemetery near Fort Fairfield. Pondering why the monument was …


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 …