Life Sciences Commons^™

Wabanaki Experiences And Perspectives On “Our Shared Ocean”: Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission Special Report Sea Run, Anthony W. Sutton, Judson Esty-Kendall, Paul Thibeault

Maine Policy Review

The Maine Indian State Tribal Commission (MITSC) recently published a special report titled, Sea Run, documenting the impact of Colonial and Maine policies and activities on the quality and quantity of tribal fisheries spanning the time from first contact between Europeans and the Wabanaki Nations to today.

To Know The Land With Hands And Minds: Negotiating Agricultural Knowledge In Late-Nineteenth-Century New England And Westphalia, Justus Hillebrand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ever since the eighteenth century, experts have tried to tell farmers how to farm. The agricultural enlightenment in Europe marked the beginning of a long arc of new experts aiming to change agricultural knowledge and practice. This dissertation analyzes the pivotal period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Germany and the United States when scientists, improvers, and market agents began to develop comprehensive ways to communicate agricultural innovation to farmers. In a functional approach to analyzing the negotiation of agricultural knowledge through its communication in things, words, and practices, this dissertation argues that the process of change …

Campana, (Richard J.) Papers, 1937-1989, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

Born in Everett, Massachusetts, Richard J. Campana (1918-2005) received a BSF from the University of Idaho in 1943. Campana then served as a surgical technician in the U.S. Army, and earned a Bronze Star award during WWII after being held as a prisoner of war (1943-1946). After the war, Campana earned an MS in Forestry from Yale University in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Forest Pathology in 1952. Soon after, Campana began his professional study and observation of Dutch Elm Disease

In 1958, Campana came to the University of Maine as the head of the Department of Botany and Plant …

Reynolds (Frank W.) Lobster Account Books, 1929-1932, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

Account book of a lobsterman from Addison, Maine. The book lists number of lobsters caught, their weight and price per pound, the gallons of gas used and price, and the number of bushels of bait used and price per bushel.

Fish Dealer's Ledger, 1879-1882, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

Ledger from an unidentified fish dealer in Vinalhaven, Maine, 1879-1882. Records purchases of mackerel and lobster from ships and individual Fishermen but does not appear to record Fish sales. Family names recorded in the ledger include Arey, Littlefield, Burgess, Brown, Corliss, Ames, Stubbs, and others.

International Paper Company Photograph Albums, 20th Century, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

Albums containing photographs taken at various paper and pulp mills in Maine belonging to the International Paper Co. Included are the Umbagog mill, Riley mill, Rumford Falls mill and Otis mill. Two photographs of the Continental Paper Bag Co. in Rumford Falls, Maine, are also included.

A History Of Oysters In Maine (1600s-1970s), Randy Lackovic

Darling Marine Center Historical Documents

This is a history of oyster abundance in Maine, and the subsequent decline of oyster abundance. It is a history of oystering, oyster fisheries, and oyster commerce in Maine. It is a history of the transplanting of oysters to Maine, and experiments with oysters in Maine, and of oyster culture in Maine. This history takes place from the 1600s to the 1970s.

Maine Twin Party Papers, 1938-1976, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

Welton P. Farrow was born in Tryon, Prince Edward Island, Canada, on December 10, 1898 with his twin brother, Harold J. Farrow. In 1938, after 18 years of living apart, they visited each other in Waterville, Maine, and at the request of a researcher named D. C. Rife from the University of Ohio, they invited pairs of twins to meet together in order to conduct research on the subjects of twins.

Collection, 1938-1976, consists of the papers of the Maine Twin Party organization. Includes correspondence, photographs, clippings, scrapbooks, and a film reel documenting their semi-annual parties celebrating twins, and their …

From Wanted To Weeds: A Natural History Of Some Of New England’S Introduced Plants, Jessamy R. Luthin

Maine History

When the Europeans first colonized New England they initiated the process of transforming the landscape into something more familiar. In order to ensure access to food and medicine and recreate the pastoral landscape of the Old World they brought with them a variety of known plant species for cultivation. With time, shifts in medical practice, agriculture, food preservation, and dietary preferences, reliance on these plants declined. As knowledge of these plant species disappeared from popular consciousness, so too did they disappear into the wilds of America, exploiting new found ecological niches, and becoming New England’s naturalized flora. Human labor was …

‘The Farmer’S Family Must Find Compensation In Something Less Tangible, Less Material’: Culture And Agriculture In Maine And New England, 1870-1905”, Cody P. Miller

Maine History

Following the Civil War, American agriculture changed dramatically, and New England was no exception. With new railroad systems, specialized crop markets, and chemical fertilizers, Maine and other New England farmers found themselves as part of an increasingly commercialized agricultural system. Farmers, urban pundits, and agricultural reformers all stressed the need to abandon small, mixed husbandry farming and instead they urged farmers to start treating agriculture like a business. In order to “progress,” one needed to increase acreage and adopt specialized cropping. While many farmers accepted this mantra, others resisted it and argued that there was a moral quality to agriculture …

Old Roots And New Shoots: How Locals And Back-To-The-Landers Remade Maine's Local Food Economy, Eileen Hagerman

Maine History

Back-to-the-landers who relocated to Maine in large numbers during the 1970s often lacked traditional rural skills and encountered a variety of agricultural challenges related to the state’s harsh climate and poor soils. Many who remained on the land often did so, at least initially, because they received support from elderly neighbors who still practiced low-input, small-scale farming. These neighbors tended to freely share their knowledge and skills and, in return, often benefited from the young newcomers’ assistance with laborious on-farm tasks. The newcomers worked with their local allies to form organizations, share knowledge, and coordinate marketing efforts tailored to meet …

Um Marine And Freshwater Sciences Before Wentworth Point, Part 2: (1939), Um Marine Biological Lab At Lamoine, Randy Lackovic

Darling Marine Center Historical Documents

This is picture album of the University of Maine Marine Biological Laboratory at Lamoine, Maine during the summer session in 1939.

Um Marine And Freshwater Sciences Come To Wentworth Point (1960s), Randy Lackovic

Darling Marine Center Historical Documents

This history recounts the formation of the Darling Marine Center from 1963 - 1966.

Um Marine And Freshwater Sciences Before Wentworth Point, Part 1: (1865-1965), Randy Lackovic

Darling Marine Center Historical Documents

This is a history of the marine and freshwater sciences activity at the University of Maine from 1865 - 1965.

Very Noble Suppers: Agriculture And Foodways In Late Colonial Falmouth, Charles P.M. Outwin

Maine History

During the American colonial period, Falmouth Neck (now Portland), Maine began its progression from a small fishing village to a vibrant hub of the region’s agriculture and trade. In this article, the author explains various aspects of this progression, particularly through a description of the ways food in the region made its way from farm (or ocean) to table. The author earned an MA in liberal studies from Wesleyan University in 1991 and a PhD in history from the University of Maine in 2009, writing a dissertation on the history of Falmouth from 1760-1775. He has published numerous works, including …

Maine’S Contested Waterfront: The Project To Remake Sebago Lake’S Lower Bay, 1906-1930, David B. Cohen

Maine History

Throughout the nation’s history, few resources have been considered as ubiquitous as water. The issue of who controls the use of water, however, has seldom been straight forward. This was no less true in the Progressive Era, when many growing urban areas significantly altered their water infrastructure to meet increased demands. When debate arose over water use, these municipalities often relied on the relatively new authority of scientific knowledge, particularly in the area of public health and safety. In this article, the author describes how the Portland Water District was able to conserve Sebago Lake’s Lower Bay as a clean, …

Visionary Science Of The “Harvard Barbarians”, Catherine Schmitt

Maine Sea Grant Publications

For over two months during the summer of 1880, eight young members of the Champlain Society made daily excursions, on foot and by boat, around Mount Desert Island. They collected plants and birds, and dredged small animals from the mud of Somes Sound. They stared at the rocks along shore and took photographs. Under the leadership of “Captain” Charles Eliot, son of Harvard President Charles William Eliot, the students were on the Island for the summer to “do some work in some branch of natural history or science.”

Penobscot Men, Michael Prokosch

Maine History

The Fowlers of Millinocket lie near the heart of Maine’s north woods story. Henry David Thoreau and Fannie Hardy Eckstorm saw the family’s wilderness existence as antithetical to the commercialization and industrialization of their times, but the Fowlers themselves adapted easily when water power, coal, and oil upended the woods economy around them. Their family history traces the energy revolutions that shaped the northern forest and our country. Mike Prokosch is an organizer, popular economics educator, and hiker who lives in Boston.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Jock Darling: The Notorious “Outlaw” Of The Maine Woods, James B. Vickery Iii

Maine History

Jim Vickery began work on this article shortly before he died in 1997. He had been researching Jock Darling for several years, and at my urging he set down his thoughts on the “old outlaw” under an arrangement by which he would compose the article on one of his infamous "yellow pads,” and I would transcribe the results on my computer and return a clean copy to him for editing and proofreading. He would also fill in the blanks where I could not decipher his handwriting. Before we could complete this project, Jim was hospitalized with the condition that finally …

170 Years Of Caring: The Animal Welfare Movement In Bangor, Maine, John D. Blaisdell

Maine History

The history of the animal welfare movement in Bangor, Maine dates to the first decades of the nineteenth century: Over the course of its long history, the movement's emphasis shifted from a focus on livestock and urban workhorses in the nineteenth century to children and animals at the turn of the century and finally to companion animals, primarily cats and dogs. These shifts, the author argues, reflect economic and technological changes as well as a transformation in society's perception of animals. A Maine native, John Blaisdell, is currently working on a book exploring the history of Maine's animal welfare movement. …

Maine Lumber Production, 1839-1997: A Statistical Overview, Lloyd C. Irland

Maine History

Complementing the qualitative account of forestry's impact provided by Geoffrey Carpenter, Lloyd Irland gives us a broad statistical overview of the industry, its changing economic fortunes, and its impact on the environment of the north woods. The data, while not always precise, reveal the terms upon which the state's decision-makers historically viewed the forest and its future. Mr. Irland is private forestry consultant in Winthrop, Maine, who has written widely on New England forestry topics, including Wildlands and Woodlots: The Story Of New England's Forests (1982).

Deforestation In Nineteenth-Century Maine: The Record Of Henry David Thoreau, Geoffrey Paul Carpenter

Maine History

Thoreau’s Maine Woods, a record of three trips made between 1846 and 1857, offers a combination of literary metaphor and precise botanical and topographical observation. Comparing Thoreau’s journals with recent advances in forest ecology, author Geoffrey Paul Carpenter reveals a detailed picture of the various ways in which logging activity changed the forests, lakes, and rivers of Maine. Carpenter demonstrates that a precise understanding of forest history depends not only on traditional statistical sources, but also on the subjective personal testimony found in the literary record.

The Transformation Of Farming In Maine, 1940-1985, Richard Wescott, David Vail

Maine History

Stone walls running incongruously through deep woods; fields and pastures becoming overgrown with brush; broken-backed barns tum bling in upon themselves; clusters of day lilies and lilacs guarding empty cellar holes — the remains of thousands of farms are scattered across the Maine landscape, relics of another age when farming was the lifeblood of hundreds of rural communities from the Piscataqua to the St. John.

“The Poor People Had Suddenly Become Rich” A Boom In Maine Wheat, 1793-1815, Jamie H. Eves

Maine History

The article discusses the important role played in the surreptitious trade in wheat to the British Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. Its European supplies choked off by tariffs and embargoes, Britain turned to Ireland and to the United States for grain.

The Harpswell Laboratory 1898-1920: A Marine Biological Station, Mary Francis Williams

Maine History

This article reviews the founding and history of The Harpswell Laboratory, A Marine Biological Station

Salt Marsh Dykes (Dikes) As A Factor In Eastern Maine Agriculture, David C. Smith, Anne E. Bridges

Maine History

The article discusses the prevalence of dykes found, primarily in Washington County, which had been built in the period 1790 – 1870 to reclaim salt marshes for agricultural purposes.