History Commons^™

Technology & Tradition: Shaping Indigenous Collections For The Future, Gretchen Faulkner, Harold Jacobs, Alex Cole, Jonathan Roy, Reed Hayden, Anna Martin, Duane Shimmel

Technical Publications

The Hudson Museum received a UMAI seed grant to support
a collaboration with the Advanced Structures and Composites
Center and Intermedia Programs to replicate a culturally -
sensitive object in our collection. This is a technical publication to describe the process of replicating a Tlingit Frog Clan Helmet (HM5040) requested for repatriation by the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (CCTHITA).

Captain Jeremiah O’Brien: Maine Mariner, Sheldon S. Cohen

Maine History

In contrast to most of the major army campaigns, clashes, leadership personalities, effectiveness levels, and strategies of the major land combatants during the American Revolution, Patriot naval activities have not received the overall attention they deserve. William J. Morgan, a former editor of the monumental series, Naval Documents of the American Revolution, has noted, “all too frequently historians of the American Revolution have ignored the maritime aspects of the conflict, or, at best have reflected slight understanding of that decisive element.” Morgan's observations, made several decades ago, can be verified by surveying the contents then found in prominent writings of …

The Projekti Arkeologjike I Shkodres (Pash): Combining Paleoenvironmental And Archaeological Data From A Balkan Lacustrine Landscape, The University Of Maine Anthropology Department

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

The Projekti Arkeolojike i Shkodres (PASH) conducted five years of interdiciplinary, diachronic field research (2010-2014) in the Northern Albanian region of Shkoder, targeting the plain and hills that ring Shkodra Lake. The project was designed to address changes in landscape, settlement, and land use, beginning in prehistory. Intensive archaeological survey of 16 square kilometers identified 15 sites of all periods, many of them multicomponent, and 175 prehistoric burial mounds. Four mounds and three sites were targeted for test excavations, allowing the beginnings of a regional absolute chronology. A program of geological coring is helping to clarify the varying size of …

Maria J.C. A’ Becket: Rediscovering An American Artist, Christopher Volpe

Maine History

Maria J.C. a’ Becket (or Beckett, as she originally spelled her name) got her start as an artist in Portland, Maine and moved on to new venues in Boston, New York, Bar Harbor, and St.Augustine. She studied in France with well-known Barbizon School landscape painters and returned to American to develop a distinctly personal and American version of the genre. Although her work and legacy are obscure today, Becket was a pioneer professional woman painter and arguably the first woman to build a career as a landscape painter by popularizing the Barbizon style in America. Christopher Volpe moved to New …

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 …

Alger Veazie Currier: Apostle Of The Beaux-Arts In Maine, V. Scott Dimond

Maine History

Alger Veazie Currier began a promising career as an artist in Paris when two of his paintings were accepted to the prestigious Salon of 1888. After this moment of glory, Currier returned to his home in Hallowell, at a time when art in Maine was at its most provincial. He brought with him with fresh approach to teaching art and a mission to bring both painters and patrons up to date. During a brief tenure at Bowdoin College, Currier signaled a break from the old- fashioned landscape painting that dominated the Maine art scene. Although his European, Beaux-Arts ideas were …

Technology To The Rescue! Maine’S First State Colors, David Martucci

Maine History

The State of Maine's 1822 issue of 100 stands of double-sided Militia colors is possibly the earliest example of copper engraved four-color printed flags. These flags were produced in Boston utilizing the talents of a famous painter/designer, John Ritto Penniman and several local craftsmen and craftswomen. The design is unique and finely detailed and is an excellent example of the fine printing arts. Dave Martucci, a vexillologist, currently serves as president of the North American Vexillological Association and Secretary (Treasurer of the New England Vexillological Association. He edits Nava News and the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF VEXILLOLOGY and has published …

“Red Paint People” And Other Myths Of Maine Archaeology, David Sanger

Maine History

Maine archaeologists continue to learn more about the pre-European past, often changing once accepted ideas. Among these is the nature of the so-called “Red Paint Peoplewho were not a distinct race or people, but various Native Americans groups who happened to bury their dead with red ocher between 6000 and 2000 B.C. Another popular idea is the erroneous notion that early Maine Native peoples migrated from coast to interior on a seasonal basis. Recent research questions this belief and explores the reasons for its persistence. Finally, the paper discusses the problem of extending modern political-ethnic terms, such as Penobscot Nation, …

Creating A Ruin In Colonial Cusco: Sacsahuaman And What Was Made Of It, Carolyn S. Dean

Andean Past

No abstract provided.

Franklin Simmons And His Civil War Monuments, Martha R. Severens

Maine History

Franklin Simmons was a Maine sculptor who achieved national prominence for his Civil War monuments. Simmons' work in Maine earned him the opportunity to create numerous monuments in Washington, D. C. In this article Martha R. Severens reviews the sculptor's life and work and provides insight into a unique style that inspired other sculptors across the Northeast. Ms. Severens, curator at the Greenville (SC) County Museum of Art, has published volumes on the Museum's Southern Collection and on Andrew Wyeth. Previously, she held similar positions at the Portland Museum of Art and the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC.

Jeremiah P. Hardy’S The Smelt Seller Genre Painting In Bangor, Molly Mulhern Gross

Maine History

As a painter of portraits and genre studies, Jeremiah P. Hardy was a sensitive barometer of Bangor’s cultural aspirations. During his career, which spanned sixty-two years, he painted hundreds of portraits, then shifted to genre painting a course reflecting both national trends and the altered meanings of gentility in Bangor. In this article, Molly Mulhern Gross provides other reasons for Hardy’s mid-career change and explains why The Smelt Seller might have appealed to its cultured viewers. Ms. Mulhern Gross met The Smelt Seller while working as a research associate at the Farnsworth Art Museum in 1992. Her research was part …

Winslow Homer’S Seascapes: Transcendental Subjects, Popular Resorts, Critical Reactions, Priscilla Paton

Maine History

Winslow Homer, acknowledged as a quintessential Yankee and one of America 's foremost nineteenth century artists, seems as formidable, stern, and ambiguous as the rocky shores that fascinated him. Homer's reception by critics highlights the impossibility of separating artistic achievement from the tastes and fashions of the society in which the artist worked. The “mystifyingly blank" faces that critics abhorred in Homer's early farm figures became the distinctively attractive features of his later seascapes.

The Embden, Maine, Petroglyphs, Roger B. Ray

Maine History

This article discusses possible meanings of the petroglyphs found at Embden and their likeness to those found at Peterborough.

The Machiasport Petroglyphs, Roger B. Ray

Maine History

The article discusses the history of the study of the Machiasport Petroglyphs and theories of the origin of these petroglyphs.

Our Lady Of Victories, Pamela W. Hawkes

Maine History

This article describes the process and competition for the design of the Portland Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

Maine Militia Flag: 4th Regiment Of Infantry, 1st Brigade, 4th Division, Maine Adjutant General

Maine Bicentennial

Following Maine's separation from Massachusetts in 1820, state officials were required to return all militia flags and other ceremonial paraphernalia to Massachusetts. As a result, Maine's Adjutant General and Acting Quarter Master Samuel Cony was required to provide new flags to approximately 100 civilian militia companies across the state.

Cony devised the first-known mass production of militia flags by ordering the moose and pine tree design, originally painted by John Ritto Penniman of Boston, engraved onto a copper plate for the four-color lithographic process. The State Arms was printed twice on white silk for each flag and one print was …