Maine Memory Network

Shops, Westbrook, ca. 1885

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1885 Location: Westbrook Media: Photograph, lantern slide

William E. McLellan's Blacksmith shop, Westbrook, ca. 1910

Contributed by: Walker Memorial Library Date: circa 1910 Location: Westbrook Media: Photographic print

40-44 Portland Pier, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Proprietors of Portland Pier Use: Fish Shop and Blacksmiths Shop

Assessor's Record, Blacksmith Shop, Wrights Wharf, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Dana Richardson Use: Blacksmith Shop

Maine Insane Hospital buildings, Augusta, 1893-1909

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1893–1909 Location: Augusta Client: State of Maine Architect: George M. Coombs; Coombs and Gibbs Architects
This record contains 18 images.

Insane Hospital buildings, Augusta; Vinylhaven, 1893-1907

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1893–1907 Location: Vinylhaven; Augusta; Vinylhaven Client: State of Maine Architect: George M. Coombs; Coombs, Gibbs, and Wilkinson Architects
This record contains 7 images.

Meshach P. Larry: Civil War Letters

Meshach P. Larry, a Windham blacksmith, joined Maine's 17th Regiment Company H on August 18, 1862. Larry and his sister, Phebe, wrote to each other frequently during the Civil War, and his letters paint a vivid picture of the life of a soldier.

A Tour of Sanford in 1900

This collection of images portrays many buildings in Sanford and Springvale. The images were taken around the turn of the twentieth century.

Thomaston: The Town that Went to Sea - Henry Knox: Wharf, Store and Blacksmith Shop

"Henry Knox: Wharf, Store and Blacksmith Shop Former site of Knox's wharf This 1946 inage shows the area at the foot of Wadsworth Street where…"

Presque Isle: The Star City - John Mooney, Presque Isle, ca. 1910

"… "John Mooney #303 ca 1910." Mooney was a blacksmith in Presque Isle. The title written on the image is "On Their Way To The Mooseleuk Minstrels."…"

A first encounter with Bath and its wonderful history
by John Decker

Visiting the Maine Maritime Museum as part of a conference

Longfellow Studies: The Village Blacksmith - The Reality of a Poem

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
"The Village Blacksmith" was a much celebrated poem. Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poem appeared to celebrate the work ethic and mannerisms of a working man, the icon of every rural community, the Blacksmith. However, what was the poem really saying?

Longfellow Studies: Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith" and "Whitman's Song of Myself" - Alternative Constructions of the American Worker

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
Most if not all of us have or will need to work in the American marketplace for at least six decades of our lives. There's a saying that I remember a superintendent telling a group of graduating high-school seniors: remember, when you are on your deathbed, you will not be saying that you wish you had spent more time "at the office." But Americans do spend a lot more time working each year than nearly any other people on the planet. By the end of our careers, many of us will have spent more time with our co-workers than with our families. Already in the 21st century, much has been written about the "Wal-Martization" of the American workplace, about how, despite rocketing profits, corporations such as Wal-Mart overwork and underpay their employees, how workers' wages have remained stagnant since the 1970s, while the costs of college education and health insurance have risen out of reach for many citizens. It's become a cliché to say that the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" is widening to an alarming degree. In his book Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips says we are dangerously close to becoming a plutocracy in which one dollar equals one vote. Such clashes between employers and employees, and between our rhetoric of equality of opportunity and the reality of our working lives, are not new in America. With the onset of the industrial revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century, many workers were displaced from their traditional means of employment, as the country shifted from a farm-based, agrarian economy toward an urban, manufacturing-centered one. In cities such as New York, groups of "workingmen" (early manifestations of unions) protested, sometimes violently, unsatisfactory labor conditions. Labor unions remain a controversial political presence in America today. Longfellow and Whitman both wrote with sympathy about the American worker, although their respective portraits are strikingly different, and worth juxtaposing. Longfellow's poem "The Village Blacksmith" is one of his most famous and beloved visions: in this poem, one blacksmith epitomizes characteristics and values which many of Longfellow's readers, then and now, revere as "American" traits. Whitman's canto (a section of a long poem) 15 from "Song of Myself," however, presents many different "identities" of the American worker, representing the entire social spectrum, from the crew of a fish smack to the president (I must add that Whitman's entire "Song of Myself" is actually 52 cantos in length). I do not pretend to offer these single texts as all-encompassing of the respective poets' ideas about workers, but these poems offer a starting place for comparison and contrast. We know that Longfellow was the most popular American poet of the nineteenth century, just as we know that Whitman came to be one of the most controversial. Read more widely in the work of both poets and decide for yourselves which poet speaks to you more meaningfully and why.