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Keywords: Early Schools

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Historical Items

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Item 13530

Brooklin Corner School Group, Brooklin, ca. 1930

Brooklin Corner School Group, Brooklin, ca. 1930

Contributed by: Sedgwick-Brooklin Historical Society Date: circa 1932 Location: Brooklin Media: Photo transparency

Item 13540

Third Brooklin High School 1932

Third Brooklin High School 1932

Contributed by: Sedgwick-Brooklin Historical Society Date: circa 1932 Location: Brooklin Media: Photo transparency

Item 37066

John Bapst Lettermen, Bangor, ca. 1963

John Bapst Lettermen, Bangor, ca. 1963

Contributed by: John Bapst Memorial High School Date: circa 1963 Location: Bangor Media: Photographic print

Online Exhibits

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Exhibit

West Brooklin School, ca. 1929

Reading, Writing and 'Rithmetic: Brooklin Schools

When Brooklin, located on the Blue Hill Peninsula, was incorporated in 1849, there were ten school districts and nine one-room school houses. As the years went by, population changes affected the location and number of schools in the area. State requirements began to determine ways that student's education would be handled. Regardless, education of the Brooklin students always remained a high priority for the town.

Exhibit

Thomaston Academy, Thomaston, ca. 1871

Away at School: Letters Home

Young men and women in the 19th century often went away from home -- sometimes for a few months, sometimes for longer periods -- to attend academies, seminaries, or schools run by individuals. While there, they wrote letters home, reporting on boarding arrangements and coursework undertaken, and inquired about the family at home.

Exhibit

Writing on the board, North School, Portland, ca. 1915

Back to School

Public education has been a part of Maine since Euro-American settlement began to stabilize in the early eighteenth century. But not until the end of the nineteenth century was public education really compulsory in Maine.

Site Pages

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Site Page

Dyar rural school building, Strong, ca. 1910

Strong, a Mussul Unsquit village - Early Schools

"The May School A unique early school was known as the May School. The May sisters, Julia and Sara, operated a private school for girls in Farmington…"

Site Page

Guilford Public School, June 20, 1887

Guilford, Maine - Guilford Schools

"Both the grade school and high school were decked out with buntings and other festive decorations for the town of Guilford’s Centennial celebration."

Site Page

John Bapst High School basketball Booster button, Bangor, ca. 1950

John Bapst Memorial High School

View collections, facts, and contact information for this Contributing Partner.

My Maine Stories

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Story

Bob Hodge:A rocky road to become Biddeford school superintendent

Bob Hodge:A rocky road to become Biddeford school superintendent
by Biddeford Cultural & Heritage Center

The son of immigrants, Bob's hard work and determination leads to a life of community service.

Story

Paul Gagne: Living a life fully engaged in his community

Paul Gagne: Living a life fully engaged in his community
by Biddeford Cultural & Heritage Center

A man with a wide range of skills and talents shares them for the benefit of his community

Story

Sister Madeleine Couture: Dedicating her life to teaching

Sister Madeleine Couture: Dedicating her life to teaching
by Biddeford Cultural & Heritage Center

The story of a life immersed in family and teaching

Lesson Plans

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Lesson Plan

Trolley, Morning Street, Portland, ca. 1900

Bicentennial Lesson Plan

Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride Companion Curriculum

Grade Level: 3-5, 6-8 Content Area: Social Studies
These lesson plans were developed by Maine Historical Society for the Seashore Trolley Museum as a companion curriculum for the historical fiction YA novel "Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride" by Jean. M. Flahive (2019). The novel tells the story of Millie Thayer, a young girl who dreams of leaving the family farm, working in the city, and fighting for women's suffrage. Millie's life begins to change when a "flying carpet" shows up in the form of an electric trolley that cuts across her farm and when a fortune-teller predicts that Millie's path will cross that of someone famous. Suddenly, Millie finds herself caught up in events that shake the nation, Maine, and her family. The lesson plans in this companion curriculum explore a variety of topics including the history of the trolley use in early 20th century Maine, farm and rural life at the turn of the century, the story of Theodore Roosevelt and his relationship with Maine, WWI, and the flu pandemic of 1918-1920.

Lesson Plan

J. P. Davis & Speer illustration, ca. 1880

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?

Lesson Plan

The Happy Home, Currier & Ives

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.