Maine Memory Network

George Washington letter to Gov. Morris, 1779

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1779 Location: West Point Media: Ink on paper

  view a full transcription

Mohican House, Lake George, Skowhegan, ca. 1920

Contributed by: Skowhegan History House Date: circa 1920 Location: Skowhegan Media: Photographic print

68-96 George Street, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Christina Ellsworth Use: Dwelling

1-9 George Street, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Alfred Southworth Use: Garage

House for George W. Bean, Lewiston, 1891-1899

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1891–1899 Location: Lewiston; Brunswick Client: George W. Bean Architect: George M. Coombs; Coombs, Gibbs and Wilkinson Architects

House for George Bonnallie, Lewiston, 1901

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1901 Location: Lewiston Client: George Bonnallie Architect: Coombs and Gibbs Architects

Lock of George Washington's Hair

Correspondence between Elizabeth Wadsworth, her father Peleg Wadsworth and Martha Washington's secretary about the gift of a lock of George Washington's hair to Eliza.

Commander George Henry Preble

George Henry Preble of Portland, nephew of Edward Preble who was known as the father of the U.S. Navy, temporarily lost his command during the Civil War when he was charged with failing to stop a Confederate ship from getting through the Union blockade at Mobile.

Architecture & Landscape database - George Coombs

"Home for Joseph Briggs designed by George M. Coombs, 1884 Maine Historical Society George Millard Coombs (1851-1909) was born in Brunswick in 1851."

Tate House Museum

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

Rug Hooking Project with a Story
by Marilyn Weymouth Seguin

My grandmother taught me the Maine craft of rug hooking when I was a child.

A Lifelong Romance with Retail
by George A Smith

Maine's once plentiful small retail stores.

Portland History: "My Lost Youth" - Longfellow's Portland, Then and Now

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow loved his boyhood home of Portland, Maine. Born on Fore Street, the family moved to his maternal grandparents' home on Congress Street when Henry was eight months old. While he would go on to Bowdoin College and travel extensively abroad, ultimately living most of his adult years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he never forgot his beloved Portland. Years after his childhood, in 1855, he wrote "My Lost Youth" about his undiminished love for and memories of growing up in Portland. This exhibit, using the poem as its focus, will present the Portland of Longfellow's boyhood. In many cases the old photos will be followed by contemporary images of what that site looked like 2004. Following the exhibit of 68 slides are five suggested lessons that can be adapted for any grade level, 3–12.

Longfellow Studies: The American Wilderness? How 19th Century American Artists Viewed the Separation Of Civilization and Nature

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: Social Studies, Visual & Performing Arts
When European settlers began coming to the wilderness of North America, they did not have a vision that included changing their lifestyle. The plan was to set up self-contained communities where their version of European life could be lived. In the introduction to The Crucible, Arthur Miller even goes as far as saying that the Puritans believed the American forest to be the last stronghold of Satan on this Earth. When Roger Chillingworth shows up in The Scarlet Letter's second chapter, he is welcomed away from life with "the heathen folk" and into "a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people." In fact, as history's proven, they believed that the continent could be changed to accommodate their interests. Whether their plans were enacted in the name of God, the King, or commerce and economics, the changes always included – and still do to this day - the taming of the geographic, human, and animal environments that were here beforehand. It seems that this has always been an issue that polarizes people. Some believe that the landscape should be left intact as much as possible while others believe that the world will inevitably move on in the name of progress for the benefit of mankind. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby – a book which many feel is one of the best portrayals of our American reality - the narrator, Nick Carraway, looks upon this progress with cynicism when he ends his narrative by pondering the transformation of "the fresh green breast of a new world" that the initial settlers found on the shores of the continent into a modern society that unsettlingly reminds him of something out of a "night scene by El Greco." Philosophically, the notions of progress, civilization, and scientific advancement are not only entirely subjective, but also rest upon the belief that things are not acceptable as they are. Europeans came here hoping for a better life, and it doesn't seem like we've stopped looking. Again, to quote Fitzgerald, it's the elusive green light and the "orgiastic future" that we've always hoped to find. Our problem has always been our stoic belief system. We cannot seem to find peace in the world either as we've found it or as someone else may have envisioned it. As an example, in Miller's The Crucible, his Judge Danforth says that: "You're either for this court or against this court." He will not allow for alternative perspectives. George W. Bush, in 2002, said that: "You're either for us or against us. There is no middle ground in the war on terror." The frontier -- be it a wilderness of physical, religious, or political nature -- has always frightened Americans. As it's portrayed in the following bits of literature and artwork, the frontier is a doomed place waiting for white, cultured, Europeans to "fix" it. Anything outside of their society is not just different, but unacceptable. The lesson plan included will introduce a few examples of 19th century portrayal of the American forest as a wilderness that people feel needs to be hesitantly looked upon. Fortunately, though, the forest seems to turn no one away. Nature likes all of its creatures, whether or not the favor is returned. While I am not providing actual activities and daily plans, the following information can serve as a rather detailed explanation of things which can combine in any fashion you'd like as a group of lessons.