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Historical Items

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Item 105301

Haying on the Ingraham farm, Hodgdon, ca. 1900

Haying on the Ingraham farm, Hodgdon, ca. 1900

Contributed by: Aroostook County Historical and Art Museum Date: circa 1900 Location: Hodgdon Media: Glass plate negative

Item 34220

Vaughan Farm, Duck Pond, Hallowell, ca. 1933

Vaughan Farm, Duck Pond, Hallowell, ca. 1933

Contributed by: Hubbard Free Library Date: circa 1933 Location: Hallowell Media: Photographic print

Item 34218

Vaughan Farm, Duck Pond, Hallowell, ca. 1933

Vaughan Farm, Duck Pond, Hallowell, ca. 1933

Contributed by: Hubbard Free Library Date: circa 1933 Location: Hallowell Media: Photographic print

Online Exhibits

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Exhibit

10 Bodwell Street, Sanford, ca. 1900

Farm-yard Frames

Throughout New England, barns attached to houses are fairly common. Why were the buildings connected? What did farmers or families gain by doing this? The phenomenon was captured in the words of a children's song, "Big house, little house, back house, barn," (Thomas C. Hubka <em>Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn, the Connected Farm Buildings of New England,</em> University Press of New England, 1984.)

Exhibit

Jewett Corn Factory, Norridgewock, ca. 1915

Blueberries to Potatoes: Farming in Maine

Not part of the American "farm belt," Maine nonetheless has been known over the years for a few agricultural items, especially blueberries, sweet corn, potatoes, apples, chickens and dairy products.

Exhibit

Good Will Farm roundel, Fairfield, 1918

George W. Hinckley and Needy Boys and Girls

George W. Hinckley wanted to help needy boys. The farm, school and home he ran for nearly sixty nears near Fairfield stressed home, religion, education, discipline, industry, and recreation.

Site Pages

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Site Page

Myron Gartley Farm, Presque Isle, 1976

Presque Isle: The Star City - Farm Life

"Farm Life Myron Gartley Farm, Presque Isle, 1976Presque Isle Historical Society King Farm, Presque Isle, ca."

Site Page

Cumberland & North Yarmouth - Skyline Farm - Making and Preserving History

Cumberland & North Yarmouth - Skyline Farm - Making and Preserving History

"By the summer of 2000, the Skyline Farm organization and the Sowles family arranged a purchase with a conservation easement through the Royal River…"

Site Page

Farmington: Franklin County's Shiretown - Early Settlers

Farmington: Franklin County's Shiretown - Early Settlers

"The early Town Warrants tell us the town hired Henry to build a box for their town records and to make a roller for the town maps."

My Maine Stories

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Story

Growing up on a potato and dairy farm

Growing up on a potato and dairy farm
by Paula Woodworth

Life growing up and working on a potato and dairy farm was hard work but fun in Aroostook County.

Story

Aroostook Potato Harvest: Perspective of a Six Year Old

Aroostook Potato Harvest: Perspective of a Six Year Old
by Phyllis A. Blackstone

A child's memory of potato harvest in the 1950s

Story

My father's world - the old farm in Richmond, Maine

My father's world - the old farm in Richmond, Maine
by Donald C. Cunningham

A story about my father and our family.

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

Longfellow Farm, Gorham, 1903

Longfellow Studies: The Elms - Stephen Longfellow's Gorham Farm

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
On April 3, 1761 Stephen Longfellow II signed the deed for the first 100 acre purchase of land that he would own in Gorham, Maine. His son Stephen III (Judge Longfellow) would build a home on that property which still stands to this day. Judge Longfellow would become one of the most prominent citizens in GorhamÂ’s history and one of the earliest influences on his grandson Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's work as a poet. This exhibit examines why the Longfellows arrived in Gorham, Judge Longfellow's role in the history of the town, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's vacations in the country which may have influenced his greatest work, and the remains of the Longfellow estate still standing in Gorham today.

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.