Maine Memory Network

Harmon's Corner fire ruins, Biddeford, 1911

Contributed by: McArthur Public Library Date: 1911-07-08 Location: Biddeford Media: Photographic print

Ruins of Somesville neighborhood fire, Saco, 1908

Contributed by: McArthur Public Library Date: 1908-09-15 Location: Saco Media: Glass Negative

Wiscasset's Arctic Connection

Scientist, author and explorer Donald B. MacMillan established Wiscasset as his homeport for many of the voyages he made to the Arctic region starting in the early 1920s.

Student Exhibit: The Great By-Pass

The debate over a proposed bridge and bypass in Skowhegan in 2005.

Life on a Tidal River - The Bangor Fire of 1911 - Page 1 of 2

"(Whipple 9) Norumbega Hall ruins, Bangor Fire, 1911 Bangor Public Library The fire spread northward through downtown, destroying Norumbega Hall…"

Historic Hallowell - Affects of the Blizzard of 1952

"… still scarred from people dying and things being ruined. They re-built the stores that were broken, and they fixed the houses, but the shock and…"

The only letter to survive World War II
by Cyrene Slegona

Only one of many letters my father sent to his wife remained after he came home from World War II.

Vietnam Memoirs
by David Chessey

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND MY OBSERVATION OF NATIONWIDE OPINIONS CONCERNING THE “VIET NAM" WAR

Longfellow Studies: Longfellow Amongst His Contemporaries - The Ship of State DBQ

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
Preparation Required/Preliminary Discussion: Lesson plans should be done in the context of a course of study on American literature and/or history from the Revolution to the Civil War. The ship of state is an ancient metaphor in the western world, especially among seafaring people, but this figure of speech assumed a more widespread and literal significance in the English colonies of the New World. From the middle of the 17th century, after all, until revolution broke out in 1775, the dominant system of governance in the colonies was the Navigation Acts. The primary responsibility of colonial governors, according to both Parliament and the Crown, was the enforcement of the laws of trade, and the governors themselves appointed naval officers to ensure that the various provisions and regulations of the Navigation Acts were executed. England, in other words, governed her American colonies as if they were merchant ships. This metaphorical conception of the colonies as a naval enterprise not only survived the Revolution but also took on a deeper relevance following the construction of the Union. The United States of America had now become the ship of state, launched on July 4th 1776 and dedicated to the radical proposition that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights. This proposition is examined and tested in any number of ways during the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. Novelists and poets, as well as politicians and statesmen, questioned its viability: Whither goes the ship of state? Is there a safe harbor somewhere up ahead or is the vessel doomed to ruin and wreckage? Is she well built and sturdy or is there some essential flaw in her structural frame?