Maine Memory Network

Selections from the Collections

Maine Historical Society staff come across unique and unforgettable items in our collections every day. While it's difficult to choose favorites from a dynamic collection, this exhibit features memorable highlights as selected by members of the MHS staff.

CODE RED: Climate, Justice & Natural History Collections

Explore topics around climate change by reuniting collections from one of the nation's earliest natural history museums, the Portland Society of Natural History. The exhibition focuses on how museums collect, and the role of humans in creating changes in society, climate, and biodiversity.

Inside the Yellow House

Photographer Elijah Cobb's 1985 portfolio of the Laura E. Richards House, with text by Rosalind Cobb Wiggins and Laura E. Putnam.

Northern Threads: Two centuries of dress at Maine Historical

Organized by themed vignettes, Northern Threads shares stories about Maine people, while exploring how the clothing they wore reveals social, economic, and environmental histories. This re-examination of Maine Historical Society's permanent collection is an opportunity to consider the relevance of historic clothing in museums, the ebb and flow of fashion styles, and the complexities of diverse representation spanning 200 years of collecting.

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.

Bookplates Honor Annie Louise Cary

A summer resident of Wayne collected more than 3,000 bookplates to honor Maine native and noted opera singer Annie Louise Cary and to support the Cary Memorial Library.

Colonial Cartography: The Plymouth Company Maps

The Plymouth Company (1749-1816) managed one of the very early land grants in Maine along the Kennebec River. The maps from the Plymouth Company's collection of records constitute some of the earliest cartographic works of colonial America.

Fashionable Maine: early twentieth century clothing

Maine residents kept pace with the dramatic shift in women’s dress that occurred during the short number of years preceding and immediately following World War I. The long restrictive skirts, stiff collars, body molding corsets and formal behavior of earlier decades quickly faded away and the new straight, dropped waist easy-to-wear clothing gave mobility and freedom of movement in tune with the young independent women of the casual, post-war jazz age generation.

Bowdoin College Scientific Expedition to Labrador

"The Bowdoin Boys" -- some students and recent graduates -- traveled to Labrador in 1891 to collect artifacts, specimens, and to try to find Grand Falls, a waterfall deep in Labrador's interior.

Lincoln County through the Eastern Eye

The Penobscot Marine Museum’s photography collections include nearly 50,000 glass plate negatives of images for "real photo" postcards produced by the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company of Belfast. This exhibit features postcards from Lincoln County.

Patriotism Shared

Post office clerks began collecting strong red, white, and blue string, rolling it onto a ball and passing it on to the next post office to express their support for the Union effort in the Civil War. Accompanying the ball was this paper scroll on which the clerks wrote messages and sometimes drew images.

MY ISLAND HOME: Verlie Colby Greenleaf of Westport Island

Verlie Greenleaf (1891-1992) bore witness to over a century of Westport Island's history. Many changes occurred during Verlie's 100-year life. Verlie Greenleaf donated photographs, personal notes, and sat for an interview in 1987, all part of the Westport Island History Committee's collection. Her words frame this exhibition, providing a first-person account of her life.

Chansonetta Stanley Emmons: Staging the Past

Chansonetta Stanley Emmons (1858-1937) of Kingfield, Maine, experimented with the burgeoning artform of photography. Starting in 1897, Emmons documented the lives of people, many in rural and agricultural regions in Maine and around the world. Often described as recalling a bygone era, this exhibition features glass plate negatives and painted lantern slides from the collections of the Stanley Museum in Kingfield on deposit at Maine Historical Society, that present a time of rapid change, from 1897 to 1926.

Maine and the Civil War - Regiments: Images, Documents

"… of regiments is determined largely by available collections of images and documents. The page will be updated as material is digitized and…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Reform and Repeal

"1920 Collections of Maine Historical Society/Maine Today Media Coll. 1949; 2005.061.13657 These temperate citizens on a parade review stand in…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Temperance Membership

"… Temperance Visitor Rockland, January 1861 Collections of Maine Historical Society Newspapers 3-48 One of numerous publications aimed at…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Politics and Enforcement

"X Voters, Attention! Alfred, 1906 Collections of Maine Historical Society Broadside 285 X Bottle Benjamin F."

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Women Leaders and Temperance

"… Chicago, 1898 Courtesy of Joyce Butler, also Collections of Maine Historical Society, B W6612g X Grand Temperance Rally Broadside, 1912…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Quenching the Thirst

"Bunker, Waterville, 1889 Collections of Maine Historical Society S.C. 3 X The Bugle Bowdoin College, 1881 Collections of Maine Historical…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Taverns, People, and Scenes

"… Matthew Prior (1806-1873) Oil on paperboard Collections of Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, MA X Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam, ca…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - A Call to Temperance

"License Early 19th century Collections of Maine Historical Society; gift of Marian Bucholtz, 1965 Broadside 282 This verse summarizes the hope of…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Influential & Interesting Documents

"1812 Collections of the Dyer Library / Saco Museum Reverend Mason Locke Weems (1759-1825), best known for his imaginative biography of George…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Business as Usual

"1920Maine Historical Society John Ford ca. 1920 Collections of Maine Historical Society, Gannett Glass Plate Negative Collection One of the major…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Society Copes

"… X The 18th Amendment, 1920 Bowdoin Bugle 1920 Collections of Maine Historical Society 378 B674Q-b Clearly many college students were not ready…"