Maine Memory Network

Jay & Livermore Falls, Pioneers in Paper Making

Alvin Record and Hugh J. Chisholm were instrumental in building paper mills in Jay, Livermore, and Livermore Falls. The two industrialists helped make the towns prosperous.

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.

The Waldo-Hancock Bridge

The Waldo-Hancock Bridge is in the process of being dismantled after over 70 years of service. The Maine State Archives has a number of records related to the history of this famous bridge that are presented in this exhibition.

Strike Up the Band

Before the era of recorded music and radio, nearly every community had a band that played at parades and other civic events. Fire departments had bands, military units had bands, theaters had bands. Band music was everywhere.

Umbazooksus & Beyond

Visitors to the Maine woods in the early twentieth century often recorded their adventures in private diaries or journals and in photographs. Their remembrances of canoeing, camping, hunting and fishing helped equate Maine with wilderness.

Fallen Heroes: Last of the Jewish WWII Veterans

Listen to recordings from the last of the World War II Jewish veterans.

Amazing! Maine Stories

These stories -- that stretch from 1999 back to 1759 -- take you from an amusement park to the halls of Congress. There are inventors, artists, showmen, a railway agent, a man whose civic endeavors helped shape Portland, a man devoted to the pursuit of peace and one known for his military exploits, Maine's first novelist, a woman who recorded everyday life in detail, and an Indian who survived a British attack.

Of Note: Maine Sheet Music

Of Note: Maine Sheet Music features captivating covers of original sheet music along with stories about Maine connections to the songs. Before people had easy access to popular music from records, radios, and the internet, they played songs of the day on instruments at home, using sheet music purchased at music stores. Iconic Maine subjects like lobsters, pine trees, and winter were perfect for lyrics sung by luminaries like Rudy Vallée of Westbrook, and intricate artwork of Maine’s landscape graced the sheet music covers.

Music in Maine - HEAR

"… Click to hear Dwayne Tomah discuss wax cylinder recordings Recording cylinders, ca. 1930Maine Historical Society Anthropologist Jesse Walter…"

Music in Maine - Bluegrass Music

"… Lilly Brothers from West Virginia, who in 1957, recorded at Al Hawkes’ Event Records in Westbrook."

Music in Maine - Country Music

"… 9,000 copies of Tombstone Every Mile before Tower Records, a division of Capitol Records, purchased the master."

Music in Maine - Music stores

"Record Store Day helped drive the resurgence of vinyl and increased US music sales to more than a billion dollars annually."

Music in Maine - Rock and Roll, Punk, and Elvis

"… years old, my mother gave me my very first Elvis record, Elvis’ Golden Records. I was captivated by the man on the cover."

Music in Maine - Music Makers

"She wrote in her diary, "Oh! My records! These new recordings make me happy. Schirmer’s machine is a joy, such tone-quality and such clarity!"…"

Music in Maine - Radio Cowboys and Country Music

"They performed and recorded music on RCA records with a band called the Lone Pine Mountaineers—paying homage to Maine as the Pine Tree State and the…"

Music in Maine - Community and School Marching Bands

"… lead in several Lewiston operas and was an early recording artist for Victor Records. Often sponsored by the Catholic church, Franco band formed to…"

Music in Maine - Sacred Music

"… further shortened version of Zimelman—teaches and records in New York, with 23 recordings of Yiddish, Israeli, Chassidic, Broadway, opera and pop…"

John Dunn, 19th Century Sportsman

John Warner Grigg Dunn was an accomplished amateur photographer, hunter, fisherman and lover of nature. On his trips to Ragged Lake and environs, he became an early innovator among amateur wildlife photographers. His photography left us with a unique record of the Moosehead Lake region in the late nineteenth century.

Music in Maine - MAKE

"… and scripture into Indigenous languages, but also recorded the oral histories and songs in Wabanaki languages including Abenaki…"

Music in Maine - Opera, Orchestras and Stages

"… across America as “Princess Watahwaso” and recorded with Victor Records. Lucy Nicolar met and married Bruce Poolaw, from the Kiowa Tribe of…"

The Schooner Bowdoin: Ninety Years of Seagoing History

After traveling to the Arctic with Robert E. Peary, Donald B. MacMillan (1874-1970), an explorer, researcher, and lecturer, helped design his own vessel for Arctic exploration, the schooner <em>Bowdoin,</em> which he named after his alma mater. The schooner remains on the seas.

The World's Largest Oxen

Named for the two largest things in Maine at the turn of the 20th century, Mt. Katahdin and Granger of Stetson, were known as the Largest Oxen in the World. Unable to do farm work because of their size, they visited fairs and agricultural events around the Northeast.

Shaarey Tphiloh, Portland's Orthodox Synagogue

Shaarey Tphiloh was founded in 1904 by immigrants from Eastern Europe. While accommodating to American society, the Orthodox synagogue also has retained many of its traditions.

The Devil and the Wilderness

Anglo-Americans in northern New England sometimes interpreted their own anxieties about the Wilderness, their faith, and their conflicts with Native Americans as signs that the Devil and his handmaidens, witches, were active in their midst.