Keywords: First Settler
- Historical Items (110)
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- Online Exhibits (35)
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Online Exhibits
Your results include these online exhibits. You also can view all of the site's exhibits, view a timeline of selected events in Maine History, and learn how to create your own exhibit. See featured exhibits or create your own exhibit
Exhibit
Holding up the Sky: Wabanaki people, culture, history, and art
Learn about Native diplomacy and obligation by exploring 13,000 years of Wabanaki residence in Maine through 17th century treaties, historic items, and contemporary artworks—from ash baskets to high fashion. Wabanaki voices contextualize present-day relevance and repercussions of 400 years of shared histories between Wabanakis and settlers to their region.
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In the early 1600s, French explorers and colonizers in the New World quickly adopted a Native American mode of transportation to get around during the harsh winter months: the snowshoe. Most Northern societies had some form of snowshoe, but the Native Americans turned it into a highly functional item. French settlers named snowshoes "raquettes" because they resembled the tennis racket then in use.
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Princeton: Woods and Water Built This Town
Princeton benefited from its location on a river -- the St. Croix -- that was useful for transportation of people and lumber and for powering mills as well as on its proximity to forests.
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Settlers' clothing had to be durable and practical to hold up against hard work and winters. From the 1700s to the mid 1800s, the women of Maine learned to sew by making samplers.
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Student Exhibit: Bloomfield Academy
In 1842, the new Bloomfield Academy was constructed in Skowhegan. The new brick building replaced the very first Bloomfield Academy, a small wooden building that had been built in 1814 and served as the high school until 1871. After that, it housed elementary school classes until 1980.
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2009 marked the bicentennials of the births of Abraham Lincoln and his first vice president, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. To observe the anniversary, Paris Hill, where Hamlin was born and raised, honored the native statesman and recalled both his early life in the community and the mark he made on Maine and the nation.
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Immigration is one of the most debated topics in Maine. Controversy aside, immigration is also America's oldest tradition, and along with religious tolerance, what our nation was built upon. Since the first people--the Wabanaki--permitted Europeans to settle in the land now known as Maine, we have been a state of immigrants.
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Wired! How Electricity Came to Maine
As early as 1633, entrepreneurs along the Piscataqua River in southern Maine utilized the force of the river to power a sawmill, recognizing the potential of the area's natural power sources, but it was not until the 1890s that technology made widespread electricity a reality -- and even then, consumers had to be urged to use it.
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Rum, Riot, and Reform - Why Study the History of Drinking?
"Indeed, for the first settlers, strong drink was simply an ingrained part of the customs and dietary traditions brought from their homeland."
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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.
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Rum, Riot, and Reform - 1620 to 1820: New England's Great Secret
"… England (1620–1820) For Maine's early European settlers, alcohol was a social institution, a medicine, and an actively traded commodity."
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The Barns of the St. John River Valley: Maine's Crowning Jewels
Maine's St. John River Valley boasts a unique architectural landscape. A number of historical factors led to the proliferation of a local architectural style, the Madawaska twin barn, as well as a number of building techniques rarely seen elsewhere. Today, these are in danger of being lost to time.
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When Europeans arrived in North America and disrupted traditional Native American patterns of life, they also offered other opportunities: trade goods for furs. The fur trade had mixed results for the Wabanaki.
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Northern Threads: Colonial and 19th century fur trade
A vignette in "Northern Threads: Two centuries of dress at Maine Historical Society Part 1," this fur trade mini-exhibition discusses the environmental and economic impact of the fur trade in Maine through the 19th century.
Exhibit
Northern Threads: Penobscot mocassins
A themed exhibit vignette within "Northern Threads, Part I," about telling stories through Indigenous clothing, featuring an essay by Jennifer Sapiel Neptune (Penobscot.)
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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.
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The history of the region now known as Maine did not begin at statehood in 1820. What was Maine before it was a state? How did Maine separate from Massachusetts? How has the Maine we experience today been shaped by thousands of years of history?
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Begin Again: reckoning with intolerance in Maine
BEGIN AGAIN explores Maine's historic role, going back 528 years, in crisis that brought about the pandemic, social and economic inequities, and the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
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Student Exhibit: Logging on Kennebec River
I became interested in the Kennebec River log drive when my grandfather would tell me stories. He remembers watching the logs flow down the river from his home in Fairfield, a small town along the Kennebec River.
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Northern Threads: The rise and fall of the gigot sleeve
A themed exhibit vignette within "Northern Threads Part I," featuring the balloon-like gigot sleeve of the 1830s.
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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.
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The Irish on the Docks of Portland
Many of the dockworkers -- longshoremen -- in Portland were Irish or of Irish descent. The Irish language was spoken on the docks and Irish traditions followed, including that of giving nicknames to the workers, many of whose given names were similar.
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The boundaries of Maine are the product of international conflict, economic competition, political fights, and contested development. The boundaries are expressions of human values; people determined the shape of Maine.
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After the canoe, steamboats became the favored method of transportation on Moosehead Lake. They revolutionized movement of logs and helped promote tourism in the region.