Maine Memory Network

Music in Maine - Country Music

"… Music By Ken Brooks Choosing a Career in Country and Bluegrass Music Click to read entire story I grew up in the small town of Robbinston in…"

Music in Maine - Radio Cowboys and Country Music

"… Pea Cove near Old Town, Harold Breau’s career in country music as “Hal Lone Pine” took off when he met his future spouse and Franco singer Rita…"

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.

Home: The Longfellow House & the Emergence of Portland

The Wadsworth-Longfellow house is the oldest building on the Portland peninsula, the first historic site in Maine, a National Historic Landmark, home to three generations of Wadsworth and Longfellow family members -- including the boyhood home of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The history of the house and its inhabitants provide a unique view of the growth and changes of Portland -- as well as of the immediate surroundings of the home.

Power of Potential

The National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs (NFBPWC) held their seventh annual convention in Portland during July 12 to July 18, 1925. Over 2,000 working women from around the country visited the city.

Field & Homefront: Bethel during the Civil War

Like many towns, Bethel responded to the Civil War by sending many soldiers and those at the homefront sent aid and supported families. The town grew during the war, but suffered after its end.

Scarborough: They Answered the Call

Scarborough met every quota set by the state for supplying Civil War soldiers for Union regiments. Some of those who responded became prominent citizens of the town.

Poland Spring: Summering in Fashion

During the Gilded Age at the end of the nineteenth century, Americans sought to leave increasing urban, industrialized lives for the health and relaxation of the country. The Poland Spring resort, which offered a beautiful setting, healing waters, and many amenities, was one popular destination.

Biddeford, Saco and the Textile Industry

The largest textile factory in the country reached seven stories up on the banks of the Saco River in 1825, ushering in more than a century of making cloth in Biddeford and Saco. Along with the industry came larger populations and commercial, retail, social, and cultural growth.

Making Paper, Making Maine

Paper has shaped Maine's economy, molded individual and community identities, and impacted the environment throughout Maine. When Hugh Chisholm opened the Otis Falls Pulp Company in Jay in 1888, the mill was one of the most modern paper-making facilities in the country, and was connected to national and global markets. For the next century, Maine was an international leader in the manufacture of pulp and paper.

Maine and the Space Age

The small town of Andover landed on the international map in 1962 when the Earth Station that had been built there successfully communicated with Telstar, the first telecommunications satellite.

Presque Isle and the Civil War

Presque Isle had fewer than 1,000 residents in 1860, but it still felt the impact of the Civil War. About half of the town's men went off to war. Of those, a third died. The effects of the war were widespread in the small community.

Father John Bapst: Catholicism's Defender and Promoter

Father John Bapst, a Jesuit, knew little of America or Maine when he arrived in Old Town in 1853 from Switzerland. He built churches and defended Roman Catholics against Know-Nothing activists, who tarred and feathered the priest in Ellsworth in 1854.

Sagadahoc County through the Eastern Eye

The Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company of Belfast, Maine. employed photographers who traveled by company vehicle through New England each summer, taking pictures of towns and cities, vacation spots and tourist attractions, working waterfronts and local industries, and other subjects postcard recipients might enjoy. The cards were printed by the millions in Belfast into the 1940s.

Port of Portland's Custom House and Collectors of Customs

The collector of Portland was the key to federal patronage in Maine, though other ports and towns had collectors. Through the 19th century, the revenue was the major source of Federal Government income. As in Colonial times, the person appointed to head the custom House in Casco Bay was almost always a leading community figure, or a well-connected political personage.

Civil Defense: Fear and Safety

In the 1950s and the 1960s, Maine's Civil Defense effort focused on preparedness for hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters and a more global concern, nuclear war. Civil Defense materials urged awareness, along with measures like storing food and other staple items and preparing underground or other shelters.

Luxurious Leisure

From the last decades of the nineteenth century through about the 1920s, vacationers were attracted to large resort hotels that promised a break from the noise, crowds, and pressures of an ever-urbanizing country.

From French Canadians to Franco-Americans

French Canadians who emigrated to the Lewiston-Auburn area faced discrimination as children and adults -- such as living in "Little Canada" tenements and being ridiculed for speaking French -- but also adapted to their new lives and sustained many cultural traditions.

Music in Maine - Music Education

"… Starting in the 1920s, cowboy themed outfits and country music became popular. Radio and film star Gene Autry (1907-1998), known as the “singing…"

Music in Maine - Community Music

"… lead dance workshops at Maine’s annual DownEast Country Dance Festival and the New England Folk Festival as well as schools statewide for students…"

Music in Maine - Opera, Orchestras and Stages

"… Tribe of Oklahoma, while traveling across the country performing as “Indians” at wild west shows and on the theater circuit."

Music in Maine - MAKE

"… Hand drum by James Eric Francis, Sr., Old Town, 2018Maine Historical Society Wabanaki peoples created the first music of Ckuwaponahkiyik when…"

Music in Maine - Military Marching Bands

"1950Maine Historical Society Town bands carried on the marching tradition of military bands after the Civil War, with uniforms often resembling the…"

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Why Study the History of Drinking?

"Having outlawed its use in this country in 1920 and repealed that law 13 years later, Americans continue to debate its pleasures and costs."