Maine History Online

Civic and Social Customs

Since most towns were founded, they have held town meetings – often in March. John Gould described the New England town meeting in 1940: "The whole family comes – mother and father to vote, and the children to listen and learn how. Town Meeting Day begins after chores – the moderator is sometimes chosen as early as six-thirty.

"Events move on with balloting in the forenoon, dinner, appropriations in the afternoon, supper at six, and a Town Meeting dance at night. Commerce, industry, and schooling stop."

In its earlier incarnations, town meeting business was conducted by men; food provided by women. Children played and observed. When women got the right to vote nationally in 1920, they began voting at town meetings as well.

Gould wrote: "Absolute independence characterized Town Meeting. No one tells a Yankee how to vote, no one dictates; and only another Yankee can persuade."

As towns have grown and populations diversified, many communities have replaced the traditional town meetings with other forms of municipal government.

Lura Beam, in A Maine Hamlet, which captures the seasonal amusements of small-town Marshfield during the early years of the 20th century, notes that while the fairs, picnics, and camp meetings of turn-of-the-century Marshfield were, indeed, more popular than the existing civic organizations, the community was not sustained by those alone, but tempered by "the self perpetuated certain social beliefs and codes, held by everybody… first, individualism; second, the continuity of customs approved by long experience."

These often conflicted, or were at least in tension, with one another; to run athwart community customs in the pursuit of individualism was to test the limits of membership in the community. Social customs reinforced values like frugality, economy, industriousness, orderliness, and cleanliness, while institutions like marriage, church, and school, supported the entirety.

In keeping with the virtues of thrift and economy, the worlds of duty and pleasure often converged in small towns. Well-known author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, E. B. White also wrote about his life on a Maine farm for The New Yorker.

One article featured a chimney fire gone cold, and the sense of home community that prevailed when the firefighters answered the canceled call anyway: "In the country, one excuse is as good as another for a bit for fun, and just because a fire has grown cold is no reason for a fireman's spirits to sag."

White was as delighted to see the firemen, as they were to see each other. The sheer camaraderie of the event inspired White to claim it as "one of the pleasantest" homecomings he had ever experienced.

Difference and Belonging

There were, of course, varieties of experience in smaller communities, particularly as immigrant groups brought their own flair and flavors to small-town life. Maine's largest ethnic group by far is of French descent, usually through migration from nearby Canadian provinces.

Early Acadians settled along the St. John River Valley; while many were forced to flee following English victory during colonial wars, they nonetheless influenced cultural development in the area and now constitute a majority population in places like Fort Kent and Madawaska.

Leaving Quebec in the midst of an agricultural crisis later in the 19th century, anxious and hopeful French Canadians brought with them music, dance, Catholicism, language, and food traditions to enliven the textile mill and industrial towns of Lewiston-Auburn, Waterville, Dexter, Rumford, and Biddeford.

The transition was not always smooth. Relocation challenged their Quebecois heritage and sense of community as assimilation vied with cultural tradition for dominance. While public schools and mills integrated the newcomers through English language immersions, churches and kinship sustained vital traditions through familiar Catholic rituals, foodways, and recreations.

Interestingly, their participation in civic organizations and sports teams in places like Dexter, for example, served both to preserve social solidarity, and to Americanize Franco-American individuals.

No matter where they are, small towns are as much determined by what they lack – or avoid – as by what they have.