Maine Memory Network

Daniels' still life, ca. 1865

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1865 Media: Oil on board

German POW painting, Houlton, 1945

Contributed by: Aroostook County Historical and Art Museum Date: 1945 Location: Houlton Media: Oil painting

House for Jessie Wright, Cape Elizabeth, 1913-1924

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1913–1924 Location: Cape Elizabeth Client: Jessie Wright Architect: John Calvin Stevens and John Howard Stevens Architects

Peirce Memorial Library, Standish, 1924

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1924 Location: Standish Client: unknown Architect: John Calvin Stevens and John Howard Stevens Architects

Student Exhibit: Historic Buildings on Madison Ave in Skowhegan

Take a tour and see some of the beautiful old buildings that used to be on Madison Avenue, Skowhegan? A few still remain, but most have been torn down.

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.

Mount Desert Island: Shaped by Nature - Wartime on Mt. Desert Island

"The cemeteries on the island still show the stones of these early settlers, often with an epitaph that recognizes their status as a veteran of war."

Farmington: Franklin County's Shiretown - SEE NOTES "What the book said to the Boy". Library bookmark.

"(They still are) This example employs a verse to instruct young persons on the importance of caring for books."

My story about tours of duty in Vietnam
by Maynard Bradley

I served in the Army Special Forces as a Green Beret, it still effects me today.

Classroom Time Capsule
by Anna Bennett

On March 12, 2020, I left my classroom not knowing I wouldn't return again for months.

Longfellow Studies: The Elms - Stephen Longfellow's Gorham Farm

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
On April 3, 1761 Stephen Longfellow II signed the deed for the first 100 acre purchase of land that he would own in Gorham, Maine. His son Stephen III (Judge Longfellow) would build a home on that property which still stands to this day. Judge Longfellow would become one of the most prominent citizens in Gorham’s history and one of the earliest influences on his grandson Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's work as a poet. This exhibit examines why the Longfellows arrived in Gorham, Judge Longfellow's role in the history of the town, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's vacations in the country which may have influenced his greatest work, and the remains of the Longfellow estate still standing in Gorham today.

Longfellow Studies: The American Wilderness? How 19th Century American Artists Viewed the Separation Of Civilization and Nature

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: Social Studies, Visual & Performing Arts
When European settlers began coming to the wilderness of North America, they did not have a vision that included changing their lifestyle. The plan was to set up self-contained communities where their version of European life could be lived. In the introduction to The Crucible, Arthur Miller even goes as far as saying that the Puritans believed the American forest to be the last stronghold of Satan on this Earth. When Roger Chillingworth shows up in The Scarlet Letter's second chapter, he is welcomed away from life with "the heathen folk" and into "a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people." In fact, as history's proven, they believed that the continent could be changed to accommodate their interests. Whether their plans were enacted in the name of God, the King, or commerce and economics, the changes always included – and still do to this day - the taming of the geographic, human, and animal environments that were here beforehand. It seems that this has always been an issue that polarizes people. Some believe that the landscape should be left intact as much as possible while others believe that the world will inevitably move on in the name of progress for the benefit of mankind. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby – a book which many feel is one of the best portrayals of our American reality - the narrator, Nick Carraway, looks upon this progress with cynicism when he ends his narrative by pondering the transformation of "the fresh green breast of a new world" that the initial settlers found on the shores of the continent into a modern society that unsettlingly reminds him of something out of a "night scene by El Greco." Philosophically, the notions of progress, civilization, and scientific advancement are not only entirely subjective, but also rest upon the belief that things are not acceptable as they are. Europeans came here hoping for a better life, and it doesn't seem like we've stopped looking. Again, to quote Fitzgerald, it's the elusive green light and the "orgiastic future" that we've always hoped to find. Our problem has always been our stoic belief system. We cannot seem to find peace in the world either as we've found it or as someone else may have envisioned it. As an example, in Miller's The Crucible, his Judge Danforth says that: "You're either for this court or against this court." He will not allow for alternative perspectives. George W. Bush, in 2002, said that: "You're either for us or against us. There is no middle ground in the war on terror." The frontier -- be it a wilderness of physical, religious, or political nature -- has always frightened Americans. As it's portrayed in the following bits of literature and artwork, the frontier is a doomed place waiting for white, cultured, Europeans to "fix" it. Anything outside of their society is not just different, but unacceptable. The lesson plan included will introduce a few examples of 19th century portrayal of the American forest as a wilderness that people feel needs to be hesitantly looked upon. Fortunately, though, the forest seems to turn no one away. Nature likes all of its creatures, whether or not the favor is returned. While I am not providing actual activities and daily plans, the following information can serve as a rather detailed explanation of things which can combine in any fashion you'd like as a group of lessons.