Family members expressed their grief and remembered deceased siblings, children, parents and spouses in needlework, drawings, paintings and jewelry.
These remembrances made use of personal items such as the deceased person's hair and often incorporated landscape, figural and architectural details that were popular at the time.
Sorrowful imagery, such as trees and persons bowed as if by a great weight, also are used to express mourning.
This pendant belonged to the Reverend John Wiswell (1731-1812), a resident of Falmouth (Portland) in the late 18th century.
His Episcopalian faith and allegiance to the Church of England eventually forced him to flee abruptly and without his family to Boston on Captain Mowatt’s British warship on the eve of the American Revolution in 1775.
This locket commemorates Wiswells’ wife, Mercy, and daughter, Elizabeth, who died while trying to reach him in Boston.
Also memorialized are their two young sons (unnamed) who died in 1773.
The land on which we live, and the communities surrounding us, shape our lives and define who we are. We develop important relationships to geography and structures, to the natural world and the built environment.
Relics from old buildings, drawings of street scenes, and painted signs in some way connect us to those places we remember in the past.
These functional items and decorative pieces help recreate the environments that have been important in the past, much the same way some people memorialize family and close friends through portraits and family registers.
The itinerant, deaf artist John Brewster Jr., painted this pair of portraits of Rev. Samuel and Mrs. Eunice Deane during an early visit to Portland.
Deane was minister at the First Parish Church from 1764 until his death in 1814.
Throughout his life, he kept journals of local events – extracts were published in 1849 and provide important insights into town life in the 18th century.
In later life, marble cutter and volunteer fireman Charles Quincy Goodhue developed a passion for local history.
Around 1890, he began to make a visual record of local scenes he titled Portland Through Grandfather’s Eyes.
This scrapbook included drawings based on memories, historical documents, and local stories.
This re-created view shows the First Parish Church with the adjacent Rev. Deane House as they might have looked almost 100 years before he made the drawing.
Major William Francis operated a lottery business on Union Street in Portland from around 1810 to 1830.
He advertised his location as “Fortune’s temple.”
Lotteries reached their peak of popularity in the 1820s, and were a common way to raise money for private efforts to build bridges, canals and roadways.
In 1827 a critic complained there were 25 shops in Portland peddling lottery tickets.
This sign, made by an unknown artist, advertised the gold coins to be won by engaging in the lottery craze.
Dr. Stephen Cummings (1774–1854) lived in the Deering section of Portland and was a member of the Union Fire Society.
The society motto, Esto Perpetua, means "may you endure forever!" The artisan Aaron Fitz made leather fire buckets as well as harnesses, saddles, and trunks in his shop on Fish Street in Portland.
Woodbury Hatch, a Civil War veteran, worked professionally in Portland as an ornamental painter and also served as a member of a volunteer fire brigade.
In 1866, he battled the Portland fire. His first-hand experience is evident here; you can almost feel the heat radiate from this painting.
One of Portland’s most distinctive landmarks is the Observatory, built by Lemuel Moody in 1807.
From the tower Moody could observe ships entering the harbor and then hoist a signal flag to announce the arrival, allowing the ship’s owner to prepare the wharf and men needed to off load the ship.
This model was made from shingles salvaged from the observatory during a restoration in 1906.
Models, drawings and painting of ships, harbors and shoreline are among the many creative expressions of these experiences.
These artifacts serve as a record of the many ways the sea has been part of Maine history.
In 1864 George Russell established his shipyard in the East Deering section of Portland. By 1891, the Russell yard had built over 50 vessels—mostly wooden merchant ships.
This painting shows the yard during World War I. In the ways are wooden steamships, or Ferris ships, made for the war effort.
The Russell Yard closed in 1921.
Portland is visible in the background, as is the railroad bridge across the Back Cove inlet.
Painted from Fort Preble in South Portland, this harbor scene includes several important local landmarks – Fort Scammel (built ca. 1812) and Cushing Island with the recently-built Ottawa House.
Sailing ships, ferries, rowboats fill the harbor with activity.
Capt. William McLellan Sr. (ca. 1735-1815) was the son of an ambitious immigrant and jack-of-all-trades.
During the Revolutionary War, McLellan was owner and master of the sloop Centurian, one of the ships destroyed by the British during the Penobscot expedition in 1779. After the war, he was a leading merchant in town.
John Brewster Jr., the son of a Connecticut physician, painted the portrait. He was born deaf.
He trained as a painter and traveled the New England coast as an itinerate artist between 1796 and 1833.
Brewster advertised locally in 1805, 1806, and 1821. He eventually settled in Buxton.
