Keywords: European immigrants
Item 61844
Fish factory workers, Swan's Island, ca. 1890
Contributed by: Swan's Island Historical Society Date: circa 1890 Location: Swan's Island Media: Photographic print
Item 25109
Ku Klux Klan field day, Portland, 1926
Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1926-08-28 Location: Portland Media: Photographic print
Exhibit
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.
Exhibit
"Twenty Nationalities, But All Americans"
Concern about immigrants and their loyalty in the post World War I era led to programs to "Americanize" them -- an effort to help them learn English and otherwise adjust to life in the United States. Clara Soule ran one such program for the Portland Public Schools, hoping it would help the immigrants be accepted.
Site Page
"… an intense level of immigration, first of Irish and other west European workers; then later French-Canadian, east and southern Europeans."
Site Page
"VI. The deluge of industrial expansion & immigration (1865-1900) Pew payment receipt, Biddeford, 1806, 1807, 1810Biddeford Historical Society…"
Story
John Coyne from Waterville Enlists as a Railroad Man in WWI
by Mary D. Coyne
Description of conditions railroad men endured and family background on John Coyne.
