Keywords: Land interests
Item 76131
Introduction of A.P. Dillingham to Gen. Shepley, Augusta, 1863
Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1863 Location: Augusta; Waterville; New Orleans Media: Ink on paper
Item 27103
Dark Harbor Cottages Poster, Islesboro, ca. 1900
Contributed by: Islesboro Historical Society Date: circa 1900 Location: Islesboro Media: Ink on paper
Item 32438
34-36 Atlantic Street, Portland, 1924
Owner in 1924: Josephine W Cummings Style: Greek Revival Use: Dwelling - Single family
Item 111981
Waterford Library, Waterford, 1937
Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1930–1937 Location: Waterford Client: unknown Architect: John Calvin Stevens and John Howard Stevens Architects
Item 111663
Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1925–1926 Location: Saco Client: York Institute Architect: John Calvin Stevens and John Howard Stevens Architects
Exhibit
The boundaries of Maine are the product of international conflict, economic competition, political fights, and contested development. The boundaries are expressions of human values; people determined the shape of Maine.
Exhibit
The history of the region now known as Maine did not begin at statehood in 1820. What was Maine before it was a state? How did Maine separate from Massachusetts? How has the Maine we experience today been shaped by thousands of years of history?
Site Page
"John River, and state interests mobilized, especially in the US Senate, to reject the proposal, although it had other more pro-American dimensions."
Site Page
"… arose from the opaque issues at stake as well as interest-driven motives to acquire rich timber lands (on both sides) and to preserve an overland…"
Story
Welimahskil: Sweet grass
by Suzanne Greenlaw
Weaving Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and western science around Sweetgrass
Story
Vietnam Memoirs
by David Chessey
MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND MY OBSERVATION OF NATIONWIDE OPINIONS CONCERNING THE “VIET NAM" WAR
Lesson Plan
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.
Lesson Plan
Portland History: Lemuel Moody and the Portland Observatory
Grade Level: 3-5
Content Area: Social Studies
Lemuel Moody and the Portland Observatory Included are interesting facts to share with your students and for students, an interactive slide show available on-line at Maine Memory Network. The "Images" slide show allows students to place historical images of the Observatory in a timeline. Utilizing their observation skills students will place these images in chronological order by looking for changes within the built environment for clues. Also available is the "Maps" slide show, a series of maps from key eras in Portland's history. Students will answer the questions in the slide show to better understand the topography of Portland, the need for an Observatory and the changes in the landscape and the population centers.
