Maine Memory Network

Women workers at Farnsworth Fish Cannery, Brooklin, 1920

Contributed by: Sedgwick-Brooklin Historical Society Date: 1920 Location: Brooklin Media: Photo transparency

View of Friendship, ca. 1930

Contributed by: Friendship Museum Date: circa 1930 Location: Friendship Media: Photographic print

Early Fish Canneries in Brooklin

By the 1900s, numerous fish canneries began operating in Center Harbor, located within the Brooklin community. For over thirty years, these plants were an important factor in the community.

Laboring in Maine

Workers in Maine have labored in factories, on farms, in the woods, on the water, among other locales. Many of Maine's occupations have been determined by the state's climate and geographical features.

Lubec, Maine - Susie Calder: Lubec's Sardine Queen

"There was a carrier, we called it, and the flakes with the fish on them came down the carrier. We’d pick the flake right up and put it on our table…"

Lubec, Maine - Canning Sardines in Lubec: Technology, the Syndicate and Labor

"… for 15 to 30 minutes in a rotary oven with the flakes on moving arms, the flakes were stacked on racks to cool."