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Keywords: fishing villages

Historical Items

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Item 6497

Fishing village, Orr's Island, ca. 1900

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1900 Location: Harpswell Media: Photoprint

Item 148246

Fishing boats docked at Union Wharf, Portland, 1887

Contributed by: City of Portland - Planning & Development Date: 1887-06-15 Location: Portland; South Portland Media: Photographic print

Item 6524

Popham Beach, ca. 1930

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1930 Location: Popham Beach Media: Photoprint

Online Exhibits

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Exhibit

Raising Fish

Mainers began propagating fish to stock ponds and lakes in the mid 19th century. The state got into the business in the latter part of the century, first concentrating on Atlantic salmon, then moving into raising other species for stocking rivers, lakes, and ponds.

Exhibit

Indians at the Centennial

Passamaquoddy Indians from Washington County traveled to Portland in 1920 to take part in the Maine Centennial Exposition. They set up an "Indian Village" at Deering Oaks Park.

Exhibit

A Town Is Born: South Bristol, 1915

After being part of the town of Bristol for nearly 150 years, residents of South Bristol determined that their interests would be better served by becoming a separate town and they broke away from the large community of Bristol.

Site Pages

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Site Page

Strong, a Mussul Unsquit village - Village Schools

"1895 Click for Slide Show The first Strong Village School (Dist.# 5) was located in the building now used by the Aurora Grange."

Site Page

Strong, a Mussul Unsquit village - The Porter Family

"… “Fly Rod” Crosby, because of her love of fishing. One month before her second birthday, her father died of consumption."

Site Page

Strong, a Mussul Unsquit village - Early Schools

"Dist.# 5 - Village School served the children of the village in the schoolhouse that later became the Grange Hall, located on the road now known as…"

My Maine Stories

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Story

Carrabassett Village and the Red Stallion Inn circa 1960
by David Rollins

The creation of Carrabassett Village and the Red Stallion Inn at Sugarloaf USA

Story

Growing up DownEast
by Darrin MC Mclellan

Stories of growing up Downeast

Lesson Plans

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Lesson Plan

Longfellow Studies: Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith" and "Whitman's Song of Myself" - Alternative Constructions of the American Worker

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
Most if not all of us have or will need to work in the American marketplace for at least six decades of our lives. There's a saying that I remember a superintendent telling a group of graduating high-school seniors: remember, when you are on your deathbed, you will not be saying that you wish you had spent more time "at the office." But Americans do spend a lot more time working each year than nearly any other people on the planet. By the end of our careers, many of us will have spent more time with our co-workers than with our families. Already in the 21st century, much has been written about the "Wal-Martization" of the American workplace, about how, despite rocketing profits, corporations such as Wal-Mart overwork and underpay their employees, how workers' wages have remained stagnant since the 1970s, while the costs of college education and health insurance have risen out of reach for many citizens. It's become a cliché to say that the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" is widening to an alarming degree. In his book Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips says we are dangerously close to becoming a plutocracy in which one dollar equals one vote. Such clashes between employers and employees, and between our rhetoric of equality of opportunity and the reality of our working lives, are not new in America. With the onset of the industrial revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century, many workers were displaced from their traditional means of employment, as the country shifted from a farm-based, agrarian economy toward an urban, manufacturing-centered one. In cities such as New York, groups of "workingmen" (early manifestations of unions) protested, sometimes violently, unsatisfactory labor conditions. Labor unions remain a controversial political presence in America today. Longfellow and Whitman both wrote with sympathy about the American worker, although their respective portraits are strikingly different, and worth juxtaposing. Longfellow's poem "The Village Blacksmith" is one of his most famous and beloved visions: in this poem, one blacksmith epitomizes characteristics and values which many of Longfellow's readers, then and now, revere as "American" traits. Whitman's canto (a section of a long poem) 15 from "Song of Myself," however, presents many different "identities" of the American worker, representing the entire social spectrum, from the crew of a fish smack to the president (I must add that Whitman's entire "Song of Myself" is actually 52 cantos in length). I do not pretend to offer these single texts as all-encompassing of the respective poets' ideas about workers, but these poems offer a starting place for comparison and contrast. We know that Longfellow was the most popular American poet of the nineteenth century, just as we know that Whitman came to be one of the most controversial. Read more widely in the work of both poets and decide for yourselves which poet speaks to you more meaningfully and why.