Here's a wonderful article from Mother Jones about John "Bunk" Bunker's quest to rediscover America's heirloom apples.Thurlow led Bunk to the abandoned intersection that had once been the heart of Fletcher Town [in Lincolnville], pointed to an ancient, gnarled tree, and said, "That's the tree I used to eat apples from when I was a child." The tree was almost entirely dead. It had lost all its bark except for a two-inch-wide strip of living tissue that rose up the trunk and led to a single living branch about 18 feet off the ground. There was no...
Saturday, 27 April 2013
Friday, 22 April 2011
North America's highest mountain was earlier named for gold prospector Frank Dinsmore, a native of Auburn.A prospector, Frank Densmore, spoke so enthusiastically after seeing the mountain from Lake Minchumina in 1889, that it was known for years among prospectors as "Densmores Peak." [Link]Dinsmore returned to Auburn in 1897 to visit his ailing father. The Lewiston Evening Journal published an interview:Mr. Dinsmore is a son of Mr. Charles Dinsmore, brother of Mr. Hiram Dinsmore of Dinsmore & Greenleaf, and he has lived in the West twenty-three...
Monday, 13 September 2010
Sunday, 13 June 2010
Cumberland and Lincoln Counties celebrate their 250th anniversaries this month. Both were carved off from Maine's original county, York, on June 19, 1760. Cumberland lost land with the formation of Kennebec (1799), Oxford (1805) and Androscoggin (1854) Counties, but it was Lincoln that had most to lose. It originally embraced 60% of the land of Maine—from Casco Bay to that part of Nova Scotia now known as New Brunswick, and north to the limits of...
Friday, 11 June 2010
Macon Bolling Allen of Portland was the first African American admitted to the bar in the United States. This item appeared in the Portland American of Sept. 4, 1844:A Coloured Lawyer.—Macon B. Allen, of Portland, and formerly of Boston, Massachusetts, a coloured gentleman, whose application for admission to the bar in April last, under the new act, was, as we stated in our paper at the time, refused on the ground that the applicant was not a citizen of Maine, in the contemplation of said act, subsequently applied under the old law to be admitted...
Thursday, 10 June 2010
In his 1899 book Ancient Pavings of Pemaquid, J. Henry Cartland described a stretch of cobblestone pavement discovered decades past in the town of Bristol. Cartland had excavated a portion of the site and gathered evidence from area residents, including Capt. Lorenzo D. McLain:"When I was a small boy, about 1855 I think it was, I helped your uncle Jim plough this field. He had got a new No. 8 plough and was going to plough his land deeper than he...
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