Maine has only one "Little Italy"—established in 1899 to house the families of immigrants imported to build the Great Northern paper mill.Italian immigrants coming to the area were unfamiliar with the land and the language. Fred Peluso was working as a clerk for John Merrill, and he was appointed to watch over the new workers. Peluso saw to their every need by placing them in jobs, providing them with food, acting as translator, and helping them start their homes. Peluso built a substantial home with some outbuildings that become known as Peluso's...
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Frank Knight was not able to save a centuries-old American elm in Yarmouth.The elm on the corner of Yankee Drive was magnificent, a local treasure high upon a hill above the harbor, among the oldest and the largest elm trees in New England. So Knight, the volunteer tree warden in Yarmouth, made it his mission to save it."They said you can’t save the tree if it’s diseased," Knight said. “But it was such a big, beautiful tree, I said, 'I'm going to try.'"He kept the elm alive for 50 years, the two of them slowly growing older side by side. But next...
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Maine is planning its first new major state park in more than a quarter century.These lands include 2,258 acres along the west shore in Turner, and 330 acres along the east shore in Leeds, known collectively as the Androscoggin Riverlands.The land includes significant wildlife habitat; river shore, lakeshore and upland natural communities; historic landscapes; scenic vistas; and an existing recreational trails network. This property is already widely-used...
Friday, 27 November 2009
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
There was a ceremony last Saturday at Sir William Pepperrell's family tomb at Kittery Point.A memorial plaque, which had been obscured by trees for 30 years, was rededicated at the site of the Pepperrell tomb and cemetery, off Pepperrell Road across from Frisbee's Market.The Pepperrell Tomb was built in 1720 as a family cemetery site. When Col. Pepperrell died in 1734, Sir William purchased the Georgian monument which rests above the tomb. The memorial...
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Here's a Flash presentation on The Building of the Cumberland County Civic Center.A caption mentions that ZZ Top was the first headlining band to play the Civic Center. True, but their opening act was a local band called The Blend. You can learn more about the band and listen to some of their music at this tribute site for founding member Jim "JD" Drown, or check out videos of their 1982 farewell concert on YouTu...
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Swan's Island was called "Burnt Coat Island" when James Swan bought it and two dozen adjacent islands sight unseen, July 7, 1786. In his History of Swan's Island, Maine, Herman W. Small offered an explanation of the earlier name:Champlain gave the name of this island on that early map as Brule cote, "brule" meaning burnt, and "cote" hill—Burnt-hill. It is supposed that Champlain designated the island by some hill that had been burnt over. Some later discoverer translated "brule" burnt, but did not translate "cote", hence on his map he incorrectly...
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
This Slate article on place names with definite articles calls to mind Maine's only municipality beginning with "The."The Forks Plantation lies at the confluence of the Dead and Kennebec Rivers in Somerset County. Benedict Arnold's expedition passed here on its way to Quebec in 1775; construction of the Old Canada Road made the way easier for subsequent travelers. The plantation was once home to The Forks Hotel, which burned a century ago.[T]he entire...
Neighbor by Neighbor is a locally produced film about a grassroots effort to save a Lewiston neighborhood.In the summer of 2004, the Mayor of Lewiston, Maine announced a plan to develop a four-lane boulevard across downtown’s low-income neighborhood. This project was called “The Heritage Initiative.” Contrary to its name, this plan was going to eliminate the downtown’s heritage by displacing 850 people from their homes as well as destroy playgrounds,...
Monday, 26 October 2009
In the 1880s, N. S. Reed bought 500 acres of bog land and untamed forest in Hinckley Township (now Grand Lake Stream Plantation and marketed it as "Lakenwild."On the extreme tip of the point he built a handsome residence for himself. He had a boat house and a substantial wharf. An elaborate prospectus, printed by a map publishing company in Philadelphia, his original home, showed this residence as the scene of a pleasant bustle. Around it spread...
Saturday, 24 October 2009
Barbara F. Dyer explains the origins of the cross on Maiden's Cliff in Camden.A parking lot filled with automobiles very frequently is seen at the foot of Mt. Megunticook. Locals and tourist like to make the easy climb to Maiden's Cliff to see the view of Megunticook Lake from the cross.If one is seeing it for the first time, their question may be, "Why [is] there a white cross as a sentinel on the sheer cliff?"Answer: The cross marks a tragedy that happened many years a...
Sunday, 4 October 2009
The character Enoch Snow in Carousel was named for a real sea captain from Scarborough known for his clambakes.After moving his family to Wells and later, Scarborough, in the 1840s, Enoch began harvesting clams to use as bait for commercial cod fishing. At that time, locals enjoyed the white-shelled clams cooked on the shore over seaweed on heated rocks, as the Indians had taught them in the 1600s.After the Civil War, the Boston and Maine Railroad came to Pine Point. As a result, clambakes became a tourist attraction. The railroad also enabled...
Saturday, 3 October 2009
Wing Cemetery near Pocasset Lake in Wayne is laid out in concentric circles, with an obelisk at the center.The concentric circle design of the cemetery was an engineering feat, Ault said. Those working on the cemetery, for example, had to temporarily move at least 39 graves while the redesign took place. Then they had to carry out a sophisticated plan for the property, cutting arcs from granite and shaping grave plots around them.The concentric circles turned out to be a carefully conceived plan to reflect Wing family genealogy. The eight-sided...
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Thom Labrie and Bruce Loring of UnderWater Wood Specialists in Greene are harvesting timber at the bottom of the Penobscot River.The wood — mostly pine — was cut by loggers and sent downriver for processing likely between the late 1700s and the 1970s. Logs that sank along the way were abandoned. Although the logs were extremely saturated, little else was wrong with them. The cold water kept them that way, preserved. Enter Loring, the diver, and Labrie, the environmentalist with a background in the wood industry."I don't care if it's sitting in...
Thursday, 24 September 2009
From the archives of The Soda Fizz, a 2003 article on Vincent's Beverages and Sunset Beverages—both bottled in Lewiston.There were bad times too, when a fire did serious damage to the plant in November of 1951. But the infamous disaster was the wire-brush incident in November, 1952, when Irene Lajoie drank a bottle of Sunset Ginger Ale and claimed she became ill because there was a rusty wire brush in the bottle. She and her husband sued, and the press picked up the story. Although Gerry Bilodeau explained convincingly that a brush in a bottle...
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Included in Google's new LIFE Magazine archive is a profile of Minnie Libby, portrait photographer of Norway.In spanning half a century of Norway's life, Miss Libby's big camera has recorded most of the personal history of the town—the dude who became a Communist, the boys who became businessmen, the girl who languished over a pet pig.Miss Libby—few call her Min or Minnie—goes around in knickers, men's shirts and a flowing bow tie. The iron-gray...
Saturday, 12 September 2009
A Brief Historical Sketch of the Life and Sufferings of Leonard Trask, the Wonderful Invalid, tells the sad story of a man from Hartford and Peru who suffered a horrible injury when thrown from a horse in about 1833. Three subsequent accidents made his condition progressively worse, until Trask's spine became so deformed that his chin rested on his chest.He has no power to move his head up or down, to the right or left, without moving his whole body;...
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Twelve Mile Circle has a nice account of the Isles of Shoals—an archipelago Maine shares with New Hampshire.Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Capt. John Mason received a joint land patent that included the Isles of Shoals along with a large tract on the mainland in 1622. A few years later they decided to divide the grant and each negotiated a portion of the Isles as part of the transaction. Mason retained the southern portion to form New Hampshire. Gorges retained the northern portion and associated it with land that would later become Maine. Thus the...
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Sins Of Our Mothers was a 1989 PBS television special telling the story of Emeline (Bachelder) Gurney—a woman from Fayette who accidentally married her own son.Here is a subject, centered around rural New England life in the 1800's, that has little or no pictorial documentation. Yet as David McCullough, the series host, points out in a brief introduction: "It's amazing how many telling details of long-lost lives can still be recovered."At the heart of the story is Emeline Bachelder, born into poverty in 1816. Her tale has become a legend in Fayette,...
Sunday, 26 July 2009
Here's a scan of a Maine Central Railroad schedule from 1931. The Maine Central Wikipedia entry details the "retraction" of the railroad after World War I.Following World War I, Maine Central began retracting. It sold or abandoned lines such as the narrow gauge logging systems, as well as its ferries and steamships. In the 1930s it began to change its locomotives from steam powered to diesel powered.Faced with increased competition from cars, trucks and buses, Maine Central operated its last passenger train on September 5, 1960, and continued to...
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
The homestead of one of my earliest Maine ancestors, John Shepard of Kittery, was excavated in spring 2002 as a joint project of the History Department of Salem State College and the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum. A map drawn in the 17th century helped in the excavation.William Godsoe had drafted a map of this specific area in 1689. The map shows Shepard’s house, barn, an outbuilding and the orchard, as well as the home of his neighbor, Paul...
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Friday, 26 June 2009
Perham's of West Paris will be closing in July after 90 years in business.The store, which sold minerals and gems as well as books and equipment for prospecting, was opened in 1919 by Stanley Perham. In December, Stanley's daughter and current owner Jane Perham said she would close the store until June 1, but the business did not reopen.In addition to the store, the business includes a museum display of gems and minerals unearthed at local quarries. Perham and her father have sent samples to the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian...
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Ed McMahon got his professional start calling bingo at a carnival in Mexico, Maine.On our arrival in Mexico it turned out we had joined one of the toughest carnivals on the road. The night before a guy had been killed by another guy. He got angry and hit his friend over the head with a sledgehammer. That smarts!The carnival had closed for the night and the wake was going on when we pulled into the grounds and started setting up to be ready to start calling bingo bright and early the next morning. This was hard work and all five men in the troupe...
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Until July 31, 2009, you can browse several Maine titles from the Arcadia Publishing Images of America series. If asked to log in, enter:Username: reviewerPassword: 69preventative2Local and Regional History Online: A History of American Life in Images and Texts is a unique new resource cultivated from Arcadia Publishing's award-winning series of local history books. At completion, it will include over 1 million historical images and texts, celebrating the places and faces that give America its spirit and life. All of the images and texts have been...
Saturday, 20 June 2009
There's a great post today at Strange Maps about the city of Portland, inspired by an unusual tattoo.Fixing her regional loyalty in indelible ink on skin, Julia had a map of Portland, ME tattooed on her shoulder. A comparison with the more conventional map on the right indicates that her tat clearly shows the Portland peninsula, the Fore River, Back Cove and surrounding coastline, plus a large part of the road network connecting Maine’s biggest city to its hinterla...
A rare shortnose sturgeon was caught in the Saco River this week.While the Atlantic sturgeon had seemingly disappeared for about 100 years, its more rare cousin had apparently never been seen in the Saco. At least not until researchers pulled one up Tuesday."It's crazy," said James Sulikowski, assistant professor of marine sciences. "Nobody had any idea that we would catch a shortnose."Squiers, for one, thinks it may be another sign that the state's only known spawning population of shortnose sturgeon – in the Kennebec and Androscoggin rivers –...
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Lisa Paul shares this story of John Wayne christening a ship at BIW.An executive at the Bath Iron Works, the shipyard that has been producing US Navy vessels for over 100 years, told me about the time John Wayne was invited to christen a battleship. He smashed the champagne bottle over the hull, which was supposed to signal the hydraulics to release the ship down the ramp and into the water. Nothing happened. In as superstition-riddled an industry as the maritime world, this is the greatest bad juju — pretty much a curse on a ship for all time....
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
A bill signed yesterday will tighten the law that bars use of the word "squaw" for official place names in Maine.After Maine's law took effect, Big Squaw Mountain in Greenville became Big Moose Mountain; Squaw Pond became Sipun, the Passamaquoddy Indian word for blackfly; and a couple of dozen other names were changed.But there have been efforts in some communities to end-run the restriction by using shorter versions of the word, such as "Squa," or combining it with another word to form place names. In northern Maine's Aroostook County, a lake...
Sunday, 7 June 2009
W. Hodding Carter and his family are attempting to live in rural Maine on $550 a month. In the most recent of his Extreme Frugality blog posts at Gourmet.com, Carter scavenges a roadkilled duck.Since it was not only dark but also misty, I was driving slowly down Route 52 when suddenly my frugal eye spotted a vibrant green-and-orange something lying alongside the road. Given the conditions, it was just a blur, but my sharply honed penny-pincher’s sixth sense knew it was food. I jerked the car to a stop, ran out in front of a truck, and snatched...
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Bryant Pond has a rare three-story outhouse in its Masonic lodge.The lodge, and its retro facilities, were state of the art in the mid-1800s when they were constructed. This skyscraper privy is a simple pine board with a hole in it. Anything dropped through falls two complete stories until it smacks the earth. Venerated by some, abhorred by others, the three-holer was finally supplemented by real indoor plumbing in the year 2000—a flush toilet and everything. But only on the ground floor; the second and third stories remain as they were. [Li...
Sunday, 10 May 2009
12th-generation innkeeper Tricia Mason believes that Seaside Inn & Cottages in Kennebunk is the oldest family-run inn in America.The Seaside has been in her family since at least the mid-1600s. That's when Mason's ancestor John Gooch answered the call of Fernando Gorges, agent for King Charles II, to ferry travelers across the mouth of the Kennebunk. Gooch sailed from England and settled here, most likely in the 1650s. Because travelers often needed to spend a night or two before the crossing, he offered rooms and meals. [Li...
Friday, 8 May 2009
The title of "geographical center of New England" has been claimed by Dunbarton and Wakefield, New Hampshire, and Sanford, Maine. But according to a geologist with the U. S. Geographical Service in Massachusetts, the center lies in the Oxford County town of Norway.Using her computer algorithms, Emily Himmelstoss pegged the center of Maine in a bog at the west end of Roaring Brook Pond in the unorganized Piscataquis County land mass labeled on maps...
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Steve Berry of Vintage Aerial is traveling the back roads of Maine, trying to identify farms photographed from the air 40 years ago.Berry, age 67 and retired from his job as a salesman for an aerial photo company, learned a few years ago that a rival company, State Aerial Farm Statistics Inc., had at least 25 million aerial photos of farms squirreled away in a warehouse in Toledo. The photos date back to the 1960s and are a visual record of the changing American rural landscape.Berry convinced State Aerial that the vintage photos, combined with...
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Sunday, 22 March 2009
BostonRadio.org offers an excellent history of Maine radio stations from 1971 to 1996.There was only one station in Piscataquis County in 1971, Dover-Foxcroft's WDME. There's still only one, and it's still WDME. The only difference is that back then, WDME was on 1340 AM (and a relative newcomer; it signed on in 1967). WDME-FM signed on in 1980, as a simulcast on 103.1 A few years later, both stations moved into a converted railroad car, and not long after that, the AM vanished from the airwaves. Today, “D-103” makes a big deal out of its exotic...
Thursday, 12 March 2009
This Interactive Map Showing Immigration Data Since 1880 from the New York Times shows that Maine's immigrants have mostly been from Canada. In the Mid-coast counties, though, Western European immigrants have often outnumbered Canadians, and Cumberland County has seen its Asian/Middle Eastern population become predominant since 19...
Sunday, 22 February 2009
In his 1906 autobiography, John M. Todd relates the boasts of some of Portland's 260 barbers:Charles C. Haskann, the king of left handed barbers, once hauled off eighteen dollars on a Saturday while working in Portland. Fred Cook at the Preble, one of the swiftest wielders, raked in the cool sum of fifty dollars during Grand Army week. J. B. Powers is slow but thunderingly sure. J. J. Sullivan says he pushed the steel over a man's face in a minute and a half, bear in mind I am not telling you any fish stories. Luke V. Whalen, the only official...
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
When WCSH finally goes digital in June, Mainers will no longer be able to listen to Channel 6 in the car. All American TV stations assigned to Channel 6 broadcast their analog audio signal at 87.7 MHz—down at the lower end of the FM dial. When WCSH switches off its analog signal on June 12, Mainers' ability to listen to its programming on the radio will be lost.To compensate for the loss, WCSH will be broadcasting its morning and evening news reports on The Oldies Channel (870 AM in Portland, 1470 AM in Lewiston/Auburn)."We know Mainers have come...
Thursday, 1 January 2009
Jim Degerstrom remembers sliding down Derby Hill in Milo on a tin roof toboggan.The huge field was different at 150 feet wide and just as long. It was wide open without any major obstacles like trees or rocks, so the only dangerous spot was a 6 foot drop into the ditch along the road. Backing up a bit, I did say we were creative inventing rides like the tin roof toboggan? I didn't say the idea was brilliant. Ouch! If you can imagine speeding downhill on soft snow riding a sharp and rusty sheet of tin, the inevitable wreck had consequences. A crash...
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