Maine Railroad Accident Reports

I've posted several hundred railroad accident reports from 1870-1889 on my Maine Genealogy website. Warning: some (including the one below) are quite gruesome.

Sarah Ann Cunningham, a child eighteen months old, a daughter of Mr. Thomas Cunningham of Milford, was killed on the 25th of November, by the 5:15 down freight train, at the railroad crossing in Milford, near the bridge. The parents live within a few rods of the track; but the child had never before, as its mother says, strayed on to the road that she was aware of. It was a very dark evening, and the place of the disaster was upon a down grade, and upon a curve. The engine had no head-light, and the employés upon the train were not aware of the casualty until the next day. The remains were found by a little sister, sent to search for her after she was missed in the evening, on the track where the railway crosses the county road, the head severed from the body, and lying some feet from it.

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Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary

A Passamaquoddy-Maliseet dictionary was released this week.

The dictionary is being presented to the First Nations communities after three decades of work. The project began in the 1970s when organizers of an education program in Maine decided a dictionary was needed to keep the Maliseet language alive.

Members of the First Nations communities on both side of the international border contributed words and definitions. [Link]

You can get a taste of the language here, and pick up the print version at local bookstores.

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Google Launches Street View in Maine

I just received this press release from Google:

Today Google Maps has expanded the coverage of its popular Street View feature to include imagery from across Maine. Street View is a free feature of Google Maps that lets internet users view and navigate 360-degree street-level imagery of cities, towns, and regions across the United States and internationally. Street View is integrated with driving directions on Google Maps to make it easier to see the view of the streets that accompany directions.

Using Street View, people can check if a restaurant has parking out front, make travel plans, arrange meeting points, save time at open houses on Saturday morning, and explore both well-known and more isolated parts of the state. Street View also now puts Maine's most historic and iconic landmarks and attractions on display, including Acadia National Park and the Nubble Lighthouse at Cape Neddick in York.

Stephen Chau, Product Manager at Google, commented: "We're thrilled to bring Street View to so much of Maine -- places like Portland, Auburn, Lewiston, Bangor, Bar Harbor, the view from drives along the Atlantic coastline, Acadia National Park. Since launching Street View, we have heard great feedback about how Street View has helped its users in their lives and how it has enabled them to discover many remarkable new places. Now residents and visitors alike can explore all Maine has to offer."

"Google Maps has been very popular and is used by organizations, businesses, and individuals far and wide as an essential and informative tool every day of the week. Street View provides an added experience by enabling users to see street-level panoramas of Maine's public roads."

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LIFE Pictures of Maine

The LIFE Photo Archive just announced by Google includes some nice shots of Maine folks. They were taken by Bernard Hoffman for a feature called "Winter in Maine," which appeared in the March 9, 1942, issue of the magazine. Just 16 of the 67 photographs were published.

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Maine's Bizarre Foods

Next Tuesday at 10pm on the Travel Channel, Bizarre Foods will be coming to Maine.

In Maine, many residents find most of the food they eat right in their own backyards...literally. Andrew gets a taste of beaver chili, forages for some unlikely edible plants to make stinging nettles soup, and goes out to haul lobsters with a fishing legend. There's even a culinary death match featuring some bizarre recipes made only with ingredients found in Maine.

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George H. Pray, Potato Juggler

One Union soldier from Maine survived the war by juggling potatoes.

During the Civil War, 12,913 inmates died from the extreme conditions in the Confederate prison in Andersonville, Ga. One Union soldier who didn't was Pvt. George H. Pray, a clever Mainer whose stage act perhaps saved his life.

"How he survived Andersonville was that he juggled potatoes," said Jeffrey Bolduc, Pray's great-great-grandson, recently. "After he juggled them, he kept them and ate them."

After the Civil War, Pray made it his mission to strike down boredom wherever it could be found.

"After the war was over, he went all over the United States, Mexico and Canada performing magic," said Bolduc. [Link]

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Portland Mural Nears Completion

Elizabeth Burke and Rebecca Pease are finishing up the mural they're painting on the wall of a new parking garage on India Street in Portland. It's a sepia-toned interpretation of a 1910 photograph of Portland Harbor.

A few more examples of Portland murals may be seen on this discontinued blog.

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