30 YEARS “THE LOCAL AND THE PARTICULAR”: HISTORICAL INQUIRY FOR A CHANGING MAINE
The Maine Humanities Council supports dozens of programs each year—teacher institutes, grantfunded projects, Let’s Talk About It book discussion series—with historical themes. In the past 30 years, three programs stand out as examples of this enduring priority: to connect history and community, past and present, through projects that reach out to wide audiences through ambitious means.
THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF STATEHOOD
In 1982, with an Exemplary Award from the NEH, the MHC embarked on a massive history project called Maine at Statehood: The Forgotten Years. The political aspects of the federal era in Maine (approximately 1783 to 1820) were already well-understood. However, social and cultural history—the period’s resonance in rural towns, on the frontier, and for the lower and middle classes—had been largely ignored.
A symposium for scholars revealed the depth of this untouched material. Once researchers seized their subjects, the Council helped them bring their works-in-progress to the public—often for the very first time. As scholar Richard Moss wrote, “It’s ironic that it took a federal program to get Colby historians working with the local high school, two blocks from campus, but it’s the truth.” Both parties were grateful for the connection. “I feel we ‘local folk’ have gained a good deal from coming in contact with outstanding scholars,” wrote a Hampden man, while scholar Laurel Thatcher Ulrich reported, “it would be hard to overestimate the contributions of the Maine at Statehood project to my own scholarly development.” (Ulrich’s Statehood work contributed to her Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard. The film version of A Midwife’s Tale was funded by the Council and premiered in 1997 during a weekend conference attended by over 1,000 people. See timeline on page 5.)
Like many Council history projects, Maine at Statehood was designed to link the past to the present: in this case, stratification of class, conflict between the coast and the interior, and outside economic control. Tracing the formation of the state’s image—its intransigent land, its independent character—through the federal period proved fascinating to a wide range of Maine people. “Statehood has seized the public’s imagination,” declared an outside evaluator.
An exhibit entitled “From Revolution to Statehood” was one of the highlights of the project, and attracted about 24,000 visitors as it traveled to museums in Saco, Brunswick, Bangor, and Portland. The central portion of the exhibit, “Maine Towns,” was designed by the American History Workshop in Boston. A kiosk described the development of representative Maine towns using maps, engravings, and photographs of surviving buildings, while abrochure offered walking tour routes and helped visitors make connections between the featured communities and their own towns. This civic centerpiece was flanked by “Maine People,” a collection of artifacts, manuscripts, and works of art curated by William David Barry and Peter Simmons. These materials evoked the federal-era lives of ten Maine people, from Sarah Molasses, a Penobscot woman; to Supply Belcher, a composer and teacher; to William King, the state’s first governor.
Maine at Statehood set a precedent for the Council’s history programming. Over fifty other institutions joined the Council as co-sponsors for the project activities. Many of the formats used to disseminate content—lectures, library programs, traveling exhibits—remain in use. For instance, a number of other walking tours, such as “Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Gardiner” (1996) and the “Portland Women’s History Trail” (1997), have since been designed with Council funding. The 2006 release of the Kennebec-Chaudière Heritage Corridor audio tour and a forthcoming project in the Saint John Valley are two more examples of how cultural tourism projects continue to be a focus for Council grants.
Perhaps most profoundly, Statehood’s focus on small towns and ordinary lives led to a recognition that local history is common ground for academic and community historians. This consciousness of “the need for greater cooperation between the academy and local historical societies and the shifts in scholarly concern that make such cooperation possible: the growing interest among historians in the local and the particular, in the community and the family” would inform almost every future history project. (The quote is from a report on the 1981 conference “New Perspectives in Local History.”)
MAPS AS MIRRORS
In 1989, the Council organized Land of Norumbega: Maine in the Age of Exploration and Settlement, which anticipated the Columbian quincentennary by highlighting the culture and cartography of New England from 1498 to 1650. The impetus for the project was the donation of the Smith Collection of maps and atlases (later united with the Osher Collection to form the Osher Map Library) to the University of Southern Maine. The high-security exhibition drawn from these materials, with significant attention to the Native American presence in the region, traveled no further than Orono, but the project’s scope was widespread. A symposium drew scholars from three countries and a collection of essays inspired by the project was published by the University of Nebraska. A video based on a traveling slide show created by David Weiss and Karan Sheldon is still available through Northeast Historic Film. Library programs and teacher seminars put even the smallest towns “on the map,” enabling Maine’s citizens to situate themselves and their communities within the previously uncharted territory of Norumbega.
LEARNING FROM THE PAST, LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER
In the mid-1990s, another NEH Exemplary Award (one of the last ever granted) fueled The Century Project: Modern Times in Maine and America. This sprawling project examined fin-de-siècle Maine (1890-1930) through the lens of two guiding questions: “As we approach the 21st century, what can we learn from the generation of Mainers who dealt with the challenges of the early 20th century? What has been lost and what has been gained in the transition to the modern world?” Themes included industry, social reform, pluralism, tourism, and the arts.
Among many other components (including a two-day introductory symposium, a 30-minute video, a film series, and a number of library reading programs) the Century Project included the Council’s first dedicated grant-making program. Seventy-five local organizations received funding and support to conduct their own research on the period, with significant input from local people who lived through it. French Island residents in Old Town compiled a cookbook of traditional Franco-American cuisine. The Weld Historical Society preserved and reproduced the folk art of a rural amateur painter. Charleston public school students interviewed local elders and started an archive of the town’s history. Many other Maine communities also benefited from Century Project grants.
At the conclusion of the Century Project, the Council reflected on its implications: “Out of this flurry of activities, several lessons emerge. One is that Mainers are intensely interested in local history. Another is that Mainers are eager to talk to each other across the generations in an effort to record, preserve, and interpret the sort of everyday experiences that often do not get into the history books. A third lesson—one with implications for everyone interested in the humanities—is that, for all the changes the 20th century has brought, people in Maine value the ways in which their communities nurture a strong sense of place.” As communities endeavor to locate themselves in time and place, the Council will support their continued efforts.
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| Wood for the lime kilns, Rockport Harbor, c. 1900.
photo courtesy: camden rockport historical society |
Carvers working on pieces for the U.S. Custom House in New York, from “Vinalhaven’s Granite Industry as Pictured by William H. Merrithew,” c. 1900.
photo courtesy: vinalhaven historical society |
Americanization class at Portland Boys Club, c. 1923.
photo courtesy: collections of maine historical society / © blethen maine newspapers |
