The territory of Maine has been inhabited by Indigenous populations for about 12,000 years, after the glaciers retreated during the last ice age. At the time of European arrival, several Algonquian-speaking nations governed the area and these nations are now known as the Wabanaki Confederacy. The first European settlement in the area was by the French in 1604 on Saint Croix Island, founded by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons. The first English settlement was the short-lived Popham Colony, established by the Plymouth Company in 1607. A number of English settlements were established along the coast of Maine in the 1620s, although the rugged climate and conflict with the local Indigenous people caused many to fail. As Maine entered the 18th century, only a half dozen European settlements had survived. Loyalist and Patriot forces contended for Maine's territory during the American Revolution. During the War of 1812, the largely undefended eastern region of Maine was occupied by British forces with the goal of annexing it to Canada via the Colony of New Ireland, but returned to the United States following failed British offensives on the northern border, mid-Atlantic and south which produced a peace treaty that restored the pre-war boundaries. Maine was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until 1820 when it voted to secede from Massachusetts to become a separate state. On March 15, 1820, under the Missouri Compromise, Maine was admitted to the Union as the 23rd state.
A commemorative coin craze in 1936 saw some coins authorized by the United States Congress that were of mainly local significance; the York County issue was one of these. Legislation permitting the half dollar passed Congress without opposition in the first half of 1936. Maine artist Walter H. Rich designed the issue; his work has garnered mixed praise and dislike from numismatic authors. (Full article...)
Blaine was born in the western Pennsylvania town of West Brownsville; after completing college he moved to Maine where he became a newspaper editor. Nicknamed "the Magnetic Man", he was a charismatic speaker in an era that prized oratory. He began his political career as an early supporter of Republican Abraham Lincoln and the Union war effort in the American Civil War. During Reconstruction, Blaine was a supporter of black suffrage, but opposed some of the more coercive measures of the Radical Republicans. Initially in favor of high tariffs, he later worked to lower tariffs and expand international trade. Railroad promotion and construction were important issues in his time and, as a result of his interest and support, Blaine was widely suspected of corruption in awarding railroad charters, especially with the emergence of the Mulligan letters. Though no evidence of corruption ever surfaced from these allegations, they nevertheless plagued his 1884 presidential candidacy. (Full article...)
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Neal Dow (March 20, 1804 – October 2, 1897) was an American Prohibition advocate and politician. Nicknamed the "Napoleon of Temperance" and the "Father of Prohibition", Dow was born to a Quaker family in Portland, Maine. From a young age, he believed alcohol to be the cause of many of society's problems and wanted to ban it through legislation. In 1850, Dow was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union, and the next year he was elected mayor of Portland. Soon after, largely due to Dow's efforts, the state legislature banned the sale and production of alcohol in what became known as the Maine law. Serving twice as mayor of Portland, Dow enforced the law with vigor and called for increasingly harsh penalties for violators. In 1855, his opponents rioted and he ordered the state militia to fire on the crowd. One man was killed and several wounded, and when public reaction to the violence turned against Dow, he chose not to seek reelection.
Dow was later elected to two terms in the Maine House of Representatives, but retired after a financial scandal. He joined the Union Army shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general. He was wounded at the siege of Port Hudson and later captured. After being exchanged for another officer in 1864, Dow resigned from the military and devoted himself once more to prohibition. He spoke across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain in support of the cause. In 1880, Dow headed the Prohibition Party ticket for President of the United States. After losing the election, he continued to write and speak on behalf of the prohibition movement for the rest of his life until his death in Portland at the age of 93. (Full article...)
Officials in Maine wanted a commemorative half dollar to circulate as an advertisement for the centennial of the state's admission to the Union, and of the planned celebrations. A bill to allow such a coin passed Congress without opposition, but then the state's centennial commission decided to sell the coins for $1, double the face value. The Commission of Fine Arts disliked the proposed design, and urged changes, but Maine officials insisted, and de Francisci converted the sketches to plaster models, from which coinage dies could be made. (Full article...)
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Portrait of Willis by Mathew Brady studios, circa mid-1850s
Nathaniel Parker Willis (January 20, 1806 – January 20, 1867), also known as N. P. Willis, was an American writer, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern. Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography while being employed as his children's nurse.
Born in Portland, Maine, Willis came from a family of publishers. His grandfather Nathaniel Willis owned newspapers in Massachusetts and Virginia, and his father Nathaniel Willis was the founder of Youth's Companion, the first newspaper specifically for children. Willis developed an interest in literature while attending Yale College and began publishing poetry. After graduation, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the New York Mirror. He eventually moved to New York and began to build his literary reputation. Working with multiple publications, he was earning about $100 per article and between $5,000 and $10,000 per year. In 1846, he started his own publication, the Home Journal, which was eventually renamed Town & Country. Shortly after, Willis moved to a home on the Hudson River where he lived a semi-retired life until his death in 1867. (Full article...)
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The unnamed hurricane at peak intensity on November 1
The 1991 Perfect Storm, also known as The No-Name Storm (especially in the years immediately after it took place) and the Halloween Gale/Storm, was a damaging and deadly nor'easter in October 1991. Initially an extratropical cyclone, the storm absorbed Hurricane Grace to its south and evolved into a small unnamed hurricane later in its life. Damage from the storm totaled over $200 million (1991 USD) and thirteen people were killed in total, six of which were an outcome of the sinking of Andrea Gail, which inspired the book and later movie, The Perfect Storm. The nor'easter received the name, playing off the common expression, after a conversation between Boston National Weather Service forecaster Robert Case and author Sebastian Junger.
The initial area of low pressure developed off the coast of Atlantic Canada on October 28. Forced southward by a ridge to its north, it reached its peak intensity as a large and powerful cyclone. The storm lashed the east coast of the United States with high waves and coastal flooding before turning to the southwest and weakening. Moving over warmer waters, the system transitioned into a subtropical cyclone before becoming a tropical storm. It executed a loop off the Mid-Atlantic states and turned toward the northeast. On November 1, the system evolved into a full-fledged hurricane, with peak sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 km/h), although the National Hurricane Center left it unnamed to avoid confusion amid media interest in the precursor extratropical storm. The system was the twelfth and final tropical cyclone, the eighth tropical storm, and fourth hurricane in the 1991 Atlantic hurricane season. The tropical system weakened, striking Nova Scotia as a tropical storm before dissipating. (Full article...)
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First page of the first issue: January 1, 1828
The Yankee (later retitled The Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette) was one of the first cultural publications in the United States, founded and edited by John Neal (1793–1876), and published in Portland, Maine, as a weekly periodical and later converted to a longer, monthly format. Its two-year run concluded at the end of 1829. The magazine is considered unique for its independent journalism at the time.
Neal used creative control of the magazine to improve his social status, help establish the American gymnastics movement, cover national politics, and critique American literature, art, theater, and social issues. Essays by Neal on American art and theater anticipated major changes and movements in those fields realized in the following decades. Conflicting opinions published in The Yankee on the cultural identity of Maine and New England presented readers with a complex portrait of the region. (Full article...)
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Detail of a 1795 map, overlaid with Arnold's expedition route: *A: Cambridge *B: Newburyport *C: Fort Western *D: Fort Halifax *E: Great Carrying Place *F: Height of land *G: Lake Mégantic This map does not accurately represent the area around the height of land and Lake Mégantic. In September 1775, early in the American Revolutionary War, Colonel Benedict Arnold led a force of 1,100 Continental Army troops on an expedition from Cambridge in the Province of Massachusetts Bay to the gates of Quebec City. The expedition was part of a two-pronged invasion of the British Province of Quebec, and passed through the wilderness of what is now Maine. The other expedition invaded Quebec from Lake Champlain, led by Richard Montgomery.
Unanticipated problems beset the expedition as soon as it left the last significant colonial outposts in Maine. The portages up the Kennebec River proved grueling, and the boats frequently leaked, ruining gunpowder and spoiling food supplies. More than a third of the men turned back before reaching the height of land between the Kennebec and Chaudière rivers. The areas on either side of the height of land were swampy tangles of lakes and streams, and the traversal was made more difficult by bad weather and inaccurate maps. Many of the troops lacked experience handling boats in white water, which led to the destruction of more boats and supplies in the descent to the Saint Lawrence River via the fast-flowing Chaudière. (Full article...)
Susanna Paine, also known as Susannah and Susan (June 9, 1792 – November 10, 1862), was an American portrait artist in New England in the 19th century. She published poetry, a Christmas hymn, a novel, and an autobiography entitled Roses and Thorns, or Recollections of an Artist.
As a young girl, she was an excellent student, but needed to quit school at the age of 11 to care for her ill grandmother. At 15, she taught school and a year later joined an academy in Providence, Rhode Island, where she earned her way through school by making and selling needlework. She graduated with highest honors and established a school that she operated for years. Paine gave the profits to her family, and she helped support them throughout most of her life. (Full article...)
For nearly a half century, Costello was one of the most prominent members of the Lewiston-Auburn community. In addition to running its largest morning and afternoon papers, he was a longtime trustee of both Bates College and the Androscoggin County Savings Bank, serving as the latter institution's president from 1931 to 1939. He was an active Freemason and member of the United Baptist church. (Full article...)
By upholding a declaratory judgement of the United States District Court for the District of Maine, the First Circuit cleared the way for the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot to oblige the federal government to bring a land claim on their behalf for approximately 60% of Maine, an area populated by 350,000 non-Indians. According to the Department of Justice, the suit was "potentially the most complex litigation ever brought in the federal courts with social and economic impacts without precedent and incredible potential litigation costs to all parties." The decision led to the passage of the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act in 1980, allocating $81.5 million for the benefit of the tribes, in part to allow them to purchase lands in Maine, and extinguishing all aboriginal title in Maine. The settlement was reached "after more than a decade of enormously complex litigation and negotiation." (Full article...)
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Mill Complex on the site of Fort Andross c. 2022 reading "1834 CABOT 1891". 1834 being the year the building was first erected by The Brunswick Company, and 1891 the year the expansion "wings" were added by The Cabot Manufacturing Company.
In the 19th century, the site of the fort was repurposed as a location for several cotton mills, including the Cabot Manufacturing Company, and in the 20th century several industrial buildings accupied the locale. In 1986, the mills were revitalized and transformed into office and retail spaces and renamed back to Fort Andross to reflect the original name. (Full article...)
The outcome of the referendum was reversed three years later when voters approved 2012 Maine Question 1, which legalized same-sex marriage in the state again. (Full article...)
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Green Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church
The Green Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church is a historic church at 46 Sheridan Street in Portland, Maine, United States. It is a 2+1⁄2-story structure of textured concrete block masonry built in 1914 to house the congregation founded in 1891. The church is named after founder Moses Samuel Green, who was the city's wealthiest African American at the time. In the middle of the 20th century, the church was the focal point of the Portland's African American community. It hosted social events and was used to organize for civil rights advancements in Maine and across the United States.
The church choir has performed throughout Maine. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and later recognized as one of three historic properties in Maine directly related to African American history. Reverend Kenneth I. Lewis has been minister since 2003. In 2015, the multiracial congregation numbered 335. (Full article...)
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USS Portland (CA-33), at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 14 June 1942.
Historic view of the iron works. Annotations are as follows: ore kiln (1), top houses (2), furnace (3), casting shed (4) and storage barn (5).
The Katahdin Iron Works is a Maine state historic site located in the unorganized township of the same name. It is the site of an ironworks which operated from 1845 to 1890. In addition to the kilns of the ironworks (of which only one survives), the community was served by a railroad and had a 100-room hotel. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.
This list was generated from these rules. Questions and feedback are always welcome! The search is being run daily with the most recent ~14 days of results. Note: Some articles may not be relevant to this project.
... that John Bunker was inspired to propagate old apple tree varieties after encountering Black Oxford apples while managing the food co-op in Belfast, Maine?
The list below, for each city, shows the population in 2010, the population estimate of 2019, the growth/shrinking percentage between the three, and the date of incorporation as a city.
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