Maine Historical Society - Programs Podcast

Timothy H. Scherman; Recorded June 13, 2023 - Timothy H. Scherman re-introduces modern readers to Elizabeth Oakes Smith, a nineteenth-century Maine writer and political activist whose disappearance from literary history would seem impossible in light of the volume of her published writing and the visceral responses she elicited from readers in her own day. A poet, lecturer, and feminist, Oakes Smi...

Kermit Roosevelt III; Recorded March 9, 2023 - In his book, The Nation That Never Was, Kermit Roosevelt III argues that we are not the heirs of the Founders, but we can be the heirs of Reconstruction and its vision for equality; America today is not the Founder's America, but it can be Lincoln's America. We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the racism and oppres...

Recorded February 22, 2023 - When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, he helped to shine a light on and memorialize an all but forgotten event of historic significance, Le Grand Dérangement—the forced expulsion of Acadians from Nova Scotia. The poem brought recognition for a unique ethnic group and gave the world an enigmatic icon, Evangeline. History, fiction, pride, an...

Recorded April 12, 2023 - CODE RED examines topics around climate change by reuniting collections from one of the nation's earliest natural history museums, the Portland Society of Natural History (PSNH) and reflects on how museums collect, and the role of humans in creating changes in society, climate, and biodiversity. Exhibit co-curators Tilly Laskey and Dr. Darren Ranco discussed the new exhib...

In person program; Recorded January 26, 2023 - Built between 1858-1860, Victoria Mansion is a National Historic Landmark in Portland, ME, known widely for its architecture and stunning intact interiors. The question of who "built" Victoria Mansion tends to surface the same few names: Henry Austin, the architect, Gustave Herter and Giuseppe Guidicini, the interior designers, and Ruggles and Olive M...

In person program; Recorded January 24, 2023 - On a frigid winter afternoon at the height of the Cold War, a Strategic Air Command B-52 Stratofortress departed Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts for a routine training mission. Hours later, the aircraft's smoking wreckage lay scattered across a snow-encased mountainside in Maine's desolate North Woods. Joseph Wax, author of FINAL MI...

In partnership with Victoria Mansion; Recorded September 8, 2022 - Built and furnished between 1858 and 1860, Victoria Mansion was remarkable from the day it was created. It stands today as the final unaltered and fully intact example of the work of three of 19th-century America's towering creative talents, architect Henry Austin, interior designer Gustave Herter, and decorative painter Giuseppe G...

Recorded June 1, 2022 - During the 18th century, patterned silks were some of the costliest fabrics available. Hand-woven on complex drawlooms, patterned silks worn for dress could be highly decorative, featuring designs that changed not just yearly, but seasonally. With no large-scale weaving in the colonies, a select group of New Englanders imitating the sartorial tastes of England and Europe’s...

Recorded June 21, 2022 - Fashion choices can tell us a lot about a person and the world they lived in, but did you know that historic textiles can also reveal hidden stories of ordinary people and how they made use of their material goods' economic and legal values? Historian Laura F. Edwards discusses her book Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the 19th-Cent...

Recorded May 17, 2022 - Whether you're a sailor, a singer, or just a lover of New England lore, you'll love the ballads and broadsides featured in Bygone Ballads from Maine Vol.1--Songs of Ships & Sailors. Julia Lane & Fred Gosbee of Castlebay spent over a decade researching and found a wealth of songs, stories and folkways from the Celtic tradition here in Maine archived in collections, recording...

Recorded April 26, 2022 - Between 1783 – 1850, the newly constituted United States emerged as a fragile, internally divided union of states contending with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Native peoples sought to defend their homelands from the flood of American settlers; the system of American slavery grew increasingly powerful and expansive separ...

Recorded April 13, 2022 - Dress codes are as old as clothing itself. For centuries, clothing has been a wearable status symbol; fashion, a weapon in struggles for social change; and dress codes, a way to maintain political control. Even in today’s more informal world, dress codes still determine what we wear, when we wear it, and what our clothing means. In his book Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fa...

Recorded February 8, 2022 - Peaks Island: Past and Present brings to light the island's rich and diverse--yet largely hidden--past as a fishing village, a bustling summer resort, and an important military base during World War II. It is the story of a unique Maine island community rooted in its past but very much part of the modern world. In this talk, Kimberly Erico MacIssac as discusses her new...

In partnership with Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site; Recorded February 23, 2022 - February 2022 marked the 215th birthday observance of famed 19th century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. To mark the occasion, Maine Historical Society and Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site hosted a panel of experts to discuss the stories and people f...

Recorded December 14, 2021 - Sarah Farmer, a visionary pioneer and transcendentalist, was the daughter of electrical genius Moses Farmer and humanitarian Hannah Shapleigh Farmer. At Green Acre – A Baháʼí Center of Learning, she had the first known Peace flag flown, and in 1905 she was the only woman to witness the signing of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty. Today, Green Acre remains committed to world...

Recorded December 7, 2021 - Phil Nadeau discusses his new book, The Unlikeliness of It All in a program with Maine Historical Society. A Lewiston native and city official of almost two decades, Nadeau's book offers unique insight into 150 years of the complex political, cultural, and socioeconomic landscape that influenced how the city was formed, how it was shaped by the French Canadian immigrant...

Recorded October 21, 2021 - Long before the modern LGBTQ rights movement, individual queer and trans people challenged gender and sexual norms to express themselves and their love freely, often in defiance of laws against same-sex sex and cross-dressing. Jen Manion discusses the lives and adventures of those assigned female at birth who embraced trans and nonbinary gender expressions in 19th centu...

Recorded November 8, 2021 - In the 1850s, long before movies, and just when the magic lantern's popularity was beginning, a night out at the pictures meant a moving panorama performance. The performer, or the "professor," made the giant picture story come alive. The travels of one traveling showman are documented in the MHS collection in the remarkable surviving "exhibitor's diary" of L. Eaton Eme...

Recorded November 17, 2021 - On November 27, 1898, the paddlewheel steamship PS Portland was on its way from Boston, Massachusetts to Portland, Maine when it was hit by a powerful storm and sank off of Cape Ann with all hands. Often labeled "New England's Titanic" due to the long-unknown position of the wreckage and substantial loss of life, the loss represented New England's greatest steamship di...

Recorded October 14, 2021 - Voting rights have evolved from the time of Maine’s founding to the present day. Which groups were initially excluded from voting rights? Why did it matter? What did it take for these marginalized groups to win the right to vote? How do voting rights continue to evolve in Maine? Historian Anne B. Gass discusses Maine voting rights, accompanied by historic slides. Purcha...

Recorded October 13, 2021 - The dark woods of Maine have been the setting for many eerie and unexplained events, none more captivating than sightings of a giant hominid known as Bigfoot. But what makes this corner of New England such a perfect place for this cryptid to live? Learn about the ecology and geography that support the legend and the people forever changed by close encounters with it wit...

Recorded September 23, 2021 - Over 1,740 documented transatlantic slaving voyages were made on vessels constructed and registered in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut -- or having departed from their seaports -- yet New England's connection to the history of slavery remains largely untold. The Atlantic Black Box (www.atlanticblackbox.com) is a grassroots historical...

Recorded September 16, 2021 - Historian William David Barry discusses the evolution of Pineland from its origins at the dawn of the 20th century as a home for Maine's so called "feeble minded" citizens (later termed special needs individuals) and his years fresh out of the university as a teacher's aid at Pineland. He also highlights the books, Pineland's Past: The First Hundred Years by journalis...

Recorded September 9, 2021 - Writer Rhea Côté Robbins gives an informative and introspective look at telling and hearing stories within the social consciousness of equality. Côté Robbins believes that everything we know comes to us via story - we are surrounded by it – and yet not everyone has the chance to tell their own. Côté Robbins’ talk examines the community of story that we live, the injust...

Speaker: James Horrigan; Recorded May 1, 2014 - Longtime Wadsworth-Longfellow House guide James Horrigan kicked off the 2014 house season with a lecture that looks at the poet’s lifelong interest in the supernatural. In addition to touching on reincarnation, astrology, numerology, automatic writing (featuring a poem of Longfellow's that can only be read with a mirror), and dowsing, James paid spec...