NEWCASTLE, Maine — Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland visited Maine on Thursday to hear from state leaders who have made the case to designate the Frances Perkins Homestead as a national monument through the National Park Service.
If President Joe Biden agrees to the proposal, her homestead in Newcastle would become the second national monument in the state.
But who is Frances Perkins?
Perkins was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet as secretary of labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She helped launch Social Security, the 40-hour workweek, and other worker protections during the New Deal era.
Perkins was born in Boston, but her parents were from Maine, and she spent time as secretary at the family property along the Damariscotta River in Newcastle.
According to Giovanna Gray Lockhart, executive director of the Frances Perkins Center, it was there Perkins first heard about the Nazi invasion of Poland. An aide whisked her away from a dinner party to listen to a radio sitting on a stone wall in the yard.
“She went back inside, excused herself from her dinner party, and got back in the car,” Gray Lockhart said.
The interest in adding the 57-acre property to the more than 160 national monuments follows an executive order Biden signed in the spring, directing the Department of the Interior to find sites around the country that honor the contributions of women to U.S. history.
State leaders—including Gov. Janet Mills, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, and Maine Senate President Troy Jackson—have been eager to elevate the homestead to the level of national monument. Haaland’s visit signals that perhaps the Biden administration is considering it, too.
Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, is the first Native American to serve in a cabinet position and related her experience to that of Perkins' trailblazing appointment.
“I feel her legacy in this position that I have now, and I’m grateful that I stand on her shoulders,” Haaland said.
Ultimately, only the president can designate a national monument, as laid out by the Antiquities Act of 1906.
To those in Newcastle, it would make the lives of women like Perkins more visible and present in the national story.
“We know our country is more than just battlefields and presidents,” Gray Lockhart adds.
Haaland is scheduled to tour the new Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument over the weekend.