PORTLAND, Maine — The folks over at the Maine Historical Society would tell you there's no wrong time to celebrate Maine's rich history, but this year they are going all out.
It's in honor of the historical society's 200th anniversary celebration, which marks two centuries of preserving Maine's history. MHS's executive director Steve Bromage and deputy director Jamie Rice have spent the past two decades at the society. They said they learn something new about our state every day.
"Maine historical was founded just after Maine became a state," Bromage said. "I think it was a period of time where the nation was new, and people were really focused on this achievement of creating a new nation, creating this new state, and so there was this pride and this real desire to capture the memories and the experiences of the founding fathers."
Bromage and Rice have spent hours poring through the many collections and artifacts found at MHS. In fact, there is so much history there that some of it had to be moved to storage back in 2014.
"In a collaboration with the Portland Public Library we established an offsite collections management facility because we have outgrown our footprint here in town, and we're looking for ways to continue to continue to collect without having the constraints of doing so here on Congress Street," Rice said. "So that's been a real big milestone in our history."
"As you can imagine, collecting over 200 years, basically every space on this campus was full," Bromage said. "It wasn't great for the collection, so that's about 18,000 square feet that we opened up five or six years ago, and that's really going to be critical to our future."
Among the artifacts at Maine Historical Society are diaries, old maps of Maine, clothing from years past, an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, and even a lock of George Washington's hair, to name a few.
"Most of the collections that we receive are gifted to our organization," Rice said. "We certainly do purchase but on a much smaller scale, and we're very fortunate that people entrust us to care for their materials."
Early photography is also a specialty of MHS, according to Rice. The collection includes daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes. One photograph that sticks out in the archives is one of Dolly Mattison, the former First Lady of the United States during the War of 1812. She is credited with saving the artwork in the White House when the British burned Washington.
However, nothing compares to the childhood home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The house was donated to the Maine Historical Society by his sister back in 1901.
"Longfellow was such a worldwide celebrity throughout his life, so the house really was a shrine from the 1830s, '40s and '50s on, and people would show up to see the great Longfellow," Bromage said. "His sister was living here and saw that and had that sense of his presence in American history, so when she died in 1901 she left the house to MHS with the agreement that we would leave our headquarters here."
The house has since been restored to its former 1850s glory. Almost everything you see there once belonged to Longfellow or his family. It gives guests a unique experience that quite literally makes you feel as if you're stepping through time.
"In 2001 we completed a major restoration of the house, so a lot of TLC and a lot of care in terms of restoring the flooring and all the materials in the house," Bromage said. "Every bit of wallpaper, carpeting, flooring, paint was re-done and with meticulous research back to the original materials, some of it was reproduced, some of it was restored."
Another milestone for MHS was the creation of the Maine Memory Network. The online catalogue gives anyone with an internet connection the opportunity to peruse everything the historical society has to offer, virtually.
"Quite a few of us get to see collections as they come through, everything from the intake process and recognizing those materials to making them available to research to digitizing and providing access when people want to do research," Rice said. "What's really great about a place that's 200 years old is that people will ask about things that we didn't know we had, that we've never seen before, and so we get to see something new almost every day so it's pretty exciting."
As the Maine Historical Society marks 200 years of celebrating all things Maine, Bromage and Rice are looking to the future and all the moving pieces that will get them there.
"It does take a lot of time and a lot of expertise to really put this together and we're fortunate that we have a lot of tools in place to have the different communities help us out with the Maine Memory Network and we have a project now to transcribe items online so anyone on the around the world can sign up to help us transcribe and make things more accessible," Rice said. "So, relying on our community as well to help draw attention to those materials is also a big piece of the puzzle."
"People are so proud and love Maine so much that they almost can't get enough of it, so, I think we're in a really unique position to be the conduit and the source of connection around that, by bringing all these stories together, by making it clear how people can participate and contribute to that," Bromage said. "I think that Maine is a special place and I think we're really lucky because we get to spend our lives in our careers and our efforts really focused on celebrating that."
You can also check out the Northern Threads exhibit at the Maine Historical Society headquarters in Portland, now through the end of July.