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A New Way to Visit PMM-
Family Field Trips
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Bring your kids to the Penobscot Marine Museum to enjoy 45-60 minutes of activities and exhibits! Each child that attends a Family Field Trip receives a kit including everything they will need for their visit. Activities include signal flags, boat bingo, compasses, and more. A fun way to learn about life at sea, Maine boats, and Maine fisheries, PMM staff will be on hand to guide each family through their visit. Ideal for ages 6-12. Family Field Trips are available during scheduled blocks on Wednesday and Friday for $20/household and free for members. Click here to book today. If you are a member, please call 207-588-2529 or email jganskop@pmm-maine.org to book your Field Trip.
You can also still visit for a guided walking tour on Tuesday evening or Saturday morning. With options of a standard tour or one of the rotating themed tours, there's something for everyone! Click here to book.
Those times don't work for you? Family Field Trips and Standard Tours can be scheduled outside of the regular hours. Subject to staff availability, schedule your tour anytime between 9am and 7pm any day. These tours are $40/household or $30 for a member household. Email Jeana at jganskop@pmm-maine.org to schedule.
All tours must be scheduled and payment received by 5pm the day before the tour. |
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Salted Tales: Zoom Edition
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Coastal Maine's rich maritime heritage has produced a lot of sailors, and you don't work on the water without accumulating good stories. Penobscot Marine Museum invites you to join us for Salted Tales: Stories From the Sea Told Live on Zoom. Hear five working seamen and women tell hair-raising real-life sea stories of amazing experiences. Each fast-paced story will be eight minutes long. Register here. Registration required.
Presenters Include:
Kylie Bragdon is the Executive Director of Maine Ocean School, an ocean-themed high school in Searsport, Maine. A native of Winter Harbor, Kylie has spent over 15 years lobstering with her father. During this event she will be sharing some of her favorite ocean adventures and information about how Maine Ocean School uniquely prepares students for maritime careers.
Montville resident Bennet Verbeck will relate a harrowing tale of adventure gone wrong on a deserted island in the Caribbean and the extraordinary chance meeting of old friends. Bennett graduated from College of the Atlantic in 1989 and soon afterward settled in interior Waldo County. He got his start as a sailor on Penobscot Bay in the late 1990s; his current boat, OSPREY, is a scrapping Bristol Channel Cutter which he's sailed to the Caribbean twice (OSPREY is arguably the protagonist of his story). He has held a U.S. Coastguard 50-ton Master captain's license for 10 years. In the course of crewing professionally on annual Caribbean yacht deliveries has tucked over 25,000 offshore miles "under his foul weather gear". These days, he splits his time between homesteading on Goosepecker Ridge, sailing when he can on the Bay, and overhauling OSPREY. When she's afloat again, he's got another long journey planned: inspired by a recent epic with friends, he aims to return to the north Atlantic waters of Labrador and Newfoundland.
Mount Desert Island boat builder Ralph Stanley will share stories from his own experiences and passed down to him from family members. He is recognized in the State of Maine and nationally as a master boatbuilder. In 1946 Ralph Stanley began his wooden boat building career. During this time he built and restored more than 70 boats including lobster boats and yachts, dories, rowboats and Friendship Sloops. Stanley became a National Endowment of the Arts National Heritage Fellow in 1999 for his contributions to boatbuilding as a traditional art.
More presenters to be announced. Be sure to check our Facebook page for the most updated information.
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Resources for Teachers and Parents
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Looking for exciting new online content? We can bring the Penobscot Marine Museum to you live on Zoom or Google Meet! Click here to find out more about our remote field trip options and be sure to check back as we add more options in the coming months. Remote field trips are free and can also be delivered as a recorded video on YouTube or Google Drive.
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Belfast Groups Celebrate
Maine's Bicentennial
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This week, banners to celebrate the State of Maine's Bicentennial will start to appear throughout the City of Belfast. This celebration of the State's 200th birthday, which also coincides with the 250th anniversary of the first settling of the community in 1770, will feature six locations with banners ranging in size from ten feet by sixteen feet to twenty feet by sixteen feet. Banners include a variety of pictures representing images celebrating and promoting Belfast's past.
PMM was a proud participant in this project working with the Belfast Area Chamber of Commerce, the Belfast Creative Coalition, the Belfast Historical Society and Museum, Whitecap Builders, and Our Town Belfast. PMM provided the lion's share of the images used in the banners and they were designed by PMM volunteer and graphic designer Norma Whitman.
These extremely visible banners, will serve as a celebration of Maine and the City of Belfast. The banners provide an opportunity for viewers to reflect on the rich history of both the City of Belfast and the State of Maine. While many of the State's in-person Bicentennial events are being canceled, this project remains largely unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic. These banners will remain up through Indigenous Peoples' Day in 2021. Check out the banners up close and learn about the images on Our Town Belfast's website.
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Why Does Maritime History Matter?
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By PMM Curator Cipperly Good
I was recently asked how maritime history is different from other kinds of history and what draws people to maritime life? As a history and American Studies major in college with many possibilities of "specialization" after graduation, why am I drawn to "sea stories"? The answer is that the sea connects all things, so maritime history is really a global history.
While today Maine gives off an insular vibe, the letters and journals of 18th and 19th century Maine merchant mariners relate their interactions with new cultures across the globe. What was in the water that sent so many adventuring Maine men and women to sea, and take their families with them? What domesticated future generations, or did they seek adventure in different ways? Why did Maine's economy falter after the Age of Sail? Working at the Penobscot Marine Museum gives me a chance to answer those questions.
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| | Wreck of the bark UKRAINE of Searsport. PMM#1968.30 |
Adventure is certainly an attractive draw to maritime history. Men and women must use ingenuity and resourcefulness to tackle the elements, survive a shipwreck, or jury-rig a sail to limp into port. In addition to engaging our attention, it leads me to wonder if I would be up for the task. So while the ship's business accounts and log books documenting the wind and weather might seem mundane, it is the little snippets of "mutiny" or sighting a distant land that keeps me combing through the primary sources.
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| | Searsport seafaring families on the ELECTRIC SPARK in the Chincha Islands, PMM#2 |
The officers and crews represented a microcosm of the different world cultures. Crews jumped ship in foreign lands in hopes of a better life or exciting adventure. To fill their places, captains recruited an international crew in which racial and ethnic tensions and prejudices played out. The merchant marine employed freed blacks at a time when other professions were closed, and allowed enslaved peoples to escape. Women also found freedom aboard ship, as trusted navigators and confidantes to their captain husbands, sometimes even taking command when sickness and death took officers out of commission.
What inspires you to study maritime history? We would love to help you delve deeper!
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New Photo Collection Pages
We have added new pages to our photography collections homepage.
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| | Harriet Hichborn Collection, LB2015.12.239 |
The Harriet Hichborn Collection was donated to PMM in 2015 by the Stockton Historical Society. The collection consists of 391 (5"x7") glass plate negatives as well as some of the postcards she produced with them. Hichborn lived her entire life in Stockton Springs. She learned watercolors and in a 1905 Republican Journal note, it mentioned that she was hand coloring the photographs of Belfast photographer Charles Townsend. She began her photography pursuit soon after. Learn the rest of her tragic story and get a link to the images here.
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| | Cunningham Collection, LB2017.17.7 |
Like many practitioners of folk photography, Frank and Bert Cunningham have become posthumous documentarians of a vanished world. They were born a few years apart shortly after the Civil War ended [1865] in the village of Washington, Maine, part of the Midcoast area. Midcoast Maine consists mostly of small towns and villages, which at this time were farming communities, sparsely served by passenger rail and connected by dirt roads. The people they live among were both self-reliant and interdependent. The bucolic appeal of the area, then as now, drew city folk to summer here and helped boost the rural economy through tourism. Learn how the collection has come back together and get a link to the images here. |
PMM Collaborates with BRHF-
New Collection Online!
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| | Willis Brewer poses with a large halibut on a wharf in Boothbay Harbor. Circa 1965. |
Last fall, we announced PMM's partnership with the Boothbay Region Historical Society and the Boothbay Region Maritime Foundation (BRMF) to create a research collection of historical and contemporary photos of fishing and boat building in the Boothbay Region. Since that time, we have digitized photos from the Boothbay Region Historical Society, the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library, and the Boothbay Register. Family collections from the Tibbetts Family, Brewer Family, June Enderkin, and Robby Begin have been digitized as well. We have many photos in our collections at PMM that also relate to the Boothbay Region, and we are linking those to this project in addition.
The first 115 digitized photos have now been added to our online database, and are available for viewing. This online collection is still in its infancy, and we will continue to add to it regularly over the next couple of years. We hope the interested public that reviews these images will share what they know about them through feedback.
The Boothbay Region Maritime Foundation was formed in 2018 and its mission is to preserve the Boothbay Maritime Heritage by supporting working waterfront, promoting sustainable practices, and embracing the educational opportunities the stewardship provides. BRMF is excited about this opportunity to work with PMM, and local historical societies to preserve and provide access to photos that are of vital importance to the region's maritime heritage. This is a unique opportunity for people to share their photos while still maintaining ownership of them and for the community to work together to create a digital photo archive reflective of the local fishing industry.
Check out the photos here! |
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A Third of the Way There! Can you help?
Thanks to several supporters we have raised a slightly more than $2,000 toward our goal of $6,000 needed to purchase 266 Eastern Illustrating negatives from an antique dealer. We realize it's not the best time to asking for help, but the opportunity to secure these is now. No amount is too small! Click here to see the list of negatives available. Thank you!
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Postcard from Gus New Post!
PMM volunteers Cathy Jewett and Ben Meader are back at it with the 3rd installment of their Postcards From Gus blog. drawing from the Phillips Brothers Collection. This time they take you on a visual and literal journey to Maine's North Woods.
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Volunteers Needed - Last Night at the Museum, the Flashlight Campus Tour
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Each year as the end of the season approaches, PMM holds an event we have called "Last Night at the Museum." It followed the night watchman as she closed the Fowler-True-Ross House for the season and was met by the paintings coming to life and other spirits who came out to tell their stories. This year will look a little different. Instead of going through one building, visitors will find spooks in many of the entranceways throughout our campus - with masks and social distancing in place. We're looking for volunteers to play the spirits of past sea-goers, telling their tales of adventure and tragedy. Volunteers will attend several Zoom meetings as well as being in-person on the day(s) of the event from 5pm-8pm on either/both October 16th and 17th. Contact Jeana at jganskop@pmm-maine.org if you're interested!
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October Speaker Series on Zoom
with PMM Staff
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Coming every Thursday in October, enjoy new, exciting Zoom programs put together by Penobscot Marine Museum Staff. Programs will start at 6pm. Register for each program using the links below.
October 1: Postcards with Photo Archivist Kevin Johnson
Wish you were here! PMM Photo Archivist Kevin Johnson will explore one of the earliest forms of social media, the picture postcard, tapping several of the museum's photo collections to illustrate. He will also examine the cameras and glass plate negatives they used. Click here to register.
October 8: Kosti Ruohomaa and Maine's Bygone Log Drives with Digital Collections Curator Matt Wheeler
Using a selection of these images from Kosti Ruohomaa's series on Maine log drives in the 1950s, PMM Digital Collections Curator Matt Wheeler will give us a glimpse of a lost enterprise; the subculture that grew up around it has made a lasting image in our historical mind's eye. Click here to register.
October 15: Quintessential Maine Boats with Curator Cipperly Good
Cipperly Good, PMM Curator, will present a look at three quintessential Maine boats: the Wabanaki birchbark canoe, Matinicus double-ender, and Jonesporter lobsterboat. Each of these boats are designed for fishing in Maine's coastal waters. Come learn more how Maine geography influenced the design of these unique boats. Click here to register.
October 22: Marine Art by the Buttersworth Family with Museum Educator Sarah Cole
PMM Museum Educator Sarah Cole will present a look at master paintings of marine art by the Buttersworth family. She will take her time exploring the paintings and zooming in to closely examine the minute details these men spent the time to include in their images. She will also explore a little bit of the events and places these paintings depict. Click here to register.
October 29: Stories from the Spirits of Sea-goers
As the Penobscot Marine Museum winds up its season and readies the buildings to over-winter, the spirits associated with the artifacts and stories tend to awaken. In this Zoom edition of PMM's annual event, you can hear their stories of tragedy and adventure from the comfort of your home! Family friendly, but may be scary for young viewers. Click here to Register.
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