In the Poland Spring Preservation Park in Poland, Maine, you’ll find a lovely octagonal Queen Anne style building with an amazing story – along with the famous spring water and the historic resort. The octagon building is called the Maine State ...
Read More »New England Gold Hoax of 1898: Greed Meets Moxie
There is, in fact, gold in seawater. And that is the kernel of truth upon which two Martha’s Vineyard men would build the greatest financial scandal of 1898, the New England gold hoax. The two boyhood chums, one with connections ...
Read More »Child Labor Exposed: The Legacy of Photographer Lewis Hine
A camera was an improbable weapon against the growing evil of child labor in the early years of the 20th century. Then, children as young as five years old were working long hours in dirty, dangerous canneries and mills in New ...
Read More »New Englanders Who Made it to the 1963 March on Washington
Fifty years ago when the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom electrified the nation, buses came from everywhere, filled with people clamoring for social and economic justice. They didn’t yet know they would hear Martin Luther King deliver what ...
Read More »Castine Quarrels – The Perils of Dating in Old Acadia
Historical correctness and political correctness are squaring off in one of the oldest towns in America and, given Castine's history of conflict, perhaps it’s not surprising. Castine, Maine, is older than Massachusetts’ Plymouth Colony by seven years. As a prime ...
Read More »New England Good Life: The Great Madness of Scott Nearing
The announcement of their wedding was that of a classically trained musician to an academic economist and political provocateur. So naturally, when you fast forward to the end of the long lives that Helen and Scott Nearing made for themselves ...
Read More »Battle flags, U-Boats and Small Town Scandal in Today’s History Highlights – 8.12.2013
While U.S. home soil was largely well-behind the frontlines of any action in World War II, the same cannot be said for the waters off the East Coast. During the first two years of American involvement in the war, dozens ...
Read More »Shipwrecks, Slave Trade and Patriots Young and Old in Today’s History Highlights – 8.9.2013
If any sailing yarn deserves untangling, it’s the wreck of the Anne Maguire. The three-masted schooner foundered off the Maine coast just 150 yards from Portland Light on Christmas Eve, 1886. Was the mystery ever solved of how a ship ...
Read More »Birthdays, Summer Colonies and Stowing Away on the USS Constitution in Today’s History Highlights
We’re a day late for Andy Warhol’s 85th birthday, but we thought we’d share a long read about his most famous superstar: Edie Sedgwick, a scion of the Massachusetts Sedgwick family. She came to our attention as one of six ...
Read More »Massasoit, John Quincy Adams and Early Welfare in Today’s History Highlights
Have you had your John Quincy Adams fix yet today? The son of Braintree (now Quincy) and America’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams was a prolific diarist. The Massachusetts Historical Society has been good enough to present his diaries in ...
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