I have to preface this article by stating that all of my ancestors
in the past one hundred and fifty years or so were born in the State of Maine.
Therefore, when I first heard of some new additions to the Maine Historical
Society’s Web site, I immediately checked them out. What I found was a
delight for anyone researching Maine history. The site also could serve as an
example to other historical societies of what they might do with their Web sites.
The Maine Historical Society’s Web site describes the traditional
resources available from the society, such as the society’s research library.
This collection includes one hundred and twenty-five thousand books, newspapers,
and other printed items, as well as 2 million manuscripts, thirty-five hundred
maps and atlases, seventy thousand photographs, and one hundred thousand architectural
and engineering drawings. The society is also renovating the 1785 Wadsworth–Longfellow
House. Built by the poet's grandfather, General Peleg Wadsworth, this was the
childhood home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 19th-century America's most famous
poet. The Maine Historical Society opened the house to the public in 1901, making
it the first historic house museum in Maine. The house is presently closed for
restoration but will re-open to the public on 1 June 2002.
The Web site also has a link to the recently-launched Maine Memory
Network, a statewide database of historical source documents contributed by
Maine's historical organizations, including the Maine Historical Society, the
Fogler Library, the North East Historic Film, the Maine Humanities Council,
the Maine State Archives, the Maine State Library, the Maine State Museum and
the Osher Map Library. The Maine Memory Network is still a new resource, and
new material is constantly being added.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Maine Historical Society’s
Web site contains a lot of background information about genealogy. Keep in mind
that this is an historical society’s Web site, not that of a genealogy
society. Historical societies generally focus on historical events, lifestyles,
and other items of note from history, while genealogy societies tend to focus
on individual people. Anyone interested in true family history will be interested
in both. Collecting names, dates, and places isn’t half as interesting
as combining that information with knowledge of people’s lives and the
events that shaped those lives. A true family historian is both a genealogist
and a "micro historian;" one who studies the lives and lifestyles
of previous family generations. It was interesting to find genealogy information
on the pages of an historical society’s Web pages.
Perhaps best of all, the Maine Historical Society’s Web site
contains an active Genealogy Discussion Forum. This discussion board is divided
into separate sections, one for Maine Surname Queries and others for Maine Locality
Queries, Locality Queries for locations outside of Maine, Genealogy Software
as well as others.
All in all, the Maine Historical Society has a Web site that they
can be proud of. If you have an interest in Maine history or genealogy, take
a look at: www.mainehistory.org.
Dick Eastman Online
