Friday morning at 33 Beach Road – the Lincolnville Historical Society (LHS) – and the parking lot is filling up. Kim’s usually the first to arrive and is already at work when I come in. The others follow, with a couple of Tai Chi practitioners the last to appear. A few minutes of chichat ensues until we finally wind that up and get to work.

Roberta heads for the little front room, the library we call it now, but it was the children’s coat room back in the day when our old building was a one-room school. She’ll spend the morning diving into the chaos of the two three-drawer file cabinets that are so packed it’s hard to open them. Though she probably wouldn’t admit to it, Roberta is quite good at organizing and reassembling all this Lincolnville-related material into something approximating order.

Meanwhile, Kim, who brings in her own laptop and is able to work right through the earlier gossip, is busy uploading the scans of the journal she’s been making at home. Apparently, scanning hand-written diary pages can be done while cheering on the hockey game she and Tim are watching. I got a lot of knitting done, sitting with Wally, back in the day when football reigned our fall weekends.

Cheryl, a bit tardy and breathless from Tai Chi on the Beach, settles in with the ancient VCR player Dwight donated, and watches tapes of 1990s Founders Week-end events.

And I say a silent “thank you” to Jackie Watts, whose cancer diagnosis prompted her to gather up all those old tapes and CDs and get them to me. Bags of them, all labeled, but as time moved on and the technology changed so rapidly, I wondered if we’d ever be able to see them.

And then there are the CDs. Many of those (a boxful) appear to be made from the VCR tapes. So, do we have duplicates? Cheryl is trying to sort that out, and as she does, Kim has learned to turn a CD into an mp3 file which she then uploads to our YouTube Channel.

Did you know the LHS has its own YouTube channel? Take a look at it here. Kim has been recording our Friday at the Museum programs and uploading them on YouTube. Subscribe to the channel and you’ll get email updates as new things are added.

Such as Cheryl’s work with those old VCRs. You may find your much younger self tap-dancing at a Grange variety show.

Remember those?

Jane is the glue that pulls together our Friday mornings, coming in with a big smile and some good news or other about our membership numbers or perhaps a surprise donation check. Without Jane, none of those could have happened for it takes support from lots of people to pull off what we’ve done. And Jane’s chatty, handwritten thank you notes (whether you’ve sent us $5 or $500 or more) help keep folks coming.

Cyrene has taken a deep dive this morning into the dreaded Map Case, five drawers full of large maps and other oversized documents, well-intentionally layered with archival quality tissue paper. Expensive archival quality tissue paper. There are huge aerial photos of town, marine charts, many geologic survey maps, detailed hand-made layouts of early settlement. A few really cool things with a lot of wrinkly tissue paper. It’s a mess and a challenge to figure out a way to organize it.

Cyrene, though, is having a much more consequential effect on the LHS by bringing forward our pre-colonization history; i.e. the indigenous people, the Wabanaki, People of the Dawn, who lived here thousands of years before a French or a Knight or a Heal/Heald or a Young or a Thomas or a Miller set foot on the place. Thanks largely to Cyrene we now know that our shore was known as Magwintegwak or “choppy seas” according to a map published by the Penobscots.

She, along with Cheryl (of the Grange variety shows!) has worked with the late Bob Anderson’s family to write the story of the Shay family’s life here and their Indian basket tent. And that has led to the LHS being a significant part of the Farnsworth Museum’s popular exhibit “Magwintegwak: A Legacy of Penobscot Basketry”. Have you seen it? The exhibit will be up until January 5. It’s beautiful and Lincolnville is a highlight of it.

Deanna spent one recent Friday with the portraits of the ancestors, those large, elaborately framed, late 19th century portraits that must have been commissioned by some energetic salesman of such things. Think of today’s school photo industry. I’ve often wondered where in the low-ceilinged, small rooms of most of Lincolnville’s cape-style houses there was space for such monster photos.

Not surprisingly, they have been donated to the LHS in droves, (who has room to hang a giant, gilt-framed grayish portrait of a long-dead ancestor no one remembers?) and thanks to a grant some years ago, archivist Deanna Bonner-Gantor reframed with archival mats and special glass. They hang in the stairwell to the second floor. So, enter the another Deanna, who climbed a ladder and took down a number of them that had become separated from their names. She figured out all their identities, and now they’re lined up against the wall waiting to be hung up again.

Enter Dwight, an engaged volunteer with lots of knowledge about old things and a good eye for how to display them. We, he and I, wander around the museum, dreaming up new ways to organize all the stuff we’ve collected. For starters, he’ll be hanging up the portraits and a number of bulky tools, getting them off the floor and up where we can see them.

A big part of this historical society business is knowing where you put something, and then being able to find it when someone comes in and wants to see it. Here’s where the backbone of the LHS comes in: the digital file or database of each and every object, sheet of paper, photograph, and document. We use Catalogit.app to register each item. Anyone can look at our catalog here and see that we have 3,194 items catalogued.

Digitizing stuff is the future. And as I’ve said so many times: “we deal with paper – photos, maps, documents, journals, stored in cardboard boxes in a wooden building that’s 170 years old and uninhabited.” It’s reassuring that we’ve already put so much of the archive up in the Cloud. Whatever that is.

The Friday morning crew is only one part of the folks who keep the place going. By now, anyone driving Beach Road has seen the beautiful stone well and hanging sign at the end of our driveway. Tom Hardy, a master stoneworker and Lincolnville native, picked out the rocks and hauled them down, and over several weekends built the stunning square well and designed the hanging fixture. Another Hardy, his uncle (cousin? I can’t keep them straight!) Will, made the sign. Will and Dwight restored the old sleigh in front of the building, on loan from the French family.

A wagon wheel from Claude Heald’s Youngtown Road farm will soon hang on the building. Andy Young and Adam Putansu are the builders responsible for most of the renovation work, both inside and out. The newly paved driveway, exterior painting, the roof and more are thanks to a former Lincolnville resident and generous donor.

Much inspiration and support, common sense and good advice comes from our board: Rosey Gerry, Sandy Delano, Alan Thomas, Niel Wienges, Connie Parker, Dwight Wass, Cyrene Slegona, Cheryl Wienges, Kim Clark and me.

Remember how the building at 33 Beach Road was in peril four years ago, with a huge renovation estimate facing the town-owned former one-room schoolhouse, and a historical society that had packed the second floor and attic with the town’s archive.

What is an archive anyway? Ms. Google says, “An archive is a collection of older things- documents, books, movies, or something else- that’s meant to preserve them.” Archives tell us about history. An archive involves old stuff — specifically, a collection of old stuff….”

Reaching out to our town’s residents for help in maintaining its archive took up a great deal of energy. From buying the building from the town for a dollar to writing grants, holding fundraisers (remember the pandemic-era take-out meals?), and to appealing to each other for donations we’ve mostly finished that job. The building is secure, an ADA bathroom in place, a new roof over our heads, water cleaned up, all new windows, LED lighting, the parking lot paved, the downstairs meeting room insulated, floor refinished, new kitchen counters, exterior painting in progress, new entrance – we can finally move to the real purpose of the LHS:

“The mission of the Lincolnville Historical Society is to engage those in our community who have both generational and newer roots to conserve and share the rich facets of our town’s natural and human history. We strive to inspire enjoyment and stewardship of past, present and yet to be written stories of Lincolnville’s people, flora and fauna, farmlands, forests and waterways.” 

Oh, and by the way. The LHS holds its first Beach Bistro dinner of the year on November 23. As of this writing all 36 tickets for the dinner have been sold. These dinners are prepared by a volunteer cook with a team of friends to help with the food. Our LHS volunteers do the set-up, serving, and clean up. We plan on a January and a March meal. Get in touch with us if you’re interested in being the cook! 

There’s still plenty to do. Winter is long, and Lincolnville has so much talent. Come join us on Friday mornings or any other time of the week. Once you’ve settled on a project you can work on it on your own. In addition to the above-mentioned energetic cooks we need a genealogist, a textile person, someone with audio skills, a Facebook administrator, a web designer, and lots more. Contact us at lincolnvillehistory@gmail.com.

A Sad Note

Bob Plausse passed away a few days ago, less than a year since his beloved wife Janet’s passing. During the years Bob and Janet lived in Lincolnville they made a big impact. Longtime members of Bayshore Baptist Church where Janet played the piano, serving on town committees – Bob was a selectman for at least two terms – and just being good neighbors, the couple was always such a positive force in town. If someone needed a ride to an appointment or a meal delivered or just a friendly visit, Bob would step up. I’ll miss him.

Municipal Calendar

Monday, November 4

School Committee Meeting,  6 p.m., LCS

Tuesday, November 5

Library open 3-6 p.m. 208 Main Street

AA Meeting 12:15 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road

Election Day, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. LCS

Wednesday, November 6

Library open 2-5 p.m.

Thursday, November 7

Joint Selectboard Meeting- Lincolnville and Islesboro, 5:30 p.m. Islesboro Town Office

Friday, November 8

AA Meeting 12:15 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road

Library open 9-12, 208 Main Street

Saturday, November 9

Library open 9-12, 208 Main Street

Sunday, November 10

United Christian Church, 9:30 a.m. Worship, 18 Searsmont Road

Bayshore Baptist Church, 9:30 a.m. Sunday School, 11 worship, 2648 Atlantic Highway