After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maine in 1976, and from the University of Maine School of Law in 1980, Leigh Saufley practiced in a small law firm in Ellsworth and served in the Maine Attorney General’s Office. She was appointed to the Maine District Court in 1990, to the Maine Superior Court…
Primarily from a digitized version of an article from The New York Times’s print archive. May Craig, whose hats and tart questions to Presidents and politicians, made her one of the country’s best‐known news women for several decades. She was almost as famous for her flowered hats as for her penetrating and persistent questioning at Presidential…
Janet Trafton Mills (1947- ) was sworn in as the 75th Governor of Maine on Wednesday, January 2, 2019. She was born and raised in Farmington, where she still proudly lives today. The granddaughter of Aroostook County potato farmers and the daughter of a long-time high school English teacher and the U.S. Attorney for…
STATE OF MAINE _____ IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD TWO THOUSAND AND THIRTEEN _____ JOINT RESOLUTION IN HONOR OF WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH AND IN RECOGNITION OF THE CONTRIBUTION THAT WOMEN MAKE TO MAINE AND TO THE UNITED STATES WHEREAS, American women of every race, class and ethnic background have made historic contributions to the…
(1955- ) Rochelle “Chellie” Pingree is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the First Congressional District. She was re-elected in 2012 and 2010, having been elected in 2008 as the first woman representing the district. It marked the first time in American history that women made up the majority of a state’s…
Assertive and Independent: Maine Women in the World by Polly Welts Kaufman From a presentation at the June 6, 2008 Norlands Conference. Maine women in every imaginable field have left the state taking their independent spirits, imagination, talents, and education to make their marks on the world. Others remained, breaking new ground in many areas.…
Dempset was the first female to graduate from Maine Maritime Academy. Born and raised in Connecticut, she went to the University of Vermont where she worked for a yacht delivery company. Later she decided to further her education at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, where she was at the top of her class. After…
(1868-1952) was a prominent lawyer, legislator, and women’s rights advocate. She was born on May 7, 1868 as Abbie Hill Laughlin, in Robbinston. She graduated from Portland High School in 1886, receiving the Brown Medal for the highest grades. Laughlin worked as a bookkeeper for four years before saving enough money to attend Wellesley College.…
Selected works . . . Bertha and Lily, or, The Parsonage of Beech Glen: A Romance. (1854)The Dandelion (1845)Jack Spanker and the Mermaid (1843?)The Newsboy (1854)Old New York: or, Democracy in 1689. A tragedy, in five acts. (1853) The Poetical Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1845) Riches Without Wings: or, The Cleveland Family (1838) The…
Selected works The Mayflower, or, Sketches of scenes and characters among the descendants of the Pilgrims (1843) The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (1855) An inside View of Slavery; or, A tour among the planters (1855) Dred; a Tale of the great Dismal Swamp (1856) Agnes of Sorrento (1862) Oldtown Folks (1869) The American…
(1891-1941) On January 3, 1923, Dora Bradbury Pinkham took her seat in the Maine House of Representatives as the first woman elected to the Legislature in Maine. Pinkham represented Fort Kent and Wallagrass Plantation (now the Town of Wallagrass). She was the only woman elected out of the nine women from across the state who…
Maud Wood Park (1871-1955), who spent a substantial part of her life in Maine, was born on January 25, 1871 in Boston. She was a Radcliffe graduate who became an organizer, civic leader, and speaker for causes that moved her. Park organized her College Equal Suffrage League. Married at 26 and widowed, her later marriage…
The town is heavily influenced by the nearby University of Maine, and the long-lived Old Town Canoe Company maintains an outlet that attracts customers with a broad range of outdoor recreation interests. See photos. DeWitt Field, Old Town’s municipal airport, hash three runways. Since 1669, the area has been the principal home of the Penobscot Indians.
(c1740-1816) succeeded in living her life according to Wabanaki traditions and, for the most part, on ancestral land because she was savvy enough to learn how to adapt to the encroaching white settlers and their way of life without assimilating into their culture. Her strength and independent nature enabled her to make a life for…
Mary Pelagie (1775-1867) an early 19th century Native American Penobscot woman, strove to live an autonomous life in an era in which there were numerous hindrances and hardships associated with womanhood. Existing in the late 18th to early 19th century was difficult for a woman in Maine and it was certainly a struggle surviving the…
Maine state legislator and attorney, has made history in the state legislature three times. In 1980 she was elected the first woman House Majority Leader; in 1996, the first woman Speaker of the House; and in 2006 Senate Majority Leader, only the third woman to serve in that position, preceded by Nancy Randall Clark in…
The town, across the Swift River and the Androscoggin River from Rumford, is home to many workers in the Rumford paper mill. See photos. In the 1960’s, the mill employed over 3,000 people; by 2009 it employed less than 600. The crash in this and other manufacturing has contributed to the sharp population decline Mexico has experienced since 1970.
(c1665-1717) was named Pidianiske at birth by her parents who were Wabanaki Indians, which translates to “People Of The Dawn,” because they believed that the sun’s early light reaches the banks of the Penobscot River first, before it touches anywhere else. The Wabanaki lived there for hundreds of years. The life of Molly Mathilde is…
Minnie D. Davenport was born in Phillips on November 4, 1883, the daughter of Marshall and Aura (Prescott) Davenport. Following high school graduation in Phillips, Minnie attended Farmington State Normal School and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She married Edward O. Craig in July, 1908. Edward, a native of Maine, was president…
Year House Senate Total 1923 1 0 1 1925 1 0 1 1927 4 2 6 1929 4 3 7 1931 4 1 5 1933 3 1 4 1935 6 1 7 1937 6 2 8 1939 4 1 5 1941 5 1 6 1943 6 0 6 1945 5 1 6 1947 3 1…