January 2011 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 7. Waterfront News Penobscot Marine Museum News


HISTORIC WALDO COUNTY PHOTOS AT HUTCHINSON CENTER Museum’s Photo Collection Shows How the Area Appeared 75-100 Years Ago “Waldo County Through Eastern’s Eye,” an exhibit of black and white photo- graphs taken 75 to 100 years ago, will be on display in the Allen & Sally Fernald Gallery at the University of Maine’s Hutchinson Cen- ter in Belfast. The free exhibit will run from January 6 through April 31, 2011. A reception with free refreshments will be held January 27, 5:00-7:00 p.m.


Depicting old town and country scenes throughout Waldo County, the exhibit shows a fraction of the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company collection owned by Penobscot Marine Museum. Eastern was a postcard publisher founded in Belfast in 1909 and active through the early 1950s. According to Kevin Johnson, the museum’s photography archivist, the East- ern collection is the largest single photo- graphic collection in Maine, consisting of nearly 50,000 images of Maine and the rest of New England and upstate New York. Most of the photos are on glass-plate negatives. The museum is raising funds to acquire more of Eastern’s negatives, and plans to have a searchable database of the images online in 2011. Photo prints are available from the mu- seum, with proceeds from their sale going to expand the collection.


Research for the exhibit was conducted by individuals and historical societies from virtually every Waldo County community. The exhibit will be open Monday through Friday, 7:45a.m.-9:45p.m. and Saturday, 8:00 a.m. -3:00 p.m., at the Hutchinson Center, 80 Belmont Ave., Belfast. Call 207-338-8000 for more information.


MAKE A “SAILOR’S VALENTINE” FOR VALENTINE’S DAY


Learn a Historic Craft, Enjoy Tea, Chocolate and Stories at PMM For a memorable Valentine’s Day gift, learn how to make a “sailor’s valentine” while enjoying tea, chocolate, and stories of mari- time romance at Penobscot Marine Museum. The class will run from 9:00 a.m. to noon, Saturday, February 12.


Sailors’ valentines are arrangements of shells in geometric or floral patterns – often with a central photograph or message spelled out in tiny shells – enclosed in glass-fronted frames. Popular in the 19th century, they were produced mainly on the island of Barbados, in the Caribbean. Visiting American seamen would purchase and bring them home for their wives, girlfriends, mothers, or sisters as tokens of affection.


In the museum class, participants will assemble sea shells (and personal photos, if desired) in glass-fronted frames. The mu- seum will provide examples and materials. Although typical sailors’ valentines held only shells and photographs, participants may bring small personal objects to incorpo- rate for a contemporary approach. In keeping with the Valentine’s Day theme of the class, romantic stories of the sea will be offered by Curator Cipperly Good, and tea and chocolate will be served. The event will be an elegant and romantic prelude to Valentine’s Day, and participants will create a lovely keepsake gift for a loved one. The $40 registration fee includes materi- als and refreshments. Museum members re- ceive a 10 percent discount. To register, con- tact Education Director Betty Schopmeyer: bschopmeyer@pmm-maine.org or 207-548- 2529 ext. 206.


CHALLENGE GRANT TO BOOST GIVING AT PMM


Museum Enters its 75th Year With Annual Appeal Under Way


A challenge grant aimed at attracting new and bigger donors has given a boost to Maine’s oldest marine museum. An anony- mous donor has offered to match the gifts of donors who have not given previously to Penobscot Marine Museum’s annual appeal, and to match the difference for donors who give more to the current campaign than they gave in prior years.


“This generous anonymous benefactor lets his or her money do the talking,” said the museum’s president, Marie Underwood. “The ability to double new and increased gifts provides extra encouragement to sup- port our educational programs, historic pres- ervation efforts and research.” Mrs. Underwood noted that the museum is about to enter its 75th anniversary year in 2011, and has plans for a number of new exhibits and education initiatives.


“LIBERTY” SCHOOL BREAK PRO- GRAM AT PMM


School Vacation Means Fun and Learning Building on the success of its popular Downeaster Days summer program, Penobscot Marine Museum is offering a school vacation program during the Febru- ary break for children in grades K-5. Parents may register children for Liberty! Winter for a single day or for the entire four-day session, February 22-25.


“Liberty! Winter keeps children excited about learning, and it enables parents to maintain their regular working schedule dur- ing school break,” said Susan Henkel, an educator at the museum. “Each day of the program has a special focus.”


Tuesday, Feb. 22, will focus on Presi- dents Day and the Maine connections of Washington and Lincoln. Wednesday, Feb. 23, is Rock and Shell Day, including art and cooking projects; on Thursday, Feb. 24, chil- dren will learn about sailors, ships and the sea; and on Friday, Feb. 25, campers will work on photography projects using both tradi- tional and digital technologies.


Pre-registration is required. For more information or to register, contact Susan Henkel at shenkel@pmm-maine.org or 207- 548-2529 ext.202, or visit www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org.


New Boats Join the Collection With the museum’s broadening focus on education and community outreach, it may appear that our original mission of pre- serving the maritime heritage of Penobscot Bay gets short shrift. Not so, as the addition of four “new” boats to our small craft collec- tion demonstrates!


Mrs. Emily Lewis donated three of the boats, in addition to a number of nautical artifacts that had been stored in the former Tucker Daland boat barn on Vinalhaven. In addition to a Vinalhaven rowing skiff and a lapstrake sailing canoe that had been con- verted for oars with the addition of rowing outriggers, there is a historic North Haven dinghy. See the following article for more on the North Haven dinghy and news of related upcoming exhibits.


The fourth boat is a replica of a fine lapstrake pulling boat that currently resides in the museum’s Ross Carriage House. The original was designed by Thomas Fleming Day (the founder of Rudder magazine). PMM trustee, the late Ted Leonard, provided fund- ing for Maine boatbuilder Greg Rössell to take its lines,


which Greg later used as the basis for a boatbuilding class that he taught at WoodenBoat School. Greg’s students built


the boat under his close direction, and Greg did the finishing work. Friends of Ted Leonard bought the finished boat and do- nated it to the museum. It will be named TED and used for on-the-water demonstrations in the coming year.


ELFIN and the North Haven Dinghies In the 1880s, well-to-do Bostonians started coming to Vinalhaven and North Haven to exchange the city’s crowds and the summer heat for the cool breezes of Penobscot Bay. Unlike New York’s very wealthy, who built large summer cottages on Mount Desert Island, these “rusticators” preferred roughing it in the farmhouses along the Fox Island Thorofare that separates the two islands. Among those summer visitors was Tucker Daland, a Harvard-trained lawyer with an interest in sailboat racing and rowing. The Dalands settled on Hopkins Point on Vinalhaven and amassed a collection of sail- ing and rowing boats.


In 1887, in the sheltered waters of the Fox Island Thorofare, summer residents began racing sailing dinghies in various boats with various rig types. In 1888, eager to test the skill of the skipper rather than the design, racers settled on a design that would become known as the North Haven dinghy. The origi- nal design was based on a tender from Will- iam Weld’s schooner yacht GITANA. James Ossie Brown, the original builder of the din- ghies, built about 70 of them in his North Haven shop over the next decades and left a legacy of boatbuilding and repair that contin- ues at J.O. Brown & Sons. One of the first four he built was Tucker Daland’s ELFIN, whose model subsequent dinghies in the class cop- ied. North Haveners still race these dinghies, making them the oldest continuously raced class in the United States. ELFIN was re- cently donated to the museum by Mrs. Emily Lewis.


A new exhibit of North Haven boats, including the Daland boats, will open in the museum’s Boat House in 2011. A 2012 exhibit on the rusticators of the Penobscot Bay is- lands will further explore the impact these communities had at the turn of the 20th cen- tury.


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Education Program Expands into Five New Schools


PMM educators have just finished teaching units from our Maritime History and Literacy Curriculum in seven new classrooms in five schools! Funded by the Maine Com- munity Foundation and a private donor, in- structors Susan Henkel, Faith Garrold and Betty Schopmeyer taught six-week programs at South School (Rockland), Lamoine El- ementary School (Lamoine), Brooksville El- ementary School (Brooksville), D.W. Merritt Elementary School (Addison), and Beals El- ementary School (Beals Island). We focused on Fisheries and Native American History, and received great feedback from teachers and students.


Among the students’ comments: “I think your program was very cool...you should make it longer...I liked making Native American pouches, birch bark canoes, and I especially liked the bannock...I know you will like seeing me in the museum...I think there were no things I didn’t like...now I would love to go to the PMM.”


And from teachers: “We were able to make connections to the learning through writing... our students extended the projects by writing their own ‘Fishy Adventures’...Wonderful integration with English Language Arts, good pacing, no student down time, classroom management was great (experienced educators really matters)...The hands-on activities were big hits.”


The museum hopes to secure funding for more pilot programs in other schools. In


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