October Newsletter

By Jeana Ganskop, Education Director

Hello from the Education Department in Penobscot Marine Museum’s Old Vestry! This is the first of what will be regular quarterly updates. It has been a busy season for the Education Department, and we have some extra special events planned as we wrap up for 2024. 

If you visited the Museum, you talked with at least one of our Museum Interpreters. Our Museum Interpreters share our maritime history and culture with our visitors—they lead tours and Set Sail demonstrations, answer questions, and point out how to get to particular exhibits. In 2024, we welcomed back Faith Campbell, Nate Palmer, Camden Breckenridge, Willa Bywater, Don Mowry, Veronica Maresh Mead, Ze’ev Shames, and Delia Billings. 

This year, we embraced the 100th anniversary of Joanna Colcord’s Roll and Go: Songs of American Sailormen. At the beginning of summer, we hosted a hybrid lecture series looking at Joanna’s life and legacy. The recordings of those talks are now available on YouTube. We’ve enjoyed weekly chantey singalongs led by staff and guests. We have two chantey singalongs left this season—you can join PMM volunteer Joe Greeley at 4pm on Thursday, October 3rd, or come for our final session on October 10th. The singalongs take place in our Main Street Gallery at 40 E. Main St., in the Music in our Lives temporary exhibit.

Looking beyond sea chanteys, which were a big part of Joanna Colcord’s life, we have experienced the local music culture during Saturday Sessions. We’ve hosted a variety of groups and individuals. Don’t miss our final Saturday Session on October 5th at 3pm when members of the Searsport Elementary School Chorus will sing for us! Thank you to the Onion Foundation and Camden National Wealth Management for making this exhibit and programming possible.

As we close the Music in our Lives exhibit, we invite you to a special Roaring ‘20s Tea on Sunday, October 13th! Enjoy tea, sandwiches, scones, and sweets catered by Splendiferous Sweet Shoppe and live music by Maine Piano Man Frank Baxter. Find a costume and register today!

By Cipperly Good, Richard Saltonstall Jr. Curator of Maritime History

Sardines equaled money for coastal communities in twentieth century Maine. Beginning in 1875, sardine canneries began employing hundreds of women, more than the number of men fishing for herring, which were marketed as sardines. These canneries once dotted the coast from Eastport to Portland, but changes in American eating habits, competition for herring as bait, and federal quota restrictions led to the closing of Maine’s last sardine cannery in 2010. 

For some communities, the working waterfront has evolved so that little of the sardine industry infrastructure remains visible. Some communities have repurposed the sardine canneries. For others, the former cannery buildings are empty shells, and the local economy has not recovered. As has been true throughout Maine’s history, once an extractive resource industry has collapsed in a rural area, revitalization is slow in coming.

By Kevin Johnson, Photo Archivist

During the past year and a half have had some exciting "new" collections to tell you about!

Old friend of PMM, Leslie Gregory, donated a set of 35 mm negatives she took of gritty Belfast in the 1980s while she was at at the Maine Photo Workshops.

Maria Griffin donated several hundred color slides from the 1940s of various spots and events around the midcoast she found in her house in Bangor. They are believed to have been taken by Robert Henry McLaughlin.

Accomplished photographer and educator, Edwin Martin, donated approximately 1,000 of his silver gelatin prints representing various photo projects he undertook. One of these portfolios contain the portrait of our former board president, Wayne Hamilton, taken in 2011 at his Hamilton Marine store in Rockland.

Wayne Hamilton has also started the process of donating the slides he took during his time as Searsport's Harbor Master. His documentation of large cargo ships coming in and out of Searsport is impressive and reflects his keen eye.

Our current board president, Jon Johansen, is also transferring pieces of his maritime collection to us bit by bit; many of the items are treasures he has plucked from Ebay.

Continued progress is also being made on the Eliot Elisofon and Jim Moore Collections. We take great pride in preserving and sharing these historic treasures. Thanks for supporting our efforts! 

Click here for photo captions.

By Shelly Patten, Office Manager

On June 15th, Father’s Day weekend, the children of Homer Waterman hosted a multi-generational reunion at our PMM campus. Nearly 50 family members gathered (some for the first time) to hear untold tales and to view the collected memorabilia from Waterman’s service as an engineer in the Merchant Marines over 60 years ago, between 1961 and 1966. 

Homer Mills Waterman (1923-2006), like Maine’s Merchant Mariners from the previous century, sailed around the world documenting his experiences through pictures, letters, and souvenirs sent home. Thanks to a collection of items given by his children to the Museum in 2021, we were able to track his course across the globe. 

An article by PMM Photo Archivist Kevin Johnson about peapod builder Jim Steele was recently published in The Working Waterfront. You can read the article here. This year we added the Jim Steele Peapod Shop as a new core exhibit featuring jigs, tools, plans, and peapods.