Maine Memory Network Item #74191

Happy New Year! It's just about time to put up the new calendar and make your resolutions. Perhaps some of you maintain a calendar (paper or digital) that allows for notes and "stray thoughts." This charming little booklet is a circa 1900 version of that. Created by Portland handwriting expert Horace Shaylor (1845-1925), it included blank pages opposite the calendar page, which was filled with designs, mottoes, and quotations.

For more information on Shaylor, read the MMN exhibit, Horace W. Shaylor: Portland Penman. And all best wishes for a productive, healthy, and delightful new year. 

Wednesday, January 2, 12:00pm
Intro to MHS: Library Tour
Tour Guide: Nicholas Noyes, Library Director

This 45-minute tour of the Brown Research Library, fully renovated in 2009, takes participants throughout the first floor reading room and behind-the-scenes into the archive, normally closed to the public. Library Director Nicholas Noyes covers the history of the building, architectural details, the basics of doing research in the library, and even shares a few treasures from the collection. This tour takes place on the first Wednesday in Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sept, Nov, at 12PM; free. Sign up in advance by sending an email to info@mainehistory.org.

 

 

Russian, Greek, Italian, Armenian, and Norwegian students, Portland, 1924

Thursday, January 3, 12:00pm
Immigration, Education, and Photography in 1920s Portland

Speaker: Rachel Miller

In 1922, during a period local anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan activity and widespread national support for immigration restriction, the Portland public school system established daytime Americanization classes for adults and school-aged immigrants. Photographs of these classes were frequently published in the Portland newspapers to counter accusations that immigrants were permanently foreign, radical, and resistant to assimilation.

Portland native and former MHS staff member Rachel Miller, now a graduate student in American Culture at the University of Michigan, will explore the political climate of Portland in the 1920s and the rhetorical power of photographs, with particular attention to issues of citizenship and national belonging. Rachel, who holds an M.A. in American and New England Studies from USM, won a 2012 award from the New England Historical Association for a paper resulting from her research on this topic.