The library is currently open Monday through Friday from 10:00am-5:30pm and Saturday 9:30am-12:30pm. The Children's Room and Archives are open by appointment. Please call for details: 207-582-3312.

Dawn Thistle, Special Collections Librarian

A new year, a new calendar — or…

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If you never got around to using an old 1988 or have a favorite 1960 calendar, they are finally functional again!
How do I know this?  One of my favorite perpetual calendars tells me so.  Calendars can come in pretty handy when working with historic materials. For example, many newspapers published weekly editions and often referred only to the weekday an event occurred (so and so arrived Wednesday or such and such will be held on Monday) and today we must scurry to find a now ancient calendar to determine what date they were talking about.  Of course, a quick Google search can help bring up a calendar for any year — but a handy perpetual calendar can provide the answer just as quickly.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/rbc/rbpe/rbpe19/rbpe199/1990170a/001dr.jpg
This is one of my favorite perpetual calendars.  It’s from an 1848 broadside and is owned by the Library of Congress.  Click here for close-up views and more information.

Perpetual calendars may look intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of them they’re a breeze and can actually be a lot of fun (well, perhaps more fun to some folks than others, but I’m quite partial to them).  Some perpetual calendars are quite basic, while others (like the one shown above) are a bit more complex.  The gist of any perpetual calendar, however, is the simple fact that, because a year may only begin on one of seven weekdays, there are a finite number of configurations any year may have (14, total), but, due to leap years (like 2016), there are still more possibilities than cannot be quickly computed on the fly (although mathematicians, including Alice in Wonderland author, Lewis Carroll, have come up with some fantastic algorithms over the decades to do just that — but we won’t get into that today).

The calendar shown above offers an amazing amount of information on one sheet of paper. Printed in 1848, it includes the dates and days of the week for every year from 1775 to 2025, as well as, at a glance, all the leap years and all the years that share the same configuration within that 250 year time span.  How amazing is that?!

But we’re all tired from the holidays and maybe some of us aren’t ready to embrace perpetual calendars as a new hobby for 2016.  So, to elicit some calendar fascination for all, here are some interesting factoids about calendars that I find fascinating — and just might make for interesting conversation when you need it:

Did you know?

  • Most years begin and end on the same day of the week.  If January 1 falls on a Friday, December 31 will, as well.  (Leap years, including this year, are the exception.  In 2016, 1/1 was a Friday and 12/31 will be a Saturday.)
  • We have been using the Gregorian Calendar in the U.S. only since September 14, 1752.  The conversion from the Julian Calendar that year eliminated 11 days from our history, sort of — folks here in the Colonies went to bed on September 2, 1752, and woke the next morning on the 14th.  Basically, September 3 – 13, 1752, never happened in U.S. history!
  • We were late adopters of the Gregorian Calendar.  France and Spain made the change in 1582; Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire did so in 1583, while Protestant states waited until 1700.  Sweden, however, was a year later than British Colonies and Russia did not adopt our current calendar until 1918.
  • Whatever day of the week is 4/4, so shall be 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, and 12/12.  The same is true for 2/2 when NOT a leap year.
That seems plenty to wrap one’s head around for now, but better get busy using your 2016 calendar immediately — it’s a unique year and won’t come in handy again until 2044!  2014s will work again 2025, and 2015s in 2016, so hang on to them accordingly.
That said, Happy New Year!  May 2016 bring you all the best!!
— Dawn Thistle, Community Archives Room

Family History – now’s the time!

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Thanksgiving Day is also National Family History Day.  It’s a natural pairing: that time of year when we gather together for family, food, and fun also marks the perfect opportunity to gather family information.

“Why didn’t I ask questions when I had the chance?”

That’s the #1 rhetorical question we get here in the Archives.  Whether trying to fill gaps in a family tree or hoping to recall or confirm stories from long ago, folks are always wishing they had taken the time to ask questions and record information once upon a time.

National Family History Day was actually declared by the Surgeon General after a Center for Disease Control and Prevention survey found that

  • over 96% of Americans considered knowledge of family history important to their personal health, but
  • less than 30% had ever actively collected family health information.

Wondering why the Surgeon General cares about genealogy?  Well, it’s simple – tracing family illnesses can help predict health risks and encourage preventative action to keep families healthy!  Of course, health questions may not be the easiest ones to address — nor do they necessarily make the best dinner conversation! — but, making an attempt to start talking about family history, asking questions, and recording information might help get the rolling on all fronts.

Here are some quick suggestions for easy ways to record your family history this weekend – or any time you gather together:

  • There’s an app for that!  Few people have tape recorders anymore, but your phone can do the trick instead!  Download a voice recording app such as StoryCorps (read about it in last week’s Wall Street Journal article) or Interviewy.   Have some questions ready (there are tips on the websites & in the article), but you can also just wing it & see where it goes!
  • Bring out old photos to get the conversation started — and while you’re at it, write the names on the back (in pencil or archival, photo-safe ink).
  • Create a Family Health Portrait with the helpful online tool from the Surgeon General’s Office.
  • Keep pencil and paper handy and just write it down!  Every little bit counts!

Need help pulling it together?  Stop by the Community Archives Room and we’ll give you a hand!

We hope you had a happy Thanksgiving – and that you build upon your family history on this weekend — and at every opportunity!

Do you recognize any of these faces?

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Woman, unknown year, Gardiner, Maine.
October is American Archives Month, so it couldn’t be more exciting or appropriate that we finally completed renovations of our Community Archives Room and moved back in last week!  We’re still shuffling some things around, settling into the space, and waiting for some furnishings – so, stay tuned for more!
In the meantime, some things never change.  As thorough as we try to be with documenting and recording information about historic items and photographs, mysteries will always exist. We have many unidentified portrait photographs in our collection and most offer very few clues as to who the subject is.
Children photographed by S.C. Stinson, a Gardiner Photographer who worked with the ambrotype process in the 1860s.
Most photographs, such as the cartes de visite and cabinet cards included here, include the name of the photographer and location of his or her studio.  These photographs were all taken (or reproduced) here in Gardiner, each by a different photographer. Although Gardiner had many photography studios over the years, we can identify a time frame in which images were produced by knowing when the photographers worked in town.  Newspapers and directory listings have helped us build such a timeline, but some photographers left and came back, others worked steadily for decades, and still more names keep coming out of the woodwork (like Hamlin, above).
Man, “Photographed by Clark,” 1860s.
Man, 1880; “Photographic Studio of Mrs. J.K. Barker.”
Fashions of clothing or hair, styles of furniture and set pieces, and also the format and design of the photograph itself provide additional clues.  Women’s hairstyles and men’s facial hair followed distinct trends through the years and clothing and props can indicate time frames, ethnicity, wealth, career, interests and more. 
 
Woman, early 1890s; J.S. Variel, photographer.
Child, early 1890s; A.W. Kimball, photographer.
Similarly, as photographic processing improved and changed, styles emerged to distinguish one print from another.  Colored borders became popular in the late 1880s and fancy edges emerged in the 1890s. Even the thickness of card stock can help determine the age of a photograph, as materials changed and advanced over the years. Coupling these details with our timeline of photographers working in Gardiner really helps in narrowing down years.  
 
Pup, 1890s; G.F. McIntosh, photographer.
 
Some photo albums or batches of images provide contextual clues, such as family resemblances or classmate connections. Unfortunately, without any contextual clues, we’re left only with facial recognition.  So, unless someone out there sees someone they “know” from the past, these folks and four-legged friends will remain mysteries for the ages.  
 
We hope you’ll tell us if you happen to recognize anyone above — and we have many more where these came from!  But the moral of the story is: be a part of history,
Label Your Photos (in pencil – NO pens, post-its, or adhesives) Today!  
Happy American Archives Month!