Collecting area: Maine

As a young man in Foxcroft, Maine, Abel Turner was caught up in the evangelical revivals and converted to Free Will Baptism, becoming a minister by the age of 21. Beginning in the backwoods settlements, Turner spent the better part of a decade attempting to “convert sinners” in Piscataquis and Penobscot Counties and the in the Burned-Over District of New York state, from Utica to Penn Yan and Cattaraugus County.

Written for his wife, Abel Turner’s long and detailed autobiography is a remarkable record of a young Free Will Baptist minister’s labors during the Second Great Awakening. Beginning with his childhood in Maine and his conversion experience, the manuscript provides insight into Turner’s experiences preaching in the rough-hewn interior settlements of Maine and the Burned-Over District of New York from roughly 1821 through 1839. In addition to some wonderful commentary on evangelical religion in the heart of the Awakening and on Turner’s own spiritual development, the memoir includes fascinating descriptions of the towns and people he met along the way.

Chartered in 1835, the Boston and Maine Railroad was one of the largest and most successful railroad operations in northern New England for over a century, hauling both freight and passengers. The Railway began a slow decline as early as the 1930s with the decline in manufacturing in the region and later with the decline of passenger service. It came through a bankruptcy in 1970 and continues as a non-operating ward of Pan Am Railways.

This collection consists of blueprint valuations of the assets of the Boston and Maine Railroad, compiled by the Bureau of Valuation of the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission in 1931.

By February 1988 members of of United Paperworkers International Union Local 14 of Jay, Maine, had been on strike for seven months. With the support of their state officials and officials of Massachusetts and Northampton AFL-CIO, a caravan of strikers traveled to Northampton to inform the public of their struggle. Collection is limited to a city of Northampton resolution and a brief report of the strikers position and their trip to the city.

Friends began to gather for worship in Vassalboro, Maine, in 1780, shortly after Quakers began to settle the Kennebeck Valley to escape the American Revolution. Their numbers grew sufficiently to be granted states as a monthly meeting in 1787, and they have subsequently been the sponsor for a number of worship groups and preparatory meetings in central Maine, as well as the source from which five monthly meetings have been laid off.

The records of Vassalboro Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends) are spotty and incomplete, but include minutes of meetings for business from 1950s through 1980s, sporadic financial records, and a substantial, but incomplete series of newsletters from 1987-2010.

Serving as a Quaker quarterly meeting for central Maine, Vassalboro Quarterly was set off from Falmouth Quarter in 1813. Over the years, it has coordinated nearly two dozen monthly meetings extending as far north and east as Cobscook. Farmington Quarter was set off from it in 1841, but returned in 1952.

The records for Vassalboro Quarterly are substantially incomplete, but document the Quaker meeting from the 1970s through 2000s. Among other records are a highly incomplete set of minutes (and “records,” which are the materials distributed during meetings); a more complete, but still partial run of newsletters; and the records of Ministry and Counsel from the mid-1990s through mid-2000s.

Quaker worship began in Windham, Me., around 1780, with a preparative meeting established there under the care of Falmouth Monthly Meeting. Windham was set off as a monthly meeting in 1803, and it had Limington Monthly set off from it in 1846. Windham has supported both a preparative meeting (1844-1889) and worship group (1903-1945) at nearby Casco, where the meeting continues to gather during the late summer months.

Windham Monthly Meeting is represented in SCUA by only two State of the Society reports, 1989 and 1993. The bulk of the records for Windham Monthly are held at the Maine Historical Society

With a complex history of names changes and switches in quarterly affiliation, Winthrop Monthly Meeting was founded in the Kennebec Valley, Maine, in 1813 as Leeds Monthly Meeting. It is currently a semi-programmed meeting under the care of Vassalboro Quarter.

SCUA’s holdings for Winthrop Monthly Meeting are limited to a single volume of meeting minutes (1944-1969); a volume recording births, death, and marriages; and two volumes of membership records. The bulk of the records for Winthrop are held in the collections of the Maine Historical Society.