On this date in Maine history: Jan. 15

On this date in Maine history: Jan. 14

Jan. 14, 1943: Author Laura E. Richards dies in Gardiner, where she spent most of her adult life. Richards won, with her sisters, a Pulitzer Prize in 1917 for “Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910,” a biography of their mother, who wrote the words to the song “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Richards, a Boston native, […]

On this date in Maine history: Jan. 13

On this date in Maine history: Jan. 12

On this date in Maine history: Jan. 11

Jan. 11, 1839: Sculptor Franklin Simmons, whose public artworks include the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow statue and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Portland and the Soldiers’ Monument in Lewiston, is born in a part of Lisbon that later becomes the town of Sabattus. Simmons, who is raised in Bath and Lewiston, starts out making sculpture models […]

On this date in Maine history: Jan. 10

On this date in Maine history: Jan. 9

On this date in Maine history: Jan. 8

On this date in Maine history: Jan. 7

Jan. 7, 1925: Ralph Owen Brewster, a Republican supported openly by the Ku Klux Klan, takes office as Maine’s governor. The election campaign put the division in Brewster’s party on full display. His predecessor, Gov. Percival Baxter, accused Brewster of being a sympathizer of the Klan, which had gained traction in Maine because of its […]

On this date in Maine history: Jan. 6

Jan. 6, 1854: Novelist Sarah “Sally” Sayward Barrell Wood, known colloquially as “Madame Wood,” Maine’s first novelist and the first female American writer of gothic fiction, dies at the age of 95. She published four novels and a collection of stories, all under pseudonyms – either “A Lady,” “A Lady of Massachusetts” (when Maine was […]