MAINE & NEW ENGLAND WOMEN Authors and Historical Figures

From March 26 to June 26, 2016, the UNE Art Gallery featured an exhibit on the art of Mildred G. Burrage. The exhibit traced the 70 year career of Mildred Giddings Burrage (1890-1983. Born in Portland, Maine, but living later in Kennebunkport and Wiscasset, Mildred traveled the world throughout her life. This catalog highlights her work from the France years, World War I, Maine, her portraits, maps, the American West, Mexico and Guatemala, World War II and ending with her mica paintings. A timeline of Mildred's life and work in also included as well as a list of her exhibitions. Color photographs throughout. Paperback. 56 pgs.

One of the most respected sports writers of her time, Cornelia "Fly Rod" Crosby used her abilities as an angler, hunter, and writer to share, conserve, and promote the abundant beauty of the Maine woods for women as well as men. From her early days as a sickly yet feisty little girl, through her lifelong struggle with illness, this story explores and illuminates Cornelia's persistence and strength. Colorful illustrations throughout. Paperback. 35 pgs.

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective explores the history of toques and top hats, bowlers, and bonnets to add another dimension to understanding your family photographs Fanciful, frilly, and fascinating, women’s hats made a fashion statement. There were hundreds of choices available each season. And they came with names like Leghorns, Gainsborough’s, poke bonnets, and wide-awakes. Home factories produced trim and hats for milliners, while enterprising women raised small birds destined to be stuffed for hat adornments. Men’s hats could be utilitarian. Abraham Lincoln and the men of his generation often carried papers in their stove pipe hats. Their desire for beaver hats led the animal to the brink of extinction. Using the clues in this book, you’ll learn interesting facts about your ancestors by studying their photographs and the hats they wore for portraits. Paperback 190 pages

A novel rich with a knowledge of life; telling of a kind of people, and of one particular American family, who seem timeless and enduring as the rocks and tides of their own Maine country. The tang of salt water is strong in the women as in the men, and the sea itself is the solid, ever-changing background for "The Fire Balloon." First published in 1948, by the author of "Spoonhandle." 2004 paperback, 347 pages.

For the Franco-American Women's Institutes' 20th Anniversary, this anthology of written works and visual arts has been published to mark the present, active, creative lives of the women of the French heritage culture. This anthology provides a snapshot of the French heritage women's lives as they exist in the present. Paperback. 340 pgs.

Tundra's Great Idea Series are early-reader biographies. The third book in the series introduces the fascinating Margaret Knight. Known as Mattie, she was different from most American girls living in 1850. She loved to make things with wood and made the best kites and sleds in town. Her father died when she was only three and by the time she was twelve she was working at the local cotton mill, alongside her two older brothers. One day she saw a worker get injured by a shuttle which had come loose from the giant loom, and the accident inspired her to invent a stop-motion device. It was to be the first of her many inventions. Margaret devoted her life to inventing, and is best known for the clever, practical, paper bag. When she died in 1914 she had ninety inventions to her name and over twenty patents, astounding accomplishments for a woman of her day. Monica Kulling deftly uses easy-to-read language and lots of dialogue to bring an amazing, inspiring woman to life. Color illustrations throughout. Paperback. 32 pgs.

Maine nurses have served tirelessly as caregivers and partners in healing at home and abroad, from hospitals to battlefields. The Division of Public Health Nursing and Child Hygiene was established in 1920 to combat high rates of infant mortality in Washington and Aroostook counties. During the Vietnam War, Maine nurses helped build the Twelfth Evacuation Hospital at Cu Chi and bravely assisted surgeries in the midst of fighting. In the early 1980's, nurse disease prevention educators in Portland rose to the challenge of combating the growing AIDS epidemic. Through historical anecdotes and fascinating oral histories, discover the remarkable sacrifices and achievements of Maine's nurses. Black & white photographs throughout. Paperback. 183 pgs.

In April of 1897 Mrs. Hermann Kotzschmar of Portland, Maine made her first, eagerly anticipated trip to Europe. She traveled with seven others from Maine, including her daughter Dorothea who was between her second and third year at Smith College. During her five months away, Mrs. Kotzschmar sent 23 letters back to Portland's Daily Press and to The Kennebec Journal in Augusta. It was customary in this period for travelers to keep a diary, either in the form of a personal journal or as letters to family. It was more unusual to send such letters back to the local newspaper. The newspapers printed a disclaimer following the end of the first letter: "The Press will publish from time to time letters from Mrs. Kotzschmar describing her tour through Europe. These letters will probably appear weekly, the one we publish above is a guarantee that they will be bright, interesting and well worth reading." Twenty-two more letters, one written each week, were actually published. This book by Janice Parkinson-Tucker is the first in a series of books about the Kotzschmar family, also including "Behind the Pipes: the Story of the Kotzschmar Organ," and "Hermann Kotzschmar: An Appreciation." 2004 paperback, 278 pages.

Temporarily out of stock

This biography chronicles the extraordinary life of twentieth century performing artist Molly Spotted Elk. Born in 1903 on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, Molly ventured into show business at an early age, performing vaudeville in New York, for royalty and mingling with the literry elite in Europe. Using extensive diaries in conjunction with letters, interviews, and other sources, Bunny McBride reconsrtructs Molly's story and sheds light on the pressure she and her peers endured in having to act out white stereotypes of the "Indian." Paper, 1995, 287pp.

This is a fascinating reflection on the life of an accomplished public historian through a series of oral history interviews conducted by her author/historian granddaghter. It is an amazing story that illuminates the real joys and real struggles of one woman's life in Maine during the twentieth century. The author deftly crafts the story with historical narrative, quotes from her grandmother, memoires from other informants, and her own reflections. Paperback, 188 pages.

We know who drove in the rivets on airplane assembly lines during WW II. But what about World War I? Who assembled all those fabric-covered biplanes? Who shaped and filled the millions of cartridges that America sent over to the trenches of Europe? Who made the gas masks to protect American soldiers facing chemical warfare for the first time? Before Rosie the Riveter and Wendy the Welder of WW II fame, this book introduces us to the women of an earlier generation and their valuable contribution to the war effort during WW I. Black and white photographs throughout. Paperback. 240 pgs.

Women from all over the country came to New Orleans in 1884 for the Woman’s Department of the Cotton Centennial Exposition, that portion of the World’s Fair exhibition devoted to the celebration of women’s affairs and industry. Their conversations and interactions played out as a drama of personalities and sectionalism at a transitional moment in the history of the nation. These women planted seeds at the Exposition that would have otherwise taken decades to drift southward. This book chronicles the successes and setbacks of a lively cast of postbellum women in the first Woman’s Department at a world’s fair in the Deep South. From a wide range of primary documents, Miki Pfeffer recreates the sounds and sights of 1884 New Orleans after Civil War and Reconstruction. She focuses on how difficult unity was to achieve, even when diverse women professed a common goal. Such celebrities as Julia Ward Howe and Susan B. Anthony brought national debates on women’s issues to the South for the first time, and journalists and ordinary women reacted. At the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, the Woman’s Department became a petri dish where cultures clashed but where women from across the country exchanged views on propriety, jobs, education, and suffrage. Pfeffer memorializes women’s exhibits of handwork, literary and scientific endeavors, inventions, and professions, but she proposes that the real impact of the six-month long event was a shift in women’s self-conceptions of their public and political lives. For those New Orleans ladies who were ready to seize the opportunity of this uncommon forum, the Woman’s Department offered a future that they had barely imagined. Paperback. 267 pgs.

Fanciful, frilly, and fascinating women's hats made a fashion statement. There were hundreds of choices available each season - with names like Leghorns, Gainsborough's, poke bonnets, and wide-awakers! This coloring book will change the way you view your old family photos. You'll learn about the colors popular for 19th century hats and head wear for men, women, and children. Color pencil suggestions were matched to those colors seen in actual 19th century engravings. Paperback. 40 pgs.

This series of short biographies of notable women ranges over centuries and cultures, from fifteenth-century writer Christine de Pizan, who imagined a world in which women achieved power and influence, to the writings of nineteenth century suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and twentieth-century novelist Virginia Woolf. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Laurel Ulrich updates de Pizan’s Amazons with stories about women warriors from other times and places. She contrasts Woolf’s imagined story about Shakespeare’s sister with biographies of actual women artists who were Shakespeare’s contemporaries. She turns Stanton’s encounter with runaway slave upside down, asking how that story would change if the slave rather than the white suffragist were at the center. She uses daybook illustrations to look at women who weren’t trying to make history but did. She also celebrates a renaissance in history inspired by amateurs, activists, and professional historians. Paperback 320 pages

One of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest friends and the first female secretary of labor, Frances Perkins capitalized on the President's political savvy and popularity to enact most of the Depression-Era programs that are today considered essential parts of this country's social safety network. More than a biography of an extraordinary woman, it is a window into another time through which we are able to observe the birthing pains of reforms we now take for granted. Paperback. 458 pgs.

Winner of the Moonbeam Children's Book Award, the book introduces the reader to remarkable Maine women such as Margaret Chase Smith, Dahlov Ipcar, Martha Ballard, Louise Nevelson, Molly Ockett and many others. Ages 9 and up. Paperback. 136 pgs.