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Publication Date

12-1-2009

Document Type

Article

First Page

4

Last Page

14

Abstract

“If preservationists are to be true to the insights of a broad, inclusive social history encompassing gender, race and class . . . it means emphasizing the building types — such as tenement, factory, union hall or church — that have housed the working people’s everyday lives.”1 This article introduces a special issue of Maine History on the state’s paper industry and particularly the fortunes of the Eastern Fine Paper Company in Brewer. The mill, which closed in 2005,was an economic and cultural mainstay of this Maine town, and in this article MacDougall and Stevens trace the history of a unique project that documented, from a variety of perspectives, the closure and its effect on the lives of the people who, for generations, had worked and lived in the mill community. Pauleena MacDougall is director of The Maine Folklife Center and faculty associate in Anthropology at the University of Maine. She received her Ph.D.in American history from the University of Maine in 1995 and has published widely on Penobscot Indian language, culture, and history, including The Penobscot Dance of Resistance: Tradition in the History of a People (University of New England Press).Amy Stevens, a lifelong Brewer resident, received her M.A. in history from the University of Maine in 2007 and worked for the Old York Historical Society, the Maine Folklife Center, Primary Source, and the American Folk Festival in Bangor, researching topics of special interest to Maine schools and Maine curriculums. She teaches elementary school.

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