Events at Member Institutions

Did you ever wonder about the history of your house?  When was it built and by whom?  Did George Washington or Abraham Lincoln sleep there?  We will discuss how to utilize existing land and other records to reconstruct the past of your house and learn about past occupants.  Included will be an overview of the registry of deeds and other sources, strategies for identifying and extracting pertinent information and tips for dealing with “stone walls” and other problems.

Our speaker, Richard Bridges, is a Maine native and a graduate of the University of Maine and the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law.  He has been a practicing attorney since 1983, concentrating on real estate and probate law.  He also serves as an Adjacent Instructor at Central Maine Community College and as a research consultant for the Augusta Historic Preservation Commission.

The Kennebec Historical Society January Presentation is free to the public (donations gladly accepted) and will take place on Wednesday, January 18, 2017, at 6:30 p.m. at the Lithgow Public Library, Community Meeting Room, located at 45 Winthrop Street in Augusta. ​  

The Polar Express™ returns for another season of magical memories at the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad!  The fun begins at the Ocean Gateway Visitor Center, which serves as our train depot for this event. Holiday decorations inside the train add to the festive atmosphere as guests on board meet the Conductor, enjoy hot chocolate and cookies served by hot chocolate chefs, and listen to a reading of the story as they journey to the “North Pole.” Santa greets children aboard the train while passengers sing along to carols as they travel back to the train station. All tickets for this event are sold through PortTIX (www.porttix.com).  Early reservations are strongly encouraged as tickets often sell out.   

The Polar Express™ is the largest annual fundraiser for the museum – thank you for your support! 

Most of our birds are migratory. They come and go and you must be on the alert to see them at the right time and place.  Most of our flowers have only a brief blooming period.  You must look for them at a certain time of year if you wish to find them in all their beauty and fragrance.  But the trees we always have with us.  With them there is no hurry. They stand there summer and winter, year in and out, in all kinds of weather.  Many have been standing for more than a century.  This presentation is to introduce them and rouse the observer’s interest to the large, breathtaking trees around us.  We are fortunate to have two “National Champions”, the largest of a particular species in all the United States.  Maine has more than 160 different kinds of trees.

If you look at a group of 100 trees in a small area, you will see at least 10 different species.

Our presenter, Duane Prugh, graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in Electrical Engineering.  He is now a semi-retired computer consultant.  For the past 15 years, he has been teaching at several of Maine’s Senior Colleges, taking local seniors on field trips to explore dozens of these sites.  There is so much to see in our own state, and his goal is to get our senior students out of their homes for day trips to explore sites in Maine that most people don’t know exist.  

The Kennebec Historical Society December Presentation is free to the public (donations gladly accepted) and will take place on Wednesday, December 14, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. at the Augusta City Center, located at 16 Cony Street in Augusta. ​  

Autumn is a beautiful time of year along the coast of Maine! Enjoy the beauty of the season with a ride aboard the Pumpkin Train at the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Co. & Museum.  The Pumpkin Train takes place October 22nd & 23rd and October 29th & 30th.  Children can explore the museum and paint a miniature pumpkin to bring home as a souvenir of the day. All visitors are treated to complimentary hot cider and cookies. Regular Admission Fees Apply.  The museum is open from 9:30am to 4:00pm with trains on the hour.

Think America's current political situation is someone else's fault?

Think Again!

On Saturday, October 22nd at 7 pm and Sunday, October 23rd at 2 pm, the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine's program director David Greenham will present a compelling new monologue, written by Mike Daisey, called "The Trump Card" at the Michael Klahr Center.

The show tells the story of Donald Trump's rise from businessman to presidential candidate.

Click Here to get your tickets today!

A film in progress about the production, consumption, and history of racist collectibles

by Chico Colvard

6;30PM-10:00PM: Reception, film, and live webchat with the filmmaker.

Wednesday, October 19th, 2016 at 

SPACE Gallery - 538 Congress Street, Portland

Free to the public, cash bar

Street parking available

Watch the trailer here. 

For more information, contact susie.bock@maine.edu

The Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine [HHRC] presents the 2016 Pride Film Festival, scheduled for Fridays in October at 7 p.m. at the Michael Klahr Center.

In honor of LGBT History Month, the Pride Film Festival encourages inclusion, discussion and celebration of the LGBTQ+ community in central Maine. The HHRC will be screening four films that made a unique impact in LGBTQ+ film history and leading an audience discussion after each one.

The festival begins on Friday, October 7^th with the showing of The Boys in the Band (1970). Noted as a milestone for its unbiased focus on the average lives of American gay men, The Boys in the Band features a group of friends enjoying a birthday party until the arrival of some unexpected visitors and a drinking game cause more harm than good. This film is rated R with a run time of 1 hour 59 minutes.

The film slated for Friday, October 14^th is Fire (1996). An Indian-Canadian romantic drama that sparked a dialogue about homosexuality and freedom of speech throughout India, Fire was written and directed by Deepa Mehta. Heavily protested at its release in India in 1998, the movie tells the story of Sita and Radha who find safety from the cruelty of their husbands in each other’s arms. Fire is unrated with a run time of 1 hour 48 minutes.

The film on Friday, October 21^st is the powerful documentary Paragraph 175 (2000). Alongside Jews, gypsies, and other “undesirable” community members, homosexuals were persecuted during the Holocaust. Paragraph 175 features testimony from several gay individuals, arrested for the crime of homosexuality by the Nazis during WWII in accordance with The German Criminal Code. From May 15, 1871 to March 10, 1994, Paragraph 175, also known as Section 175, stood to criminalize homosexual acts between men; the Nazi regime expanded that law, leading to the imprisonment and death of thousands. This film is unrated with a run time of 1 hour 21 minutes.

To conclude the festival, the HHRC will screen The Danish Girl (2015) on Friday, October 29^th. This Academy Award-winning film is based on the true story of Einar Wegener, a young artist who begins the process of transitioning to Lili Elbe after realizing that she has always identified as a woman. Set in the 1930s, The Danish Girl tells the story of one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment surgery. This film is rated R and has a run time of 2 hours.

The HHRC’s Pride Film Festival is free to attend, open to the public and refreshments are provided.

All films will be shown at the Michael Klahr Center, located at 46 University Drive in Augusta. For more information visit www.hhrcmaine.org/pridefilms2016 or call (207) 621-3530.

The Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine [HHRC] in partnership with the Kennebec Valley Art Association [KVAA] present Equal Protection of the Laws, an exhibition featuring the work of 17 Maine artists inspired by the rights granted by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The exhibition is the result of a call to artists to respond to the important themes of the 14^th Amendment including: due process, liberty, gender and sexuality, race, legal protections, equality in the workplace, housing, education, law enforcement, rights of the incarcerated, tolerance, and local, state, and federal representation.

Equal Protection of the Laws: America's Fourteenth Amendment, featuring 36 original works, runs through Friday, December 16^th at the Michael Klahr Center on the campus of the University of Maine at Augusta, 46 University Drive, Augusta, Maine 04330. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., or by appointment. Admission into the Klahr Center is free and it is open to the public.

This exhibit has been made possible with funds from the Maine Humanities Council, the HHRC, and the University of Maine at Augusta. In addition, the project has received support from the KVAA, the Maine Arts Commission, and several individuals.

In this talk, maritime historian Lincoln Paine will use the history of the Kennebec River as a lens through which to examine Maine and American history since the pre-Columbian period. Examining the different ways that people have approached the Kennebec over time provides us with a new way of reading and understanding the history of the United States and its people. Abenaki culture was deeply informed by the way that people related to the Kennebec, which also helped shape patterns of exploration and settlement by early European settlers and the subsequent commercial and industrial development of the late colonial and post-independence period.  While the Kennebec has often been viewed in terms of its importance to navigation—both for shuttling goods and people between the hinterland and the sea, as well as for shipbuilding—it has also been a source of industrial power, a conveyor belt for the lumber industry, a source of harvested ice, and latterly a showcase for environmental restoration.  In this respect, the many uses of the Kennebec offer a periodization of history that affords us a more nuanced appreciation of how Maine and the United States developed. 

Lincoln Paine is a maritime historian, author, editor, and curator whose books include the award-winning The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (2013), Down East: A Maritime History of Maine (2000), and Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia (1997).  He is also an editor of Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction.  In 2012, he curated “Triumph of the Passenger Ship: Highlights from the Norman H. Morse Ocean Liner Collection, 1870–2010,” at the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Research, University of Southern Maine, in Portland.  He has lectured on a wide range of maritime and naval topics in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia.  A graduate of Columbia College, he spent fourteen years as a non-fiction and reference book editor and currently specializes in editing academic writing by non-native speakers of English.  He is a trustee of the Maine Maritime Museum. He and his wife, Allison, live in Portland and have two grown daughters.

The Kennebec Historical Society October Presentation is free to the public (donations gladly accepted) and will take place on Wednesday, October 19, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. at the Augusta City Center, located at 16 Cony Street in Augusta.​  

The story of Maine’s Historic Bridges is more faceted than you might think.  Why are bridges located where they are?  Who built them?  Why do they look the way they do?  Amanda Taylor, Architectural Historian, will provide a presentation based on the publication Historic Bridges of Maine: 350 Years of Bridge and Roadway Design.  She will discuss the unique ways in which Maine’s bridge builders overcame geography and environmental influences to provide travel throughout the state.  The talk also showcases several specific historic bridges in Maine and detail how their builders chose creative solutions to difficult crossings and how technology changed design and construction.

Our speaker, Amanda Taylor, is an Architectural Historian for Kleinfelder, an international engineering and architecture firm with an office in Augusta.  In recent years, she has documented historic resources related to the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge in Kittery, Masse Saw and Grist Mill in Vassalboro, and Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad Freight House in Belfast.  She has spent much of the last four years completing historic resource surveys throughout Maine.

The Kennebec Historical Society Annual Meeting Program is open to the public and will take place on Wednesday, September 28, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. at the Viles Arboretum, located at 153 Hospital Street in Augusta.​  The public program will be preceded at 5pm by a potluck supper and at 6pm by the society’s annual business meeting.  Any members that wish to attend the potluck supper are invited to bring a dish to share.  Please note that the Annual Meeting program is not the society’s monthly program.