Making "bean-hole-beans" at the Common Ground County Fair, Unity, Maine, 1999. Part of the documentation in Maine's Local Legacies Projects.

Maine

The collections of the American Folklife Center contain rich and varied materials from Maine that document the diversity of the state's folk traditions. Among its rarest materials are the first wax-cylinder field recordings, made in 1890 of Passamaquoddy Indian music and tales in Calais. There are also maritime and lumbering traditions; oral histories from Aroostook county; and African American Baptist services. The Center conducted the Maine Acadian Cultural Survey in 1991, which documented the ongoing traditions of the Acadian people of the northernmost regions of the state. The documentary material created during the project, including thousands of photographs and hundreds of hours of interviews, has been incorporated into the collections of the Folklife Center.

Collections

Finding Aid: View a complete list of our Maine collections.

Local Legacies: This project provides a "snapshot" of local culture as it was expressed in the year 2000. View Maine's Local Legacies projects.

Veterans History Project: Browse state collections from the Veterans History Project.

Additional Resources

Educational Resources: View a list of educational materials related to Maine from A Teacher's Guide to Folklife Resources.

Folklife Resources: Find state folklife-related agencies, societies, archives, higher education programs, and more, in Folklife Sourcebook: A Directory of Folklife Resources in the United States.

Field Research Project: 1991 Maine Acadian Cultural Survey. [catalog record] [finding aid]

Publications: Report on The Maine Acadian Cultural Survey. [available in the Folklife Reading Room]

"The Teamster in Jack MacDonald's Crew: A Song in Context and Its Singing," Folklife Annual 1985. [catalog record]