This week, teams from three communities–Surry, Strong, and Swan’s Island–will come to MHS for Maine Community Heritage Project (MCHP) orientation. This day-long training will prepare them to spend the coming year researching their town history, developing their capacity to collaborate and share resources, and create new websites on Maine Memory Network.
The town of Guilford participated in the last round of MCHP, unveiling a multi-layered website in May, 2010. Early Manufacturing, one of the team’s five main exhibits, explores Guilford’s proud history of creating valuable products–and the jobs that go with them.
The first lines of the exhibit tells us that “from the earliest days when the first trees were felled, crude cabins erected and gardens started, Guilford residents have been noted for their industrious nature. This characteristic continues today, nearly 200 years later, as little Guilford is home to more jobs than any other town in Piscataquis County.”
Written by town manager, Early Manufacturing not only chronicles the history of Guilford’s various industries, but places them in the larger context of Maine’s, and the nation’s, manufacturing past. And, in fact, reminds us that not all manufacturing in Maine is past.
This exhibit is just one of 100 or so created by MCHP teams over the past several years. What great resources for the new teams to use as they manufacture their own websites in the coming year.
Maine Historical Society Blog 