GREAT CRANBERRY ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Newsletters

Great Cranberry Island Historical Society
Museum Memos
Volume 2 Summer 2002
Marjorie Phippen
Marjorie Phippen working at the Ladies Aid.  Photo from the Maine Times,
Summer 1984 issue.

 July 20 Quilt Show
The Great Cranberry Island Historical Museum celebrates its third season this year with a new summer-long display highlighted by a free Quilting Talk and Exhibit on Saturday, July 20, at 1:30 p.m.

Guest speaker Evelyn Beaulieu, Director of the Center for Adult Learning and Literacy at the University of Maine, Orono, will present a talk entitled "Women You Should Know in the History of Quilting."  She will also explain, "How to Read a Quilt."

Complementing the talk, museum chairman Charlotte Harlan has collected a sampling of quilts made on Great Cranberry Island by Marjorie Phippen and others.  Marjorie, who died last March at the age of 97, was postmaster here for many years, and was also active in the Ladies Aid Society.  The exhibit highlights quilts by Marjorie as a special tribute to her.

Even if you miss this event, please visit the museum's summer-long display, "Crafts, Then and Now," featuring examples of all the island's crafts: Indian sweetgrass baskets, carvings, quilts and handwork, pottery, decoys, and ship models from the 1900s to the present day.

 

Don't forget!
GCIHS Annual meeting
with a special
video program
Thursday, August 15,
7:30 p.m.
at the Church		 Additional Quarters!
The Cranberry Isles School Board has granted the Society's request for use of the unused schoolroom in the Longfellow School, which we will share with the Library.  This new space allows us to expand our exhibit area and create a new Community Multimedia Center.

Multimedia Center Now Open!
Thanks to hard work last winter, the Great Cranberry Island Historical Society's dream of a "Community Multimedia Center" has now become reality.  The center aims to offer "big city" print, audio, and video media services to local individuals, groups, and businesses, without having to leave the island.

The idea for the center originated with the need for equipment to update the Historical Society's publications capability, and to energize the museum with audiovisual exhibits, enlivening the existing displays of artifacts and captioned photos.

The Community Multimedia Center is installed in a corner of the museum's new room.  It consists of a powerful new computer with word processing, music, and realtime video editing capability, plus a scanner, high-speed color laser printer, video projector, VCR, and DVD player.

The equipment is to be managed by the Historical Society, but shared for use by all Cranberry Isles groups and individuals.  A volunteer will be on hand to help any comers make color copies, signs, documents, print-on-demand bound publications, video tapes and DVDs, and music CDs.  All this without going off the island, to help conserve energy and sanity.

The new equipment was purchased through grants of $4550 from MBNA and the Island Institute, and a donation of $2000 from the Cincinnati Stock Exchange in memory of Fred Moss.  Your memberships and contributions helped refurbish the room and obtain necessary accessories, supplies, and programs.

 

Cranberry Road cover Check out our new publications

"A Taste of Cranberry"
by Susan Michalski

and

"Cranberry Road"
by Wini Smart		 Taste of Cranberry cover

 

 

Archival Workshop Held
On July 1st & 2nd the Historical Society held an Archival Workshop.  A grant from the Maine State Humanities Council let us hire a professional archivist, Martha Harmon of Ellsworth, to come and instruct us in preserving and cataloging our holdings.

With permission from the Board of Selectmen, Phil Whitney, Bruce Komusin, and Owen Roberts carried down old Town records that were disintegrating in the Longfellow School's third floor attic.  Documents as old as from the early 1800s were rescued and inventoried.

Louise Strandberg, Georgie Ware, Charlene Allen, Judy Whitney, Janet Roberts, Phil Whitney, Bruce Komusin, and Wini Smart all attended this workshop.

The Museum will institute a finding aid and cross reference cataloging system for all our historical documents and artifacts.