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Hunting, Harvesting & Homecooking on the Bagaduce Way Back When
The public is invited to come and share or hear some favorite memories about how people filled their larders and their tummies. Topics may include but will not be limited to hunting, canning, and favorite recipes from the past. People are encouraged to bring old photos and samples of goodies as well. Refreshments will be served, and admission is free. The Bagaduce Watershed Association will help with carpooling for those who can use a ride or would like to save gas. Back by popular demand, this is the fourth program in the "Way Back When" series. For more information contact: Wilson Museum 326-9247, or BWA 326-0966.
Images of Women in European Ice Age Art: From the French Caves to the Russian Plains
Randall White is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for the Study of Human Origins at New York University and one of the leading specialists in the study of paleolithic art and personal adornment. White was one of the first to recognize the evolutionary importance of personal adornment and its critical role in the organization and demographic expansion of modern humans. His research in this area has taken him to various museums and sites from France to Russia. He recently published the lavishly illustrated book: Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind (New York: Henry Abrams, 2003).
Members' Reception
The Old Stone Age - 500,000 to 11,000 Years Ago Exhibit Opening & Reception For Members & their Guests Sunday, June 22, 2008, 5:30 p.m. RSVP by June 15th
Plein-Air Painting & Drawing Workshop
For more information call 207-249-8210 or email barbmallonee@verizon.net
Eastern State Normal School Alumni Annual Reunion
Eastern State Normal School began in Castine in 1867 as a training school for teachers. Seventy-five years later members of the class of 1942 were the last to call themselves ESNS graduates. The school buildings became part of the Maine Maritime Academy complex, while the Wilson Museum has become caretaker to a collection of memorabilia from the School's many years of history. The alumni have been holding reunions since 1875.
Eastern State Normal School Alumni posed for a group photo. Alumni and their guests enjoyed a lovely luncheon and toe-tapping entertainment by Ellacapella.
Fireside Cooking
Ellenore and Grace Tarr are 13th generation descendants of early settlers of this area. The girls and their mother have been cooking on the hearth at the John Perkins House for the last four summers.
Highlights from Wilson Museum Textile Collection
During several visits to the Museum, Lynne has conducted an in-depth assessment of the Museum's textile collection. She will display and highlight some items that she has found to be noteworthy including a beautiful candlewick embroidered bed cover dating from the early 1800s and some stunning earlly-20th century lady's party dresses.
To see a full listing of businesses and events: http://castinemerchantsassociation.com/celebrate/Events.html
Native American Music - Hawk Henries Native American flute maker and musician Hawk Henries will perform Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 3 p.m. at the Wilson Museum, 120 Perkins Street in Castine.
Music can tame beasts and bridge gaps between cultures and peoples. As a member of a northeastern Algonquian tribe called the Nipmuc, Hawk is a believer in living in tune with his ancestors by carrying on a tradition of creating handcrafted flutes and original musical compositions. Through his programs to student and adult audiences, Hawk also uses his music, stories and humor to teach tolerance and celebrate the diversity of humanity.
Yankee Brass Band
Begun in 1986 the Band is renowned for performing music from Lincoln's era (1840-70s) in an authentic style and on original instruments. Such attention to detail earned several members of the Band a place in the production of the PBS Civil War series. Members of the Yankee Brass Band are from all over the country. They are from all walks of life including engineers, doctors, teachers, professional musicians and other enthusiasts, as did bands of the past.
Civil War Medicine Encampment & Presentation
***Notice - this program cancelled due to illness 7/22/08***
Gettysburg is considered to be one of the worst medical disasters in the history of the U.S. Military according to "Dr." Celli. He will describe the organization of the the medical service from the standpoints of both the North and the South. He will "illustrate" his talk with his collection of rare tools and instruments including those used by Dr. Thomas Frye of Rockport, Maine. Michael Celli is a Regimental Surgeon with the rank of Major in the 20th Maine Infantry Volunteers re-enactors. In his 21st century life he has served as mayor of Brewer and is currently serving his third term as Brewer City Councilor. Along with his speaking and re-enacting activities, Celli is on the Board of Directors for the Brewer Historical Society and the Friends of Fort Knox.
Eighteenth Century Encampment
What started as a homeschooling project six years ago has turned into a passion for the whole family. Father Matthew has contributed to the encampment with his carpentry skills; daughters Tina, April and Robin have sewn their own costumes; and The Davis family lives and homeschools on the island of Sunshine.
African Masks and Art Objects as Communication Tools
Oscar Mokeme is a native-born Igbo from southeastern Nigeria. He is an Igbo healer, practicing traditional healing rituals, and is also the founder and director of the Museum of African Culture in Portland, Maine. The Wilson Museum's anthropological collections include objects from Africa and around the world.
Opening Reception for exhibit Friends of Elizabeth O'Malley: Sketches & Paintings
Animals of Uganda: Their Faces and Their Stories and Long-time summer resident Johanna Sweet will present two programs about her recent three-week visit to Uganda. The programs are sponsored by the Wilson Museum, the Castine Arts Association and the Witherle Memorial Library.
Both programs are free to the public; however, donations will be gratefully accepted and will benefit the Kasiisi School Project, which includes school improvements and scholarship support. In addition, craft items from Uganda and fabric from the Congo will be on sale; proceeds to support the School Project as well.
Basic Gravestone Restoration Workshop
As a result of this workshop, the gravestones of the Robert Perkins family will be repaired and straightened. Robert Perkins was the son of John and Phebe Perkins of Castine. John was the original builder of the Wilson Museum's John Perkins House. Robert and his wife Miriam started a home on Perkins Street which is now the administrative offices of the Museum.
The photo on the far right shows the process of straightening and resetting a stone during the workshop and the photo to the immediate right shows Robert & Miriam Perkins's stones after the workshop.
Pickles and Preserves
Sandy will make simple pickles with cabbage, cucumbers, green beans, and radish pods. She will preserve cream (as butter), discuss drying, cellaring, storing and demonstrate fruit preserves, and tell about the "social refrigerator" where many families kept fresh meat in hot weather. Sandy Oliver began her involvement with food and food history in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. She is the author of Saltwater Foodways and the publisher and editor of www.foodhistorynews.com, a website for anyone interested in food history. She and her husband reside on Isleboro.
Early Northeast Prehistoric Pottery Workshop
Charles Paquin studied at the University of Vermont with Dr. William Haviland (now of Deer Isle, Maine) as well as leading archaeological ceramics experts. For more than 25 years he has undertaken fieldwork on historic and prehistoric sites predominantly in the northeast.
We built pots, learned to throw spears with an atlatl, flaked stone tools.
We cut our food, learned to make fire without matches, and began firing our pots.
Before Champlain: Indians on Penobscot Bay
People living between the Kennebec River and the St. John River called themselves Etchemins, meaning "real people," as opposed to animals, monsters, and other people. William Haviland is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Vermont. He has done archaeological and ethnographic work in Belize, Guatemala, Maine and Vermont. A resident of Deer Isle, Professor Haviland is President of the Island Heritage Trust.
Caring for Leather & Fur: The Basics
Julia Clark has a background in anthropology, archaeology and museum studies and is the Collections Manager at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. Last year she participated in a Leather and Fur Workshop given by the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies in Mount Carroll, Illinois.
Concert: Castine Town Band
In the late nineteenth century Castine's Town Band was a proud contributor to patriotic events and summer evening entertainments. Revived in 1998 by a group of like-minded musicians, by 2004, the Town Band was recognized as one of the top four municipal bands in Maine. Membership in the Band is open to players of all ages and talent. It is a fine blend of locals, retirees and summer people who have one common interest - playing in the Town Band.
The Castine Deposit: A Numismatic Rosetta Stone
In 1799 the Rosetta Stone was discovered in the Nile Delta containing inscriptions in three ancient languages. After twenty-five years of study, scholars were able to understand previously undecipherable Egyptian hieroglyphics. The term "Rosetta Stone" is now applied to any model that helps unlock mysteries. While the Castine coin deposit, one of three early coin recoveries from the New England area, has helped explain many aspects of the currency of colonial America, its origin, owner, and hasty burial are still shrouded in mystery.
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| A non-profit organization, tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) IRS Code 120 Perkins Street, PO Box 196, Castine Maine 04421 (207) 326-9247 info@wilsonmuseum.org |
The exhibits show the evolution of tool-making from 450,000 to 10,000 years ago, as well as representative selections of fine tools from the Lower, Middle, and all stages of the Upper Paleolithic. Featured are some of the earliest European human body ornaments - tiny beads in bone, ivory and shell from 35,000 years ago. Also displayed are Solutrean points and blades of exquisite workmanship in an array of subtly colored flints (circa 22,000 to 17,000 years ago) and fine Homo erectus biface hand axes (circa 350,000 years ago). One special exhibit shows all the stages of making small sewing needles from a piece of Alpine hare bone.
The display of artifacts is enhanced by photos and letters showing how Dr. J. Howard Wilson, geologist and founder of the Museum, acquired these collections. Visitors may even see the actual hat he wore while digging and collecting in France in 1903. As many European Paleolithic artifacts and documents were destroyed during the World Wars, this is a unique opportunity, not only to view a world-class collection, but to get a glimpse of the people and places which made a collection such as this possible. We are delighted to present these treasures of human history and collecting to public view.
Food - Glorious food! The Wilson Museum and the Bagaduce Watershed Association (BWA) will offer an afternoon of reminiscing about food to be held at the Emerson Hall, Court Street, Castine, Sunday, January 27, 2008, 2:30 p.m. (Snow date: February 3, 2008). Community members who have lived in the Bagaduce watershed (Brooksville, Castine, Blue Hill, Sedgwick, and Penobscot) area for one or more generations will share stories about hunting, harvesting and homecooking that they or their parents, uncles, aunts or grandparents did way back when.
The Castine Arts Association and the Wilson Museum will present Dr. Randall White of New York University speaking on "Images of Women in European Ice Age Art: From the French Caves to the Russian Plains." The talk and slide show will be on Thursday, April 17th at 7 p.m. in the Mitchell Room of the Castine Historical Society. All are invited and admission is free.
The Wilson Museum has invited Professor White to examine the Museum's paleolithic collections and offer recommendations. He will also consult with guest curator Dr. Riva Berleant on the Museum's new exhibit entitled "The Human Journey Begins: The Old Stone Age in France - 500,000 to 11,000 Years Ago." 
Spend three days (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) painting & drawing Downeast on Penobscot Bay, in Castine, Maine - a beautiful little town on the coast which dates back to its beginnings as a trading post in the early 1600s. The Wilson Museum overlooking the harbor is the homebase from which the class will "paint the town."
Leader Barbara Mallonee, has been painting in Castine, on and off neck, for over 40 years. Her work in oils, watercolors & pastels are in corporate and private collections in this country and abroad.
Eastern State Normal School Alumni will hold their annual reunion, hosted by the Wilson Museum, in the Harborview Room at Maine Maritime Academy on June 28, 2008 beginning at 10:30 a.m. Following luncheon will be a business meeting, then Ellacappella, an a cappella women's group, will provide entertainment. Reservations for lunch required 326-9247.
Founded in 2003, Ellacappella is made up of women from the Penobscot Bay area who perform, without accompaniment, favorite songs from the 1930s to contemporary pop music. Members of the group include: Bundy Boit (second alto), Jessica Booth (second soprano), Marilyn Brossmer (second alto), Lisa Chase (first soprano), Anne Donaghy (second soprano), Cara Guerriri (first alto), Nancy Hatfield (second alto), Karen Milliken (first soprano), Bonnie Myers (first alto), Joyce Newkirk (second soprano, director), Sherry Pfister (second soprano), Janet Simpson (first alto), and Priscilla Wiggin (first soprano). 
As you punch in the seconds on the microwave oven in your twenty-first century kitchen, have you ever wondered how our ancestors cooked in large open fireplaces and what kinds of foods they prepared? The kitchen of the John Perkins House will be the venue for such wonder when Joyce Tarr and her two daughters demonstrate fireside cooking: July 9th, 13th & 16th and August 6th, 10th & 13th, from 2-5 p.m. This historic home is located at 120 Perkins Street in Castine and is part of the Wilson Museum complex. Guided tours are $5 per person; visitors will enjoy some tasty morsels from the day's fare.
Lynne Bassett, textile consultant, will give an extemporaneous lecture showcasing a range of vintage garments and beautiful bed covers of the late-18th century to the mid-20th century from the Wilison Museum's collection on Thursday, July 10th at 3 p.m. at the Wilson Museum, 120 Perkins Street, Castine, Maine.
Lynne Zacek Bassett is an independent museum consultant and author specializing in New England's historic costumes and textiles. A former Curator of Textiles and Fine Arts at Old Sturbridge Village, Lynne now consults and lectures at historical societies and museums including Colonial Williamsburg, the Smithsonian Institution and the Winterthur Museum. 
The Castine Merchants Association presents a five-day series of events to be held Friday, July 11th through Tuesday, July 15th. The purpose of "Celebrate Castine" is to thank the community for supporting our businesses.
As one of the participating organizations, the Wilson Museum will have its entire complex open all five days from 2-5 p.m., including tours of the Perkins House and demonstrations in the Blacksmith Shop.
As our nation embarks upon the bi-centennial of Abraham Lincoln, the Wilson Museum is proud to inaugurate the celebration in Castine by hosting the Yankee Brass Band on Wednesday, July 23rd at 6 p.m. This is a free outdoor concert on the Museum's grounds at 120 Perkins Street - bring a chair or blanket and enjoy!
If you would like to hear a sample of the Yankee Brass Band, click on the following link: 
Civil War enthusiast, Michael Celli will camp out at the Wilson Museum, 120 Perkins Street, Castine, Maine, Wednesday and Thursday, July 23 & 24, as well as giving a presentation on Civil War Medicine and the Aftermath of the Battle at Gettysburg on Thursday July 24 at 3 p.m. To add authenticity to his encampment, Celli will portray a battlefield surgeon and have on display period tools and equipment.
The Davis family will set up camp 1790s style on the grounds of the John Perkins House, 120 Perkins Street, Castine, Maine on Saturday and Sunday, July 26 & 27, from 2-5 p.m. each day.
Mother Sherry has even taken a blacksmithing class. Join the family as they cook over their campfire and explain to visitors about re-creating a camp as it might have been in the years following the Revolution.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a mask can speak volumes according to Oscar Mokeme. African drumming, with chants and a masquerade that bring a spirit mask to life, will highlight a lecture entitled "African Masks and Art Objects as Communication Tools," Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 3 p.m. at the Wilson Museum, 120 Perkins Street in Castine.
A Maine native, Elizabeth O'Malley studied art in Portland and Boston, beginning her artistic career creating greeting cards and fashion plates. Over time her work evolved to include semi-abstract art and natural landscape, however portrait painting became her bread and butter. A resident of Castine from 1968 to 2004, she has now retired from active artistic pursuits and resides in Penobscot.
The first program, Animals of Uganda: Their Faces and Their Stories will take place on August 12th at 7:30 p.m. at the Wilson Museum, 120 Perkins Street. It is suitable for ages five years through adult. As part of a cross-school exchange Ms. Sweet visited Uganda and went on safari in Queen Elizabeth National Park. She will share pictures and impressions of the land and wildlife she witnessed. Drawing on her skills as a storyteller, Ms. Sweet will weave a variety of African folktales into her program.
The second program, Uganda: Classroom to Safari will take place on August 21st at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Parish Hall, across the green from the Library. This program will be of greater interest to older children and adults. 
It will examine the contrasts in this lush and beautiful country, focusing on the progressive exchange that began ten years ago between the Kasiisi Primary School near the Kibale National Forest and the Weston Public Schools in Weston, Massachusetts.
Gravestones are a rock-solid connection with the people of our past. Some of these stones, however, are showing the ravages of time and need help. The Wilson Museum, in conjunction with the Castine Cemetery Association, will host a Basic Gravestone Restoration Workshop with Jonathan Appell on Saturday, August 16, 2008, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Castine Cemetery off Court Street. This is a free workshop and attendees are invited to participate in the resetting of a sunken and/or badly leaning stone, cleaning a stone, and rejoining a broken gravestone.
Jonathan Appell, who refers to himself as a "Monumental Mason," is an independent gravestone conservator from Connecticut working throughout the United States performing gravestone conservation training workshops and cemetery preservation projects.
Putting food by for winter was an absolute necessity in the early eighteen hundreds. Sandy Oliver will give a demonstration of these techniques in the historic John Perkins House, part of the Wilson Museum complex on Perkins Street in Castine, Wednesday, August 20th from 2 to 5 p.m.
A three-day hands-on workshop exploring prehistoric pottery and other "primitive" activities will be held at the Wilson Museum, 120 Perkins Street, Castine, Maine on August 25, 26 & 27 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day. Here's a chance to become immersed in another time as Charles Paquin, experimental archaeologist, leads the participants in building pots, making tools used in pottery decoration, fire starting and pit firing of the pottery - even cooking in earthenware pots. Other primitive technologies discussed and tried as time permits may include: making and using basic stone tools, making cordage from natural fibers and spear throwing with an atlatl. Registration for the workshop is required by August 18th.
The original inhabitants of Penobscot Bay will be the subject of Professor William Haviland's slide show and talk entitled "Before Champlain: Indians on Penobscot Bay" to be held Wednesday, August 27th, 3 p.m. at the Wilson Museum, 120 Perkins Street, Castine.
Over time, alliances formed and reformed as a result of political, economic and/or social events. Professor Haviland will summarize the forces affecting the peoples who called Penobscot Bay their homeland during several thousands of years, up to the time when Champlain and other Europeans arrived.
Collectors and families with leather and fur garments or objects will learn tips and techniques for their care at a workshop given by Julia Clark, Thursday, August 28, 2008, from 1-4 p.m. at the Wilson Museum, 120 Perkins Street in Castine.
The beautiful grounds of the Wilson Museum on Perkins Street, on the shore of Castine Harbor, will be the location of an outdoor concert by the Castine Town Band, Friday, the 29th of August, at 6 p.m. This is a free concert, so bring a chair or blanket and enjoy!
Dr. Philip Mossman will explore what a cache of coins hidden in the Castine area in our long ago colonial past can reveal about world currency as well as the local economy of the time in a talk entitled "The Castine Deposit: A Numismatic Rosetta Stone," Saturday, September 13, 2008 at 3 p.m. at the Wilson Museum, 120 Perkins Street in Castine.
Dr. Mossman began his numismatic career at the age of 12 by collecting every sort of coin he could. Though he became a medical doctor and specialized in rehabilitation of stroke victims, Dr. Mossman continued to pursue his interest and research into colonial coins. He has written numerous papers and articles including the 1993 American Numismatic Society publication, Money of the American Colonies and Confederation, A Numismatic, Economic and Historical Correlation. 