Museum Roundup
News & Updates from the Maine State Museum
February 2022
Black History Month Highlights Discoveries and Insights
No matter what famous person appears in textbooks and museum exhibits, history is really made up of countless people who contribute every day to the shaping of a particular time’s stories. In honor of Black History Month, this issue of Roundup highlights some of these people who touched Maine’s past - from the Civil War’s Corps d’Afrique, to a woman who brought messages of equality and reform to small town Maine, to a college football player also known as a powerful orator..
The Latest...
Football Player to Pastor - Bates College Student Featured in MSM's Collection
Black and white portrait photograph of a young African American man in a suit and bow tie.
MSM staff members recently came across this portrait of Thomas Bruce taken in 1898 during his senior year at Bates College. The Bates athletics department recently featured Bruce alongside other Black student-athletes in the college's early years.
See What You Missed!
Last month, the Annual Meeting of the Friends of the Maine State Museum celebrated some Remarkable Maine Women and some exciting developments at the museum. 

Tune into the 50-minute program, which took place on January 20 and included MSM Director Bernard Fishman, Archivist Zach Selley, and members of the Critique Group at the USM Kate Cheney Chappell Center for Book Arts. 
Lectures and Kindness - Frances Watkins Harper in Maine
While researching the story of Maine suffrage recently, museum staff uncovered the fascinating story of Frances Watkins Harper (1825-1911) and found an unexpected glimpse into a moment of Maine’s past. 

Born in Baltimore, Frances Watkins Harper was the only child of two free Black citizens. She left Maryland to become a teacher, published poet, and anti-slavery lecturer. The Maine Anti-Slavery Society hired her as a lecturer in 1854.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
In her role, Harper traveled all over Maine, speaking in towns from Monmouth to Limerick and beyond. “I have met with some of the kindest treatment up here that I have ever received,” she wrote. “And if you could see our Maine ladies, some of them among the noblest types of womanhood you have ever seen!”

After leaving Maine in 1855, Harper became a nationally known writer, poet, and lecturer while working for reform movements such as Black suffrage. She was warmly welcomed back to Maine after the Civil War, when she lectured on suffrage and temperance. 
Maine Men and the Corps d'Afrique
Special Orders from March 29, 1864. From the collection of Colonel Isaac Dyer 15th Maine Infantry Regiment. Colonel Dyer brought this document back to Maine in 1866.

MSM 2020.65.2
African American soldiers played a critical role in the Civil War, and there were men from Maine who worked with "colored troops" in defense against Confederate forces. The military orders shown here relieve two soldiers from duty: Sergeant Fredrick Barnard of Calais, and Private Alexander McFayden of Portland, who returned to the 15th Maine after working alongside the 2nd Engineers, Corps d’Afrique.
 
Organized at New Orleans, August 15, 1863, the 2nd Engineers, Corps d'Afrique was one of 39 regiments of Black soldiers from Louisiana in the Union Army. Although regiments were segregated, soldiers of different races were stationed in the same areas and sometimes worked together. The 15th Maine was stationed with the Corps d’Afrique on Matagorda Island, Texas. The Corps served garrison at Fort Esperanza and engineer duty on the Matagorda Peninsula.
 
After Union troops withdrew from the island in May 1864 the 2nd Engineers actively served throughout the Gulf region. They joined the siege against Fort Gaines and Morgan, the campaign against Mobile, Alabama and its Defenses, and the siege of Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely. Only a few days after this order was written, the designation of the 2nd Engineers was changed to the 96th Infantry, US Colored Troops on April 4, 1864.
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