Maine State Museum June Roundup

June 2024

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The Latest...

Trial and Error - Testing a Switchboard Game

Museum educators are testing a new game that will replicate the experience of working as a telephone switchboard operator.

The Lunder Education Center will feature the magneto switchboard from Bryant Pond, which had the last hand-crank phone system in America. The museum is thrilled to show off this beloved object and story!

Testing at Waterville Public Library

Operators connected phone calls, helped with a wide range of tasks, and were the glue that held the community together. This new game follows a fictional day in the life of an operator who is helping with a local emergency. Education Center visitors will be able to plug in cables and connect phone calls on a simplified version of a switchboard.

Museum educators traveled to libraries across the state to experiment with the game. Testing ensures that the game will make sense to people of different ages and backgrounds. Thanks to everyone who has provided input!

Testing at Skidompha Public Library, Damariscotta

The Man with the Eyepatch Finds Home at the Museum

Waterville’s C. F. Hathaway Company was not only Maine’s, but America’s, oldest and last major shirt manufacturer when its factory permanently closed in 2002. In 2023, the Maine State Museum received dozens of Hathaway shirts, photographs, and the company archives.

Hathaway factory, Waterville. Maine. c. 1967

The shirt-making business that Charles Foster Hathaway began in the parlor of his Waterville home in 1854 grew to an international corporation by the late 1900s. Hathaway became a player in the international market in 1951 with its Man with the Eyepatch advertising campaign. That simple addition of an eyepatch on male models transformed a standard shirt ad into one brimming with allure and mystery. Hathaway shirts flew off shelves, doubling sales in five years. The campaign lasted until the 1980s with various celebrities sporting the eyepatch.

Ultimately, the Hathaway brand fell to changing fashion that favored casual styles, lower costs, and a corporate quest for higher profits. The Maine State Museum is grateful for the recent donation of Hathaway materials and the chance to keep this influential company’s story alive.

Click here for the full story

Good Dog, Bruno!

Bruno’s Dog License, 1877. MSM 2023.53

Jabez Knowlton, Newburgh, Maine

Photo courtesy of the Bangor Public Library

The early Maine dog license pictured at left was issued March 5, 1877, one week before Maine’s “Dog Law” went into effect.

Newburgh, Maine store owner Jabez Knowlton paid the standard fee registering his dog Bruno, described as a light yellow dog with black hairs on the upper part of his tail. You can imagine Bruno lazing in the sun at the Knowlton family store as he waited for pats by all who came by.

Virginia is credited with issuing the first U.S. dog license in 1853. By 1877, Maine had followed with a stringent law aimed to prevent loss of livestock and damage to property by stray and wild dogs. Under the new “Dog Law”, a one-year license to identify and protect Maine’s canine residents cost $1.20 ($37 modern equivalent) of which $1 was paid to the town treasury and .20 to the town clerk. The license fee covered the cost of damages and provided a small financial boost to town economies.

Rarely enforced and facing criticism, the law was repealed and amended a year later allowing towns the option of licensing.

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