Palermo, Sicily!

These paintings of the port of Palermo in Sicily, prominently feature the lighthouse on the Mole or large pier. The Mole Harbor was capable of holding a great number of vessels. Ships kept their sterns close to the pier to protect themselves from the winds rushing through the valley of Conca d'Oro, on which Palermo stands surrounded by the rocky promontory of mountains stretching from Cape Zafarana to the south and Point Mangerbino to the north. The inner port was reserved for the use of the Arsenal, a low flat roof building originally the site of a shipyard, but later as a munitions depot and the prison for galley slaves.

Barkentine FLORENCE GENOVAR of Waldoboro, Maine with Capt. Marcellus Veazie with his wife Sabrina and son Maurice entering the port of Palermo 1884, watercolor by Joseph Monasteri, 1884. PMM#2001.8.1.1

The promontory of Mount Pellegrino, with a zig-zag path up its face, looks over the Mole Harbor to the north of the city, as seen in the ship's portrait of the FLORENCE GENOVAR. To the right of Mount Pelligrino, is the village of Arenella, with a tower at the farthest point of land in the FLORENCE GENOVAR portrait.

Brig EUGENIA of Bangor, Maine under the command of Marcellus Veazie entering Palermo, watercolor by unknown artist, 1875. PMM#1992.7

The portrait of the EUGENIA looks south over the lighthouse, Mole, and city of Palermo along the mountains to Mount Catalfano near Cape Zaffarana.

Palermo derives its name from Panormus, meaning all-harbor, and is situated on the northwest coast of Sicily. The Conca d'Oro, or Golden Shell, is a fertile plain known for its citrus. Other exports were olive oil, sumac and sulfur. The CLYTIE of Searsport exported sumac and sulfur on her 1867 voyage. The VESUVIO of Castine, carried fruit box shooks (bundle of wood for making fruit boxes) from Bucksport to Palermo to box the citrus in 1896.  

Brig CAROLINE EDDY of Brewer, Maine provisioning list, 1877. PMM 32-1061

Anyone who can read Italian is asked to please help us translate this list of provisions brought aboard at Palermo for the CAROLINE EDDY's voyage back to St. Thomas in 1877. The usual food and provisions such as rice, tobacco, potatoes, type of meat, coffee, etc. seem to be included.  If you think you can help, contact Curator Cipperly Good at 207-548-2529 ext. 212 or cgood@pmm-maine.org.

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Photos from the PMM archive get used in a multitude of ways, most typically to illustrate books, articles or websites. We had a first last month when one of our photos was used as backdrop for a theater production. Steve Knox of the Lakewood Theater Company in Lake Oswego, Oregon requested a photo of  Main Street in Bar Harbor  to be printed on a giant canvas to be used as the backdrop of their production of Inherit The Wind . Steve was kind enough to send us a few photos of it in use during the performance.

In 2016 we received an amazing collection from Mary Jane "MJ" Phillips Smith of Ellsworth. She donated the archives of her father Augustus "Gus" Phillips and uncle Luther Phillips. The Phillips Brothers had a postcard and map business based out of Northeast Harbor. The collection consists of thousands of postcards and the 35mm slides used to make them as well as more than 25 different decorative maps of Maine, which I have been told decorated every camp in the state in the 1950s & 60s. The collection is being processed by volunteers Cathy Jewitt (MJ's niece) and Ben Meader, a cartographer. Cathy and Ben accompanied me to the Maine State Archives to enlist the help of Peter Mallow, their imaging specialist, to digitize the maps. It was an exciting day that even included a tour of the archives. Peter used the Archives' amazing high resolution digital camera, which can easily handle the large maps, to create digital files for PMM's archives. These digital files will also allow us to reproduce the maps and offer them for sale. We have some available now. Check them out  here.

Belfast, ME Depot

A few weeks back I was alerted by one of our supporters that someone had listed a few Eastern Illustrating negatives for sale. I reached out to the seller and learned that he had nearly 100 Eastern negatives of trains and train stations primarily of Maine locations. I was able to negotiate a reasonable price per negative and then began looking for help to find the $2500 needed to make the deal. Thanks to three generous supporters I was able to quickly raise $1500 toward the total and are looking for help for the rest. This is a particularly exciting find and the images are amazing! Can you help?

 

Hanson and Cassens clan

Sometimes one of our small collections can be one of our most interesting. We have recently added one of those to our on-line database. The photographs were donated by the great-grandchildren of the man from Belfast who is the subject of the collection:

 

He was born in Lincoln in 1853 and as a young man he farmed,

	Edgar F. Hanson and the pony

went to sea and was a general laborer on the railroad after moving to Belfast. With his savings, he started a company to manufacture carriages where he was manufacturing as many as 300 carriages per year and doing $36,000 a year in business, a remarkable amount in a small

Edgar F. Hanson

town. With the money he made on that enterprise, he invested in Dana's Sarsaparilla as one of the owners and the manager. Later he managed the Nutriola Co. of Chicago and was indicted in the US courts on several counts for sending obscene matter through the mails, and was sentenced to one year in Joliet penitentiary and fined $5000. The conviction was later overturned as having no merit by The U. S. Circuit court of Appeals in Chicago.

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