Q: Besides being Mainers, what do Edna St. Vincent Millay and a handful of Sebago Civil War soldiers have in common?
A: They are both subjects of recently unveiled grant projects by organizations that received 2011 Maine Memory Network Community Mobilization grants.
Edna St. Vincent Millay around the time of her graduation from Camden High School, ca. 1909.
Camden Public Library used an MMN Digitization Grant to scan, catalog, and, in the case of several letters, transcribe about 30 items from its rich Edna St. Vincent Millay collection.
Millay, who was born in Rockland but raised in Camden, was good friends and classmates with Corinne Sawyer, librarian at CPL in the 1930s. She amassed an extensive collection of newspaper clippings, photos, and letters related to her famous friend.
Parts of the collection are also being cataloged by the Library of Congress through the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections.
Meanwhile, well south and west of that coastal community, the Cumberland County town of Sebago celebrated the completion of its multi-part Home Ties: Sebago During the Civil War exhibit.
Civil War soldier Charles Weed’s Certificate of Disability, 1862
Presented to the community at a Memorial Day celebration, the exhibit tells the stories of four Sebago families during the Civil War, largely through their letters from soldiers home and vice versa.
Sebago Historical Society received the online exhibit grant in conjunction with Spaulding Memorial Library; the team painstakingly transcribed close to 60 letters and other text-based documents for the exhibit.
(RE)LIVING HISTORY 