Maine Centennial Parade Floats 1920
In 1920, to mark the occasion of one hundred years of statehood, festivities blossomed across the state of Maine, including a multi-day extravaganza in Portland. The Historical Floats Parade, held on Monday, July 5th, 1920, was a highlight of the celebration, with well over a dozen floats that represented “an immense moving picture, as it were, of events in Maine’s history.” (Boston Herald, June 29, 1920)
No expense was spared, with some of the floats costing up to $1,200 (that would be about $15,000 in 2020). The majority of the floats were designed by the New York firm of Messmore & Damon, Inc., a company that also designed and built exhibits for the 1933-34 World's Fair in Chicago (Century of Progress Exhibition), and both New York World's Fairs (1939-1940 and 1964-1965). Joseph Damon (1882-1962), one of the firm’s founders, painted preliminary sketches for some of the parade floats.
These sketches wound up in the hands of Fred H. Gabbi, Business Manager of the Maine Centennial Committee, who included them in a scrapbook he compiled about the Centennial. (Credit for the scrapbook should go, though, to Georgia Fales, secretary for the Centennial Commission, as it was she who performed the heroic task of cutting, pasting, and labeling hundreds of newspaper clippings). The scrapbook, a two-foot high behemoth, is held in the collections of the Portland Public Library. Glued to the top corner of many of the paintings are the black-and-white reproductions and accompanying captions that were printed in the official program of events.
We hope you will enjoy this selection of images from the scrapbook. The sketches for the floats reflect the attitudes of their time, in some instances revealing outdated perspectives and a decidedly Caucasian, Eurocentric outlook. The picture of Maine’s history that they paint is not the picture that today’s historians, artists, and float designers will paint. What will Maine’s tercentenary celebrations look like?
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Painted Sketch for "Admitting Maine to the Union, 1820" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
On March 3, 1820, Maine became the 23rd state in the Union. This float depicts Columbia placing a star for Maine on the flag. Columbia was the female personification of the United States. The float was contributed by Portland's theaters, including B.F. Keith's Theatre and Empire Theatre.
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Painted Sketch for "Early Marketing in the Town of Falmouth" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
The Portland Company, the Thomas Laughlin Company, and the Maine Electric Company were among the sponsors of this float which show a farmer leading a two-wheeled, oxen-driven cart.
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Painted Sketch for "Hannah and Rebecca Weston" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
In June of 1775, Hannah Weston, 17 years old, and her sister-in-law, Rebecca, also a teenager, carried 30-40 pounds of gunpower and lead on foot through sixteen miles of woodland between Joneboro and Machias. They delivered the ammunition to the residents of Machias who had engaged the British ship "Margaretta" in what is considered the first naval battle of the American Revolutionary War.
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Painted Sketch for "Longfellow" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
This float shows the Portland-born poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, sitting in a chair. At the back of the float are life-sized books bearing the titles of two of his famous works, "The Children's Hour" and "The Village Blacksmith." Several children walk out of "The Children's Hour" and head towards the poet, while a blacksmith stands at the entrance to the second book.
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Painted Sketch for "Lumbering Attracts Immigration" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
When Europeans first arrived in the state we now call Maine, Maine's trees were harvested for masts for the English navy. After the American Revolution, lumbering operations expanded in response to the new nation's demands for wood products. Many Canadians crossed the border to work in the woods during the winter season.
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Painted Sketch for "Pioneers of Arookstook" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
In pencil at the bottom of the painting is the caption, "Settlers starting a home in 180-" [the final number of the date is cut off.] The description accompanying the illustration in the Centennial Program notes that "The settlement of Aroostook began in 1839." The county was organized in that year, but the story of white settlement on Wabanaki tribal lands is, of course, much longer and more complicated than that.
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Painted Sketch for "Popham building a fort at Sagadahoc" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
In 1607, under the leadership of George Popham, about a hundred men and boys sailed from England and landed at the mouth of what is now known as the Kennebec River, where they built a fort and a few other buildings. The colony disbanded about a year later. Sagadahoc is an Abenaki word meaning "river mouth."
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Painted Sketch for "The Dawn of Discovery - John Cabot Spying Land" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
In 1497, John Cabot, explorer and navigator, set sail from England, under the aegis of King Henry VII, in search of a shorter route to Asia. He landed somewhere on the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, and planted the English flag, thus marking the beginning of English expansion overseas. This sketch depicts Cabot and his sons on board a ship.
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Painted Sketch for "The Visit of the Vikings" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
Medieval Norse sagas contain accounts of Viking journeys to mainland North America. Long after this float was created, archeologists in the 1960sunearthed evidence of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
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Painted Sketch of "The Mobilized Humanity of the World" Parade Float
Joseph A. Damon
More than a hundred Red Cross units were active in the state, carrying out peacetime activities that included public health nursing and providing classes for new Mainers. In this sketch for the float, a Red Cross worker stands in front of a giant Red Cross, with ribbons streaming down to the women marching alongside. The float was contributed by the American Red Cross.