Wingate Clock

Letter from Gov. Barrows

In this undated letter, Governor Lewis O. Barrows explains the history of the Blaine House.  The letter is also signed by Margaret Blaine Damrosch and Harriet Blaine Beale, James G. Blaine’s daughters. Like Blaine, Barrows was a Republican. He was the governor of Maine from 1937 through 1940.

MSM 79.40.68

Plaster Bust of Lord Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6^th Baron Byron, known as Lord Byron, was a British Romantic movement poet in the early 1800s.  The town of Byron, Maine is named after him and was incorporated in 1833, nine years after his death. This bust dates to the Blaine family’s occupation of the house.

MSM Unnumbered

USS Maine Silver Set

Gorham Silver made this set of serving dishes for the US Navy in 1895. Matthew Nicholson, in the employ of jewelry firm Henry P. Lowell of Augusta, engraved the set.  In the late 1800s, the Navy commissioned silver for each captain’s quarters. Maine had been a “dry” state (where liquor was not allowed) since 1851. The story is told that, although the ship had no direct affiliation with the state of Maine, the Navy commissioned a soup tureen and two vegetable dishes rather than a punch bowl for the USS Maine in acknowledgment of this. In fact, however, Navy ships were also “dry” at the time the silver was commissioned.

The USS Maine blew up in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, setting the stage for the Spanish-American War. The silver was recovered from the wreck of the ship, cleaned, and repaired. The Navy sent the tureen and vegetable dishes to the State of Maine together with a silver loving cup with antler handles that Mainers living in New Orleans had given to the captain of the Maine a few years before the explosion. In the 1990s, the Navy commissioned the nuclear submarine USS Maine (SSBN741A).  At that time, the Navy donated this silver set to the people of Maine. The new Maine sails with the loving cup with antler handles.

MSM 79.40.84.1-.3