The Fifth Maine Museum is partnering with the Victorian Mansion, the Maine Historical Society, the Osher Map Library, and Greater Portland Landmarks to provide a one-week Portland Explorers Camp.
This is a great chance for your 9-12 year old to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of the amazing historical places around Portland and learn by doing. This camp will visit a new site each day and campers will get a chance to do exciting activities led by curators and museum staff — cooking, photography, arts and crafts, and field trips.
The cost is $250 for members of any of the sponsoring organizations, and $300 for non-members.
Enrollment is limited, so sign up now by scanning this QR code:
Call or email Stacia Hanscom at Victoria Mansion for more information:
shanscom@victoriamansion.org or 207-772-4841, ext 104.
The Fifth Maine Museum is hiring an Operations Manager to assist with Board of Directors with administrative duties.
Basic Details:
Date Posted: 2/15/2023
Applications due: 3/15/2023
Date Needed: 5/1/2023
Location: Peaks Island, ME
Primary Category: Administrative
Salary: $20/hour
Type of Position: Part-time
Experience Requirement:
The ideal candidate will have 1-2 years experience in organizational or corporate communications, managing staffing schedules, and/or coordinating a rental venue.
Description & Details:
This is a part-time, hybrid-remote position for a small, seasonal history museum. The position requires approximately 20 hours/week from May-September, and approximately 10 hours/week from October-April.
The position can be fully remote from November-March, partially remote otherwise. Candidates must be able to support the museum in-person, as needed, June-September. Some evening and weekend hours will be required to support private events and fundraisers.
Duties & Responsibilities:
- The Operations Manager will report directly to the museum’s President of the Board of Directors.
- Communications Support: Candidate will support the President of the Board in preparing and issuing member newsletters, thank you letters, membership drive, and annual appeal fundraiser.
- Facility rental coordination: Candidate will coordinate rental of the museum facility for small private events, corporate off-site meetings, and evening programs. Candidate will promote the facility as an event venue. Candidate will order cleaning and office supplies as required.
- Fundraising event support: Candidate will support the President of the Board in organizing several fund-raising events during weekend hours June – September.
- Docents/Guest Services Associate Management: Candidate will create and manage schedule for museum staff and volunteers. Candidate will promote and support evening programming June-September. Candidate will submit weekly payroll for museum staff.
Requirements:
- Candidate should be comfortable with technology platforms for publishing communications, tracking donations, managing staff, and tracking payroll.
- Excellent communication skills.
- Preference given to candidates already familiar with:
Google Drive
Word / Excel
Past Perfect
Signup Genius
- Minimum education requirement is an associate degree. Preference given to candidates with a degree in business administration, museum studies, or history.
- Upon being hired by the Fifth Maine Museum, new employees are required to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Work Conditions:
The Fifth Maine Regiment Museum is an oceanside, Queen Anne-style shingle “cottage” located on Peaks Island in Maine (accessible only by ferry from Portland), built in 1888. It is a rare survivor from the Civil War reunion era, a unique piece of American history. Today, the building houses the Fifth Maine Museum, a museum that tells two intriguing and related stories through objects, artifacts and exhibits: the story of the Fifth Maine Civil War Regiment and the history of Peaks Island–from its early settlement, to its days as the “Coney Island of Maine,” to its role during World War II and beyond.
The Fifth Maine Museum is also an active community center, hosting dozens of community events each year for local non-profits and organizations.
The museum is open Friday, Saturday, Sunday from Memorial Day through the end of June, and again from Labor Day through Indigenous People’s Day. It is open every day of the week during July and August. Opening hours are 10am-3pm.
Physical Requirements:
The museum was built in 1888 and is not fully ADA-compliant – the office on the second floor is only accessible by stairs. However, the dining room on the lower level can also be used as an office since Wi-Fi is located throughout the building.
The museum is located about 0.5 miles from the ferry landing and can be reached by walking or using the island taxi service that is available at the ferry landing.
How to Submit an Application:
Please send your resume and two references to: fifthmainemuseum@gmail.com before March 15, 2022.
Candidates will be contacted via email to arrange virtual interviews conducted between March 20th and March 31st.
Candidates will be notified of the Board’s hiring decision by April 15th.
Here’s the results/comments
The museum received a terrific new acquisition today! The circa 1790 Henry Trefethen family desk returned to Peaks Island, a gift from Trefethen descendant, Charles Blackman. A group of board members and other volunteers safely moved it into the building where it is now on exhibit. Come take a look!
The desk was used by the Trefethen family on House and Peaks Islands, and possibly on Monhegan Island before leaving for the mid-west in 1946. We’re happy to welcome it back to Peaks!
Our excellent team of movers!
Donor Charles A. Blackman and fellow Trefethen descendant Reta Morrill.
Even before the “official” start of the 2019 season, the Fifth Maine Museum hosted seven school field trips. Local students ranging in age from fourth grade through twelfth enjoyed the combination of a ferry boat ride and an engaging museum visit.
Backpacks piled up outside the museum’s front door.
Several of the Fifth Maine Museum board members and our curator, Holly Hurd-Forsyth, have experience as museum educators, and they do a terrific job of providing age-appropriate content to the students.
Board member Dick Macguire encourages visiting high school students to investigate the artifacts in the displays around the main hall.
The younger students tend to focus on three or four “cool” items in the collection and are always interested in the view off the porch. For older students, actually seeing the items described in their text books (such as kepis, haversacks, or hardtack) helps to define days gone by. It’s an eye-opening experience.
The battle flag was a big hit with the fourth and fifth graders.
Board member Peter Bridgford commented that the learning isn’t a one-way street. “In reading the names etched into the windows, the kids and I noticed many duplicate last names – names of brothers or cousins. It dawned on me that the Union Army of 1861 was slightly different than the army of today that is recruited from all over the country. The young men in each Company of the Fifth Maine Regiment would most likely have come from the same place. These soldiers would have grown up together and probably knew each other before the war. We talked about how losing a fellow soldier in battle must have really affected the young men – it really hit me.”
Peter Bridgford explains the Fifth Maine Museum’s iconic stained glass windows.
Almost all classroom field trips share a couple things in common – lunch on the porch and a class picture on the steps. Classroom teachers that are interested in coming to the Fifth Maine Museum for a field trip can find out more details here.
Lunch with a million dollar view!
The Fifth Maine Museum steps have been in thousands of photographs over the years!
Change is afoot in the temporary exhibit room at the Fifth Maine Museum. Our extremely popular post card exhibit has been dismounted to make room for our new Peaks Island in the 1970’s exhibit, which opens on June 21, 2019.
The exhibit will feature some never-seen-before artifacts and pictures from daily life of islanders in the 1970’s – from ferry strikes to artist studios to sports teams and new stores.
So be sure to visit our new exhibit! It will be installed through October 2020!
And if you missed our postcard exhibit, you can still check it out – we’ve installed a few of the reproduction postcards in our restrooms.
The new exhibit poster features the finish line of a round-the-island race during the 1970s
The Fifth Maine Museum’s new exhibit, Peaks Island in the 1970s: Building a Community, opened to rave reviews during Peaks Fest. The exhibit displays previously unseen pieces from the museum’s collection, as well as photographs and objects borrowed from community members who lived on Peaks Island during the 1970s.
The new exhibit poster features the finish line of a round-the-island race during the 1970s
Holly Hurd-Forsyth, Fifth Maine Museum curator, says that the exhibit goes beyond nostalgia.“The 1970s was a time of action on Peaks Island. Many of the island organizations that are in existence today were founded during the 1970s,” says Hurd-Forsyth. The Peaks Island branch library was founded during the 1970s as well as a parent-led childcare cooperative that evolved to become the Peaks Island Children’s Workshop.
Among the islander contributions is a scrapbook of newspaper articles from Reta Morrill. The articles document the numerous captains’ strikes that plagued Casco Bay Lines at the time and the islanders’ concerns about ferry service disruptions and bankruptcy throughout the 1970s. These problems led to the formation of the Casco Bay Island Transit District through emergency State legislative action in 1981.
Bill Hall, president of the board of directors of the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum, says the close-knit Peaks Island community has embraced the exhibit. “The Fifth Maine Museum is committed to preserving and showcasing Peaks Island history, even recent history. We continue to add to our collection and rotate artifacts in and out of display so that visitors can see 
something new each season,” says Hall.
We’ve got some good news and some bad news.
Fifth Maine Museum roof seen from overhead.
The bad news is that the roof of the Fifth Maine Museum, which is nearing the end of life, continues to degrade. Several roof patching attempts can be seen in this overhead shot of the building.
During the 2018-2019 winter, roofing shingles allowed some water damage to develop in one of our upstairs storage rooms. In response, the Board of Directors has launched a “Raise the Roof” campaign to fund the re-roofing of the entire building during the fall of 2019. After soliciting several bids, the building committee reports that the project will cost approximately $75,000.
An overhead shot of the conical roof on the turret of the Fifth Maine Museum
Roof damage led to a water leak in an upstairs storage room.
Now the good news! Board member, Perry Sutherland, has submitted several grant applications to help fund the project. He recently received news that the Davis Family Foundation will provide $10,000 and the Casco Bay Islands Alliance will provide $1,500. Fundraising efforts will continue throughout the summer of 2019. Watch this space for more details!
Thank you to both the Davis Family Foundation and the Casco Bay Islands Alliance! And thank you to our superb grant writer, Perry!!