1872 and the little town of monson in central maine has a big problem problem. The town has bounced from the fire that swept through its downtown destroying many of the buildings. In 1860 and its from the trauma of the American Civil War the civil war ended just seven years earlier in. 65 more than 10 of townspeople served in the civil. And at six of them died. The problem, even as the town of monson celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding is that so many of its young people are moving away. In the census of 1870, monson was listed as having hundred and four residents. 604 out of curiosity, how many of you are from places with more than 604 residents . Show of hands. Virtually everyone. How many of you went high school with more than 604 people . Again, virtually everyone. Monson was a tiny place and that that every departure every person who moved away from home hurt their absence was noted. In 1872 when townspeople gathered to celebrate turning 50. The speaker at the event tried to put a good spin on things, but he admitted, quote, this emigration of citizens and especially of the young seems, discouraging. Its worth noting that this was not new in new england. Young people been moving away from home for centuries in settled parts of new. Often, if were not the child who inherited the family farm you had to move away to find land and the frontier of maine was becoming of the places that people moved to. This map is from about 1820. Ive marked location of monson, maine with the star and. I love this map in part because it shows just little was known about the interior of maine. In 1820. Monson would be founded there two years after this map was created. Theres plenty of information about Coastal Maine, but virtually nothing about interior of the state. This was truly the nations northern frontier. In 1820, monson were part of a tidal wave of movement in the first half of the 1800s. During first half of the 1800s. Almost half of all americans crossed state boundary to change residence. Almost half of all americans crossed state boundaries to change residence. This was one of the if not the most mobile period in American History. In previous classes, weve talked about the majority of settlers who headed west, but a Smaller Group moved onto the northern frontier. Monson was, founded in 1822 by settlers from massachusetts sets and Southern Maine who came pushing north into the ancestral homeland of the wabanaki people. And this map shows you the division of that land. Wabanaki land into townships. So ill point out a couple of things. You can see monson circled on the left. Its been divided between. Two educational institutions, two schools, Hebron Academy and monson academy. Hebron academy was located in hebron, maine, southern and monson academy. Monson, massachusetts, and perhaps youll note some of the other educational institutions who have been given granted by the legislature. Townships, Bowdoin College williams college, the massachusetts medical society. This was a common practice. The legislature here would grant townships would grant on the frontier to educational institutes or philanthropic societies. They could then sell off that land to individual settlers and use the proceeds to pay expenses. Also note how close monson is to the center of the state of maine. And you can see at the very top of the map the efforts of, the state of maine to fix the wabanaki people in place on land reserved for indians. Now lets fast forward 50 years back to 1872, where we started monson existed because. People had been willing to pick up roots and relocate. Now in 72 the town was considered ground because so many of its residents were leaving home and. Monson was not alone. Many places throughout the united were confronting the same problem. Some rural people were moving west into the far west or midwest in search of farmland. So rural people moving to new rural areas. But others were leaving rural life entirely. This was a trend that had gained in the 1840s and never stopped. Youre looking here at data from the Us Census Bureau and this data shows some important things about american in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I want to get your thoughts about stands out in this census information. Whats noteworthy who has some comments what this shows us american life. Yes lexa. Please. Theres a very direct linear trend that as more people move from rural to urban. Every ten years, it seems to be twofold. Excellent. Thank you. Yes. Is he. So . So the trend that i noticed is that it actually starts to show the industrial in the United States. So it kind of shows the increase of middle class, because when you become middle citizen, they typically move towards more urban areas. So you can see that as rural decreases, increases, which kind of shows the rise of probably jobs increasing in those urban areas. And theres the lack of need to work on farms. Excellent. Thank you. Let me just highlight couple of things and thank you for those good comments. One, until 20. Most americans were rural people. They lived in the countryside. So if you want to understand the 19th century american experience, you have to understand the rural experience. But as was just pointed, a big part of that experience is the steady movement, people into the city. Now actually in hard numbers, rural population increasing. But can see that rural people as a percentage of overall American Population is declining and is declining decade by decade by decade. We know that many rural people, especially the ambitious young people, were moving to the cities. Historians of midwest have described a pipeline from farms to the cities by. The end of the 1800s. I should note that rural was defined by the Us Census Bureau during this time as any place fewer than 2500 residents. So these were truly small places, places like monson, maine. This could terribly hard for the people who remained behind. Just think about it. Its hard enough living in a college town like harrisonburg where every year people that you care about graduate and leave and dont come. How rude, how thoughtless. But at least here, thousands of new people up every year to you. Not that they can, but here they come every. Imagine what it would be like if every year the seniors graduated and went away and no freshmen ever came to take your place. One historian has argued that population loss, especially the of young people to cities or to the west, raised fears among some rural easterners that not just their town but their way of life was fading. It was clear that cities were increasingly culturally powerful in shaping tastes and fashions and values. Additionally, over the previous few decades, the differences between the city and the country and the differences between city people and. Country people had been. So let me just give you one way in which this takes place. Urban historians have shown that during the years before the civil war there were many animals and significant agriculture in major american cities. For example, in 1820, there an estimated, by one estimate at 20,000 hogs living in the settled portions of manhattan. 20,000 hogs roaming the streets of manhattan. Thats one hog for every five people. And was the case hogs roaming through the streets of the city rooting freely until in the middle decades, the 19th century middle class gentrifiers began to restrict urban in the name of health. Last week we studied the rising and the growing inequality year of the gilded age. The last few decades of the 1800s as the United States on a grand scale after the civil war. Cities amassed more and more economic clout. They became economic hubs, for example, rural people could now buy urban goods through the mail. Last week, on sunday afternoon, i ordered two books on amazon and they showed up at my doorstep the next day. It was almost as if jeff bezos was standing outside my house just ready to give me whatever i. Thats impressive. But its worth noting that sears got their first based in chicago. You could order by mail an incredible variety of merchandise from the city that made its way into the country. Some urban struck by economic clout of and new york compared their relationship with rural areas to the relationship between an Imperial Capital and its colonies. City people many of them by the way, born and raised the countryside began to popularize negative stereotypes of country people. Some stereotypes that we still recognize today. Heres a cartoon was published in a new york city magazine in 1890. It imagined what would be the case if rural people elected a country person as president of United States. We talked week about the growing political activity of people in the countryside, the farmers. The populist party. What negative stereotypes of country people do you see in this image. What you notice. Tiffany tiffany. I mean they dont look like really refined, like on the top. You can see a guy whittling a stick. His like feet are up on the table. I mean, we dont exactly picture that as professional now so i cant imagine they would have thought that it was professional back then. These people are not fit to wield political power yet here they are. And the caption reads the great political future of the farmer. A glance ahead to the time when the hayseed runs the government. Has anyone ever heard the slur hayseed used for a person this term, this insult for a country person was coined . As far as we know. In 1851, in novel moby , he is the author of the novel moby. Moby. Anyone know. Herman melville. Herman melville. You and where is he from. I dont know. New york city. Herman melville. New york city has seen a provincial a rustic urban. People had many putdowns they could use to mock rural people. So we know of a couple others that have been used for centuries. Bumpkin hick, urban americans began to use hick and as an adjective as well as in that guy is from a hick town. And they invented a new insult for country people. Rube, during the 1800s. But it went both ways. Last week we talked about the populist movement. I showed you this cartoon country people back with their own about city people. You can see it happening in this cartoon where the populist movement that urban fat cats were exploiting hardworking people. Country people came up with insulting nicknames for city people. We still use some of them today. If i were to ask you, whats name of someone from . The city. Who goes out into the countryside and sticks out like a sore, doesnt have the knowledge or the skills to survive in the country. What would you call that kind of a person . Is he, you know, just a city slicker . Thats exactly that term, that insult for urban folks was first used that we know in indiana in the early 1900s. Many americans of this time thought of urban, rural as a dichotomy, fundamentally different and even competing in things. And we still do, dont we. Heres a cartoon from just a few years ago. That is quite similar to the populist cartoon i just showed you. Urban california is depicted elitist, demanding grabby grabby, given to us. Your water, your bountiful harvest, exploiting the hard work of farmers and other rural people people. Our political conflicts in the United States often seem to map on to the urban, rural divide. This is familiar, right . Red state Republican Associated its own distinctive rural way of life, its own culture. Opposing blue democratic america with its own distinctive urban. And know from recent survey data that Many Americans, whether in the country or the city, feel misunderstood or dislike, worked by people from other kinds of places. So heres survey data from the pew research. And it says that. 3 of urban americans feel that their communities are looked down and misunderstood by people in other types of communities. The same is true for 56 of rural people and suburban guys dont feel as looked down or misunderstood. 70 of rural people say most people who dont live in same type of community as them dont understand. The problems that they face. In light of all you might think that rural people always responded and defend actively to the growing power cities. Difference were multiplying. There was resentment and distrust. But in the rest of todays class i want to show you another of the relationship between city and countryside. In the late 19th century, historian have shown that it is misleading to only focus on the tensions and the conflict. There also a symbiotic relationship between city and countryside. We that for example in this book the historian William Cronin which explored how chicago and western rural places remade themselves by together to globally desirable commodity is like grain, lumber and, meat. So as grew sparking concerns about rural population and the decline a rural way of life. Many rural people realized that cities might help them solve their problems. Looking at all of those numbers that i showed you earlier might seem to suggest that decline in the countryside was in. Decade by decade. Cities rise rural fade. But as you know in this course we are trying throughout American History to read history forward in hindsight right. Most developments seem inevitable right. Because they happened. But when we step back into the shoes of rural people. In 1870 or 1900, when read what they wrote and tried to see the world through their eyes, we often a surprising degree of optimism about their ability to use urban resources for their own purposes. And this actually moved beyond the rural urban division to across other supposed oppositions such as local and global rural people often drew creative lean on outside resources of all kinds to strengthen local rural places. They learned how to weave the fabric of locality from as as indigenous materials. Now we could look in many places to see this happening. But i want to focus on how it all played out in the small town where we began today of monson, maine. Why . Monson good question. A few more people lived in chicago than in monson, but. Until 1920. More people lived in places like monson than in places like chicago. Still, there were thousands of small towns across the United States. Why this particular small town . The short answer is that i care personally much more about this particular small town than i do about those thousands of other small towns. Theres nothing very special. Monson, maine. From an academic point of view which is actually helpful for studying broader developments in american rural life. This was not an unusual place so it can open a into changes other similar small rural places. But for me theres a lot this special about monson from personal point of view because is the place where i spent first 18 years of my life. This is my hometown. Included in this 1889 lithograph, this birds eye view of monson are, the house where i grew up, the church on main street that my father. The lake where i learned how to swim, not very well. I failed. Swim lessons. Thats another story. The shop my brothers and i bought penny and the where i went camping with my parents and where now live. I know the mean streets of mt. From firsthand experience. Yep. Thats me in the center. On the bike i got for my birthday. And no. You are not seeing on right. Is my identical twin brother on his identical bike dressed as and also badly in need a haircut. This is view from the house where my parents now live on homer hill, where we used to cut down Christmas Trees and go camping in the summer. And this is the view of my parents thermometer. One cold winter morning which maybe helps to explain why so few people live in monson. Its very cold in winter. Has anyone ever of monson nope. Didnt think so. Once a great while ill mention hometown and someone will say, i know it. Ive been there and its almost always because of this. Monson is on the appalachian trail. Its at the beginning or the end, depending on whether youre hiking north or south of the 100 mile wilderness is the last hundred miles of the trail. Before you get to katahdin and, many, many hikers come through. Monson people send them packages they pick up at the post office or. They stock up, take a much needed shower and prepare for the final or recuperate from just having hiked the hundred mile wilderness. Just this summer. A friend of mine spent a day two in monson as he section hiked the appalachian trail. I love this town. I love monson. But like all those young people who were leaving monson and rural places in 1872, i away when i turned and i never moved back. Many of my friends also left town like other rural places in central maine and throughout the United States. Monson has faced hard times. The furniture shut down. That was the backbone. The towns economy. Many jobs were lost. The Elementary School where i attended kindergarten through fifth grade, closed. In 2000. The Census Bureau reported that the official population of monson was 666 residents, 666 residents, six, six, six. That is not an auspicious number. At that point, i someone really needs to take for the team and just move away from town or a friend to come move in with them so that you have 665 or 667 residents, but not. 666 for a long time. As i studied history in graduate school and then began teaching writing history here at jmu i enjoyed visiting monson in the summer, but i didnt think much about the history of the place that i was from and then a few years ago, i began to realize that many of the things i study an historian, for example the relationship between the United States and the wider. And the way that places and identities these are formed through interactions. Many of those things that i study as an historian played out here in, this place that i was from. So i began to dream of a history of my hometown and that would explore how rural places like monson often forge locality, not by isolating themselves the wider world, but by creatively engaging it. Long story. Thats the book that im currently writing. And fortunately for me, the town has always had people who cared its history and worked to preserve it. Heres the monson Historical Society, which has allowed to work with its wonderful collections. I was there doing research a couple of years ago in the summer and they gave me the key to Historical Society so i could come and go as i wished. Local historians like glenn poole and tony bennett have worked for years to preserve the towns history, and theyve been incredibly generous to me in sharing documents and photographs, including many of the photographs that ill show you just a bit. In offering advice and guidance and support, i want to draw on that research now to examine four ways that the people of this rural place responded to the problem i talked about at the very beginning of class. Their town declining and they rejuvenated it in the late 1800s by tapping urban and even Global Resources. So over the next few minutes, we are going to look together at munsons creation of an industrial landscape landscape, a tourist landscape the creation of a new local newspaper called the weekly slate and that rural immigration. First of all an industrial landscape. We talked about industrial last week when we explored gilded age between 1870 and 1900 as the United States industrial ized on a grand scale. The value of manufac orchard products quadrupled. The United States passed a significant milestone in 1890 because in 1890, for the first time in American History, the value of manufactured goods passed, the value of agricultural products. We spent some time last week in discussion section exploring some of the industrial activity that took place in cities chicago. Think of your guests and other immigrants working the meatpacking factories of chicago. Rural, sometimes industrialized as well. For example small towns in the midwest, opened canning factories, usually staffed by local farm women that canned local produce sweet corn peas, tomatoes. Thats a form of Rural Industrialization industrialization. These images from munson reveal some of the ways that munsons landscape was altering as the nation industrialize. So heres economic activity. Can you see it . Can you tell what it. Upper left . If you look at the upper left part, that upper left image, you can see the existence logging. This was always important source of additional income for people in monson and others. They would cut trees. They would float them across lake hebron through the canal. And i know if you can make it out, but theres a lumber where they can store them boards. Theres a railroad. Ill talk in just a moment about why monson gets a railroad in the 1880s. And then theres some big activity going on in that bottom image. This is the heart of the creation of munsons industrial landscape. And it has to do the discovery that munson had something that the rest of the nation even other parts of the world desired. And here it is. Heres the thing that monson had that other places wanted. Can you tell what that is. What material was used to create this cutout in the state of maine . Any idea. I think something hard. Excellent. Very, very good. How about you . Do know what that is . The kind of stone. Just like a perfect slate. You can pass that around. That is munson slate. That cut into the shape of main monson. Found that it had something very valuable. And it was willing to work hard to dig it out of the ground and ship it out on its new railroad to the rest of the world. Running through munson are two veins of very high quality black slate blue slate. The pictured on the bottom image runs straight through town. From lake hebron to munson pond. Literally crossing under main street. Now townspeople in monson have often talked about slate being discovered. In 1870. The towns Wikipedia Page talks about the discovery slate in 1870. So i was surprised to learn in my research that townspeople actually knew long before 1870 about the existence of slate in their area. For example, in 1820. This is two years before the town was officially. A few settlers built a slate chimney with slate that they found lying around on the ground. And they said that it worked about well as a brick chimney from early on. Some townspeople buried their dead beneath slate markers in the first churchyard cemetery. You can see a couple of those markers close to the foreground of this photograph. In 1860s, surveyors, the state of maine passed through monson and they reported in their official report that there was high quality slate that could be profitably quarried. So what happened in 1870 was not the result of the discovery . Slate the creation of madsens Rural Industrial landscape was not the result of. The discovery of slate. Many people knew it was there, but it didnt have much value them until National Global developments made it possible to quarry slate profitably in rural central maine. If you were buying slate in the late 19 century, what were you going to do with it . Any guesses . Would you use slate for in the late 1800s, you guys arent in the slate market. No ones. Tried to buy. Slate mia. Yeah, if you would. Possibly possibly blackboards in schools. Yes. That is one of the main uses. Later in the 1800s, early 1900s blackboards in schools. But main use was roofing. If you were buying slate in the late hundreds, you probably intended to use it to shingle a building your home or church or a courthouse or some public building. Why . Because slate shingles were fire resistant and they lasted longer than wood shingles. But they were also expensive and therefore quite rare in the United States. Before the civil war, most people who could afford to buy slate shingles bought it from quarries in wales or. In england it was often shipped as ballast in the hold of ships from england or. Three changes during middle decades of the 19th century created demand for months in slate. So here very quickly are three changes in the middle decades of the 1800s that created demand and and people to begin up slate and shipping it out of their town. First of all development of the Railroad Network in the United States. This made it possible to profitably ship heavy stone over long distances. Development of the Railroad Network as part of this conversion to steel rails. Thank you andrew carnegie. Conversion to steel rails people to use larger that could haul heavier loads. So thats the factor the development of the rail network. Second factor was new building styles. The styles that caught on across the United States featured steeper roofs and they worked better with slate shingles. They were also more visible, the street and so because they were visible from the street design experts, began to praise slate as a roofing material. They liked how it looked. Some builders like the builder of this vermont constructed in 1885, even began to arrange slate shingles into multicolored, ornate patterns. The third factor was welsh immigration. Welsh immigrants from slate quarrying regions of wales began to move in large numbers. The United States. Dozens them moved to monson. And welsh immigrants. Dramatically improved american quarries. So the growth of madsens quarries was part of a much larger developed a larger in which americans fought their way into an established market. In doing the established industry and control from and welsh quarries of the American Slate market mawson had a kind of crazy first decade with slate. The quarries opened in 1870 and there was something that sounds to me reading the documents like a slate rush for the first decade local people were buying and selling land land fortunes were won and lost. And then in 1880 after it was clear that was a lot of slate here and it was very high quality and there was demand for it. Outside investors from massachusetts came to town and they bought up the quarries and they began to operate the quarries. These investors opened new markets for months and slate in the west and they connected the town the nearest Railroad Line with the little narrow gauge. I showed it to you earlier that opened in 1883. The brought hundreds new jobs to this small town in central maine and those attracted many people. Here are some of the workers in munsons slate quarries. The work that they were doing was quite dangerous. The quarries descended of feet into, the ground. This is actually the same. Ive zoomed in on the right so that you glimpse the men at the bottom of this vast pit. You can hardly see them in the photograph. The left. Here are images of men ascending and descending to the bottom of the slate quarries. Note how they get up and down in these little rickety looking wooden boxes, this is dangerous. The local newspaper is filled with accounts of people in blasts of massive chunks of slate falling onto men and injuring them, or crushing them. The blasting method that was used in madsens slate quarries produced a massive amount of waste. Much of that waste is visible to this day in mountains of jagged slate that rise around the rims of old abandoned slate quarries with permission from the state of maine. The quarries also dumped some their waste into lake hebron, helping to form this peninsula where. I played when i was a kid. We used to call it slate point. Ive skipped slate on lake hebron with my grandfather out of the end of slate point and recently ive skipped slate on lake hebron with my own children. This photograph shows you how large. The quarries got. This is the old kenya quarry. And i know this place too, because on saturdays when i was growing up, we would get into the car drive down to the edge of this quarry, which that time was long abandoned. Take our trash out of the trunk of the car and throw it over the. When i was growing up, this was the town dump. Believe it or not. And it continued be until i left for college and someone realized probably a good idea and to haul munsons trash away. As the pits deepened, monson slate began to appear on the roofs of harvard law school, new england prisons and cathedrals. A new york courthouse and countless other buildings across the country, slate quarries were soon munsons employer. The town was reinventing itself by drawing on outside capital to profit from an industry had recently been dominated by british quarries. The creation of a Rural Industrial lands. But even as the quarries blasted and burrowed deeper and deeper shipping off slate to the cities, urban themselves began to arrive in monson, usually during the summer months, and those city people were looking for a very different kind of landscape, one that in many ways was at odds with the industrial landscape landscape for most americans taking a vacation in was still a relatively new experience. The middle class talked about them had begun to embrace the practice of taking a vacation just during the 1850s and soon businesses were giving their brain workers their white workers. One week of paid vacation during the summer city. People often saw rural vacations as a chance to get away from the heat and, the congestion, the noise, the stress of the city, and to reconnect with. So every summer, crowds of urban middle class vacationers left on the railroads for rural destinations, places, White Sulphur springs in the south West Virginia or lake tahoe in the west or the Hudson Valley in new york. As the nations Railroad Network quadrupled in size between 1865 and 1890, vacationers could travel further and further afield. You had a week but if you could travel by railroad, maybe you could make it to a more location and enjoy your time away. This was part of the process by which Coastal Maine became a tourist mecca. And gradually people to find their way even into the center of the state of maine to a place called Moosehead Lake. Moosehead lake is one of the largest lakes within the bounds of. One state in the country, and it is located just 15 or 20 minutes north of monson. It was actually on that map that i showed you, the one without any detail in the center of maine. All they said was Something Like a large lake has been discovered here. Well, that was Moosehead Lake and it became a major tourist with big city tourists from places like boston, making their way during the summertime. Companies realized that more urban vacationers meant more paying passengers. So railroad companies, some of the big vacation promoters. They released i travel guides and brochures. There was lots of money be made. One person called big vacationers. The crop from the city. Every year the crop from the city with the right approach, even quiet and of the way places like munson might be able to get in on the Rural Tourism boom. There were some requirements though. One was easy transportation. People had to be able to get there easily and quickly. Massachusetts investors with that by connecting the town to the Railroad Network. Monson people got into the act as well. They voted in a town to use town funds to improve the roads for bicyclists like these people and for carriage riders hoping to move the countryside and enjoy the scenery outside. Investors also a place to stay. This was another requirement. In 1882, investors built munsons beautiful new lake hotel. So there needs to be easy travel. You need good lodging and good roads. But the most important requirement was what we might call placemaking. Placemaking, defining and marketing. Your rural as the kind of place where urban vacationers might enjoy visiting. For that crucial task. Monson people turned to a railroad publicist. His name was George Haines, who had already mastered the formula. George haines, a publicist for the railroad. And over just five years or so, he cranked out nearly 20 promotional guides touting small places, good vacation destinations. Heres the brochure that he created for monson. This was published in 1889 and it was designed lure city people onto Railroad Cars and the middle of maine to spend their weekend vacation in monson. Now how do you that. Lets think about it. If you are a railroad publicist in 1889, what do you say . Monson or any other isolated rural place to make it seem appealing to city people . Id like to get your thoughts. What do you think if youre a publicist. In the late 1880s. What do you emphasize about a quiet rural place typically. I mean like they did i would emphasize something thats really unique to the place theyre visiting so like the sleet. And also just emphasize that its beautiful and you connect back to nature and fact that you can get to it easily, which is what they did. The train. Excellent good. So theyre saying you can get here quickly. Youve got a week you wont need to take all of it out traveling. Theres something to see once get here. The slate quarries. That is beautiful. What else . What kind of adjectives would you want to use, kiernan. Well, i was going to say that you could emphasize the lake because, you know, water is pretty cool. Like, you know, being in the city, theres like, you know, theres not like a lake around. I also thought was interesting up there at the top, it says the switzerland of maine. Is that because of the temperature or . I think its because of the beauty of the landscape. Okay. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. So the lake, the water would you do . You could swim. You could fish. Its beautiful. Its the switzerland of. Maine. This is a place where you can breathe mountain air. You can be rejuvenated. Youre escaping the city industrialized, polluted of the cities is health giving. All right. Are going to play a little bit of small town bingo. So these very good adjectives that you helped to come up with. I want you to listen and see how many of the qualities that were just mentioned by kiernan and tiffany are used in george heinzs actual pamphlet advertising. Monsanto. So im just going to read a couple selections. Manson the beautiful is a charming locality nestled between high. It has within its borders 25 lake glitz with picturesque surroundings. The scenery as viewed from this lake is very beautiful as a place for summer recreation, for riding, walking, boating, bathing or swimming, fishing and, hunting sports. Monson has charms which those who know best most love. It is fast becoming a summer resort to weary City Resident who desires a rest from business and society cares and the oppressive heat of the city. Here the invalid or overworked man of business or letters can quaff the god given pure mineral waters and breathe the mountain air mingled with the balsam fir and pine that braces them up as no other tonic can, and have the opportunity of enjoying a quiet country life over farms and forests or mountains and lakes. Do you hear the language of relaxation and step out of the rat race . Slow down. Its like a step out of the modern world. And what about people who live there . What about the town itself . Haynes wrote flower gardens are numerous ornamental grounds, are often seen and fine cottage homes and villas just such one would expect. Love, happiness to dwell in are found upon every street. It sounds a Thomas Kinkade painting. Doesnt it . It sounds almost too good to be true. This is small town depict. Did as the opposite of the ills of the city. Again, its like stepping of modern life with all of problems and. Being able to recharge your batteries for a week in the countryside as. Manson created and marketed its tourist landscape it joined the widespread romanticized of rural life, the very qualities, quietness relative isolation that had led many of its young people to leave for the cities could now be emphasized in order to draw city people to the country even if for only a week, local were absolutely in this kind placemaking. The stewards, a family of models and artists sold images of the tourist landscape that they painted on canvas on canoe paddles and on slate in the bottom. This is the months of the lake Hepburn Hotel, pictured in the upper left of moose and fish of a quiet, peaceful lake. Without the noise and din and pollution of the. And there was abso lutely some truth in the munson created by George Haines and painted by seth stewart. But the qualities that you see here were clearly not the whole truth about. Munson or other rural picturing the country as the opposite it of the city as a place to get away the problems and difficulties of modern life ignored the fact that rural places were complex and changing and part of modern life and. We can see that simply by noting the existence of the industrial landscape. So image from 1889 features both the tourist landscape. You can see the lake Hepburn Hotel circled near the left and the boaters out on the lake. But it exists alongside the munson chugging Railroad Cars and the slate quarries. And a lumber mill. And there is some tension between the rural tourist and the rural landscape because people from or or new york, they all send summer vacationers to when they come the lake Hepburn Hotel. They probably are not very keen on the sound of explosions from slate quarries. The industrial. There is some tension. These two even though they coexist. All right. Lets move on the third point. Yes, mayor. I was just going to say this reminds a little bit of the bit about noble savages from a few weeks ago. Like the noble savages just painted as being the native americans, as painters being part of nature forever. But not caught of the modern world. Like all the clocks are raised out of the photographs. That is a very insightful comment to me as reminding us of edward and the myth of the vanishing indian and. The way that Many Americans romanticize. Native americans. Right. They picture native american way of life as beautiful the opposite. All of the problems of modern life but doomed to fade away when it confronts modern life. And we could add to that mia and point that the same thing was done with precivil war south, which after the civil war was falsely as beautiful and antiquated. And modern. And to be gone with the wind. When it confronted the modern north. So i think its a very perceptive observation. You can see it with native americans. You can see it with the precivil south, and you can see it with rural places and small towns as the nation industrialize, as it confronts the problems of modernization, people are looking for something that they can use to imagine an alternative. And often they romanticize these other groups and often even as theyre saying thats beautiful and admirable. Theres some condescension involved. Thank you for that comment. Now, talk about the third point, the weekly slate. In june 1885, a stranger walked into this building on main street. It was called the rat hole. And it was the tiny little law office of john Francis Sprague. Summer of 1885. The stranger was visiting bangor. Bangor was originally city, just 50 miles from. 50 miles southeast. The stranger represented Printing Firm in bangor that was establishing a line of locally edited small town newspapers. John Francis Sprague jumped at the chance to serve as the first editor of munsons first and only newspaper. The town was so small that it could never have supported a newspaper on its own. But it appealing to join a syndicate run by a big city printer. Soon. The first issue of the weekly slate. Great name rolled off the press in and went on sale in monson and five neighboring towns. I found the first years run of the weekly slate at the maine Historical Society in portland, maine. This is issue number one. It was definitely a local paper. It advertised itself that way. Look at the masthead. A local newspaper devoted to the interest of the people of northern piscataway. Thats the county and vicinity. And it doesnt get much more local than the breaking news at the very top of. The fourth column that the other one of a. P. Hathaways laid an enormous egg. Thats local newspaper, right . The slate promoted understanding of progress and locality that outside. This is one of the key things that i found as i studied the first years run of this local newspaper. It actually us local people debating, the meaning of local. What is local . Well, for the slate for john Francis Sprague, local meant welcoming in outside influences. This was a local newspaper that was owned and printed in a city, bangor, every issue combined ads and news about monson and nearby towns with material that was drawn from outside sources. So news from the cities or literature serialized from european sources and writers. We get to glimpse the slates view of local very clearly in a war of words between munsons newspaper and dovers newspaper called the piscataquis observer. Dover was the county seat of piscataquis county. Monson is located and for a long the piscataquis observer, based in dover was the only newspaper in the county, so it did not look on the larger of bangor. Starting a small town newspaper within the county in monson monson, the observer published dover complained that the slate, its new rival quote can hardly be called a local institution inasmuch as is owned by foreign capital and is wholly printed outside of piscataquis county. When i first read that, i how interesting something published 50 miles away is called foreign because. It is owned by people who live outside the county. So heres a very closed and insular understanding of local. If its of the county, it doesnt qualify as local. Its actually foreign. The controversy that continued the following months shows john Francis Sprague also saw himself as a champion of the local and that he had a very different conception of local a newspaper published in bangor was not for him foreign threat but actually a powerful resource for building and promoting town. John Francis Sprague clearly saw the placemaking power of print. Like many others who measured their small towns not primarily against. But in comparison to nearby small towns, sprague saw ties with bangor not as undermining local independence, but as a way of bolstering munsons position within its county, dover, which was the county seat and the home of the piscataquis observer. Dover was the key rival. Sprague wanted to use. His city published newspaper. To bypass dover and to make munson an economic and cultural hub for in his vicinity. So you have an urban printer as a for a small town who wants to strength his position against other small. You see something similar happening a few years later when a boston artist and entrepreneur comes to monson selling birds eye views ive been showing vignettes from this 1889 birds eye view of monson. These were very popular, more than 2400 communities had birds eye views made. Local people could pay to have their business numbered on the image and then listed in the legend at the bottom. And you then share this lithograph. You send it to possible customers. You could hang it in your home or in your shop. This was often done. This was advertising and it was a way of announcing the significance of your place, of your community. Bangor had one. Dover had a birds eye view. And 60 other maine places. Birds eye views. If you had one, it was a way of announcing you had arrived. You were significant. And whos creating them . Well, mainly urban artists, who travel through the countryside, offering to sell them, collaborating with local Business People who helped to fund them. Monson worked with an outsider, a artist and entrepreneur to produce locality, it paying to be a place. In 1889. So here again, as with the slate was a conception of local that didnt require isolation or selfsufficiency, but rather the ability to channel outside flows of and culture. One scholar has called this and extroverted sense place. I like that. How do you make a place. Well, this is an extroverted sense of place. You make your by weaving together a unique arrangement of outside flows of capital and culture. This is opposed to an introverted sense of place where you put the walls and emphasize is whats unique to your trying to keep out other influences. And we see something similar in the last development that i went to examine today and that fourth and final Development Rural immigration think about an immigrant if i ask you to imagine an immigrant to the United States in the late 1800s. Where is that person. If you imagine an immigrant where is that immigrant located just call out some places New York New York city neck sorry any factory probably based in city right. Most of us i think a associate immigrants with urban areas. Is that fair . So its worth noting that in 1900 one third of foreign born americans in hundred one third of foreign born americans lived in places with. Fewer than 2500 residents. A third of foreign born americans lived in rural places. The areas with the percentages of foreign born residents were often rural. Millions of immigrants moved to countryside. The slate quarries drew of immigrants to monson. The welsh arrived started arriving in the 1870s. Swedes, like and Nellie Johnson settled large numbers beginning in the 1880s, and finns showed up in the first decade of the 20th century. Now, rural immigration was distinctive in certain and it presented distinctive challenges to newcomers. One was how to keep up ties with distant family and friends in other parts of the country. Monsoon immigrants responded to this challenge by using urban print. Ill give you a couple. These grieving parents announced the death of their little girl and widow, announced death of her husband in a log accident. With obituaries in a chicago, swedish language newspaper. Monson immigrants also wrote in to this newspaper to which some subscribe to complain about poor working conditions and low pay in the slate quarries. Even as they cultivated these ties with family and friends, fellow swedish immigrants in other parts of the monson people transformed their own town. Swedish language advertisements began to appear in the weekly slate. Swedish immigrants constructed, a new church building, a Lutheran Church. Monson in 1890. It was beautified with gothic ornamentation that made it look like churches back sweden. So slates reshaped munsons social, as well as. Its physical landscape. Of the 604 residents in 1871 was born outside the United States by 1900. There were 248 foreign born in monson, a drop in the bucket in a big city, right . 248. Not very impressive, but this was a big in such a small town. And this is another distinctive of rural immigration. And that is the ability of relatively small groups of immigrant to quickly and dramatically alter the texture of local life. By hundred immigrants. 22. 2 of montanans populate. More than one fifth of the town was composed of immigrants. That was a higher proportion than in portland which was maines largest city. And it was just under the proportion of foreign born population. Philadelphia. If you factor in the children of immigrants. One quarter of montanas population was at most a generation removed from sweden. Now such dramatic changes might been expected to create unease and even backlash. And that was in fact the case in other small towns near monson. Were going to talk about the of the ku klux klan next week. And youll see that the klan was strong in maine, including in towns like milo dexter, very close to manson. I think the key reason that monson immigrants were better treated than many immigrants in other parts of maine is that unlike franco and irish americans, modern immigrants from northern europe. They were protestant. They were building. Lutheran and methodist churches. And they were eager to. So the klan in maine was mainly an anticatholic antiimmigrant group. This Beautiful Church building the Lutheran Church constructed in 90, still in monson. And the legacy of immigration continue to shape the town. I grew up around people with last names like burke and sumi and erickson. All right let me wrap it up. Weve seen that monson like other american rural places during the late 19th century, was well aware the challenges posed by the growth cities and that it was quite ingenious in drawing upon urban and Global Resources to respond to those challenges. Monson did this by creating industrial and tourist landscape, by working with an urban printer to create the towns first local newspaper, and by weaving rural immigrants into the life of the town. A few weeks, kiernan visited during my office hours. I this image hanging on the wall. My office. We were looking at it. We were talking about munson and. Kiernan asked a very reasonable question, he said. He asked, does everyone in monson know everyone else . And my answer to that question is. Monson is a small enough place that you could know everyone else. And i say that, because even in a Small Town Community and identity and local loyalty do not emerge spontaneously or automatically. They have to be created and recreated continuously. And the thing that has struck me as ive examined madisons history is that locality is often created by weaving in outside influences. Monson story continued to be wrapped up with global into the 20th century. The slate industry declined. Jobs disappeared later in the 1900s, the town entered a period of steep decline, again, losing many of its young people, including me. This is a common story, a tragic story in americas rural areas. But this monson story ends a twist. And thats where i want to end today today. Just a few years ago, three years ago, a Philanthropic Foundation based in Southern Maine began working with local people to revive. Over the years has attracted some very talented, even globally famous artists. Some of them came as summer vacationers. Some became long time residents. The libra foundation, based in Southern Maine, is building on that history and spending millions of to renovate buildings in monson to create lofts and studios to establish ties with art schools and set up residency programs and artists and art to monson. This experiment in whats called creative placemaking, has even been discussed in. The boston globe and the new york. During all of those hard years, as the town really struggled i could never have imagined that this would happen to my hometown and that it would attract interest from big city newspapers. We started today with monson celebrating 50th anniversary of founding in 1872. Monson is now preparing to celebrate its bicentennial. Its 200th anniversary. And once local find themselves debating discussing how to weave outside influences the outside world into their place. Thats it for today. Thanks everyone. Have good afternoon and ill see you on thursday