User:Maineshepp/sandbox

Accomplishments
Working alongside Neal Dow, Lillian Stevens was recognized as a skilled organizer in 1884 when she helped to insert prohibition into the Maine State Constitution. Under her national presidency, membership continued to swell, and one thousand temperance unions were organized in one year (1900). She helped to raise the age for protection of girls to 16 and to add scientific temperance instruction to the schools.

Tributes
In 1917 "The Little Water Girl" temperance fountain was donated to the City of Portland by the W. C. T. U. Designed by British sculptor George Wade for the Columbia Exposition at Chicago, a bronze copy was given to honor Lillian M. N. Stevens, 55-year-long resident of the city, and president of the Maine W. C. T. U., the National W. C. T. U., and benefactor of Portland. Originally installed at Congress Square, since 1979 it has been located in the Portland Public Library }}
 * birth_place        = Dover, Maine
 * death_date         = April 6, 1914
 * death_place        = Portland, Maine US
 * nationality        = United States
 * party              =
 * religion           =
 * spouse             = Michael Stevens
 * relations          =
 * children           = Gertrude Mary Stevens
 * residence          = Stroudwater, Maine
 * alma_mater         = Westbrook Seminary
 * occupation         =
 * profession         = teacher
 * signature          =
 * website            =
 * footnotes          =

Public Service
Lillian Stevens lived her life as a humanitarian. According to her daughter, "all she did for humanity she did in the name of humanity's Christ." Frances Willard and Mary A. Livermore summarized her character and manner as follows:
 * As a philanthropist she labors in a quiet way doing a work known to comparatively few, yet none the less noble. She is known and loved by many hearts in the lower as well as in the higher walks of life.  Her justice is always tempered with mercy, and no one who appeals to her for assistance is ever turned away empty handed.(Amer women)

Temporary Home for Women and Children
By 1881 Lillian Stevens had worked with W. C. T. U. members in Portland to establish the Temporary Home for Women and Children. It was viewed as "a temporary home for those who desire to begin anew in an upright life . . .in a place free from evil associations and away from old temptations." By the early 1900s it was run by a private corporation and targeted "unfortunate girls, discharged prisoners, and homeless women and children."

Maine Industrial School for Girls
Lillian Stevens was a staunch supporter of the Maine Industrial School for Girls, established in 1873. She was first appointed one of five (later six) trustees in 1885.
 * . . .designed as a refuge for girls between the ages of seven and fifteen years, who, by force of circumstances or associations, are in manifest danger of becoming outcasts of society. It is not a place of punishment, to which its inmates are sent as criminals by criminal process-- but a home for the friendless, neglected and vagrant children of the State, where under the genial influences of kind treatment and physical and moral training, they may be won back to ways of virtue and respectability, and fitted for positions of honorable self support and lives of usefulness.

National Council of Women
The National Council of Women of the United States and the International Council of Women were organizations that aimed to unite all women's organizations and groups to promote the status of women. "[S]incerely believing that the best good of our homes and nation will be advanced by our own greater unity of thought, sympathy, and that an organized movement of women will best conserve the highest good of the family and the state. . . ." They were formed in 1888 at Washington, DC. Stevens was active in the national branch, where she assumed the role of treasurer in 1891 and in 1895 joined its newly-formed cabinet as Secretary of the Department of Moral Reform. In 1896 Hannah Bailey and Lillian Stevens advanced the motion for the American group to formally join the International Council of Women.

The World's Congress of Representative Women
Stevens was invited to participate in "The World's Congress of Representative Women," convened at the the 1893 Columbia Exposition at Chicago." Its purpose was to "[present] to the people of the world the wonderful progress of women in all civilized lands in the great departments of intellectual activity." Stevens chaired the committee on "Philanthropy and Charity," as well as being a member of the Home Advisory Council.

National Conference of Charities and Corrections
Stevens was corresponding secretary representing Maine for the National Conference of Charities and Corrections. Begun under the American Social Science Association, in 1879 the organization changed its name to the National Conference of Charities and Correction, a name it bore for nearly forty years. "By 1880 the number of members had grown to over 125, most of whom were representatives of public institutions or agencies and delegates of private bodies." In the 1888 conference at Baltimore, the issue of women police matrons came up. Lillian Stevens reported: "As a Maine woman I take great pride in saying that the first police matron in this country was appointed in Portland." Stevens served on the standing committee On the Co-operation of Women in the Management of Charitable Reformatory and Penal Institutions.

Temporary home for women and children
Around 1900 Lillian Stevens worked to establish the Temporary Home for Women and Children in Portland. It was run by a private corporation and targeted "unfortunate girls, discharged prisoners, and homeless women and children."

Other
Following the international crisis in Armenia in 1896, temperance workers were encouraged by Frances Willard to shelter Armenians fleeing from the Turks. Stevens made arrangements to house 50 refugees in Portland.

Women in society
Lillian Stevens was a strong advocate of women's suffrage, and organized within the state of Maine for its advance. Later, suffrage leaders feared the association between suffrage and prohibition would hurt their cause, and urged Stevens to dissociate from their organization.

She was a friend of animals, awarded a Silver medal by the American Humane Education Society and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.(Leavitt)

=Career= Lillian Ames was 16 years old, when her father died of consumption in late 1859 or early 1860. At about the time she began to teach school. She was hired at the Spruce Street School outside Portland, followed by the Stroudwater School. She was educated at Foxcroft Academy and Westbrook Seminary.[3] Lillian was said to be one of the earliest Maine women to continue teaching during a winter season, customarily restricted to male teachers[5] After several years she chose to marry, a status judged incompatible with women's teaching.

Childhood in Maine
Lillian, known as "Marilla" in childhood, was the fourth of six children born in Dover, Maine to Nathaniel Ames and Nancy Fowler Parsons Ames. Two of her older siblings died in infancy, leaving two boys and two girls. As a child, “she loved the woods, quiet haunts, a free life and plenty of books." The four siblings "spent many happy hours on the hillside and in the woods where she delighted to be. . . . [S]he came to love the stately pines better than any flower, or shrub, or other tree.” Her father was a teacher, and both parents shared early New England ancestry. She studied, at the nearby Foxcroft Academy, founded by the state in 1823 “for the promotion of literature, science, morality and piety.” Sadly, her mother passed away when Lillian was 14. In January 1859 her father married Frances L. Bragdon, a resident of Cape Elizabeth. Lillian’s new home provided easy access to the Westbrook Seminary, which she entered for the spring term two months later.

Spencer, Wilbur Daniel. 1932. Maine immortals, including many unigue characters in early Maine history. Augusta, Me: [Northeastern Press].

Writing the book
Phelps began writing The Gates Ajar in the final year of the American Civil War, inspired in part by the death of her mother, stepmother, and her fiancé who was killed at the Battle of Antietam. Phelps later claimed the book came from divine inspiration: "The angel said unto me 'Write!' and I wrote." She spent two years revising the book in her father's attic. Frustrated by the insignificant role women played during the War, she wrote the book specifically with a female audience in mind. In an autobiography, she reflected, "Into that great world of woe my little book stole forth, trembling... I do not think I thought so much about the suffering of men... but the women,—the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted women." Emily Dickinson, according to scholar Barton Levi St. Armand, was among those who believed in a similar vision of the afterlife and found the book helpful in organizing those thoughts.

Structure of book
The Gates Ajar, according to Helen Sootin Smith, incorporates at least four literary elements: "sermon, diary, sentimental domestic plot, and allegory." She identified the latter as its "most important literary form." The Gates Ajar, as a sacred allegory, relates the steps in Christian redemption. The rude, willful Mary in the opening chapters represents that of unregenerate man, who has succumbed to the temptations of 'the world, the flesh, and the devil.'. . . Royal Cabot, however, did not die in vain. He is Christ, dying in the Civil War for the sins of mankind. As Christ's death redeemed mankind so that it could be reunited with Him in heaven, so Roy's death saves Mary for everlasting life with him.

Publication and aftermath
The book was published in November 1868 by Fields, Osgood, and Company. Along with an initial royalty check for $600, publisher James Thomas Fields reported to her, "Your book is moving grandly. It has already a sale of four thousand copies." In a letter to George Eliot, she wrote: "I do not hope much for it now; I am physically too far spent even to do what is a bitter comfort to hope I might have done, if the success of 'The Gates Ajar' had not driven a very young woman who wanted money, into rapid and unstudious work before the evil days came when work must be quietly put out of the imagination like other forms of suicide." Phelps later published two similar books: Beyond the Gates (1883) and The Gates Between (1887), though they are not traditional sequels as they do not continue with the plot or characters of The Gates Ajar. She later lamented she did not write more, partially because of how much effort she had expended so quickly because of her financial duress.



Interest in mythology
For many years Elizabeth Pope taught a course on Basic Myths. In response to an invitation to speak at the annual Mills College Alumnae Association meeting in 1958, Elizabeth Pope elaborated the topic of "Mythology and the Modern Mind."

"The fact is that on the mythological level modern man [sic] has actually achieved what he [sic] is only beginning to dream of on the political level – – a real coming together of races and nations. Perhaps we should not make too much of this phenomenon – – but there is no need to underestimate it either. In the past hundred years, the resources of our imaginative life have been enormously broadened, deepened, strengthened, and enriched; it is a great achievement, and one of which the modern mind may legitimately be proud."

Pope proceeded to discuss four distinct approaches to origins of mythology. The first is the "historical-archaeological" approach, that myth "is a distorted and fantastic version of something that actually happened." The second approach is "psychological" presenting "in symbolic form the unconscious desires and loathings which lie buried deepest in the most hidden recesses of the psyche." Third is the "anthropological theory," emphasizing "phases of the agricultural year and the important stages of human development (birth, coming-of-age, marriage, death) "marked by elaborate ceremonials and rites by means of which the whole community participates in the occasion," and where ceremonies linger on "even when the participants no longer understand exactly what it means." Fourth, is "analytic study," viewed as more scientific. These scholars "break the story down into its component parts and classify them according to type – – or. . . 'motif.'" Pope concluded with a probing questions: "we have always known that the modern mind is capable of scientific study: is it also capable of the sort of creative imagination that produced myths in the first place?"

2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 201 people, 94 households, and 57 families residing in the town. The racial makeup of the town was 96.0% White. There were 297 housing units, of which 183 were "for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use," and 94 categorized as occupied. The majority of households (55) were husband-wife families, and 37 were non-families.

The average household size was 2.14 and the average family size was 2.72. The median age in the town was 50.1 years. 20.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them. The gender distribution of the population was 55.2% male and 44.8% female.

18.4% of residents were under the age of 18; 3.1% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 17% were from 25 to 44; 41.3% were from 45 to 64; and 20.4% were 65 years of age or older.

George Richard Crooks

Overview
Irene Bradford has been written about in books, magazines, and newspapers   ––and even had a library display and video produced about her by the local university. But the quality that explains that attention is elusive. Bradford stood out among her townspeople as an all-embracing, unpretentious woman who, above all, cared for people. She contributed to her community with personal ties, but also documented its history in her History of Patten Academy (1947) and was working on a general history of Patten, Maine, at the time of her death.

Childhood
Gerald Evan Williams was born in Bridgewater, Maine to Myron Luther Williams and Lottie Belle "Belle" (Barrett) Williams. His father's family had lived in Bradford, Maine since before the Civil War, but in his teens Myron moved to the rural potato-growing area of Bridgewater, where he lived for a time with in-laws, before his marriage. He soon participated in the local economy, working as a potato buyer. Myron and Belle moved their young family to Presque Isle in the 1910s, establishing a laundry business in an older section of town. Gerald Williams graduated from Presque Isle High School in the mid 1920s. A short distance away lived Maine Senator Arthur R. Gould, who may have provided the recommendation for admission to the United States Military Academy.

Table
=== Representative Short Stories ===