BELFAST, Maine — Megan Pinette is aware of extra about Belfast historical past than simply about anyone else, however she didn’t develop up listening to the tales and lore of the 7,000-person midcoast metropolis.
As a substitute, the longtime president of the Belfast Historic Society and curator of the Belfast Museum, is from Queens, New York, about as completely different from a small Maine metropolis as you may get. However on reflection, Pinette’s upbringing helped put her on that path. Within the Fifties, her household spent numerous time within the metropolis’s museums: the American Museum of Pure Historical past, The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Met Cloisters.
“Being in a museum could be very snug for me,” Pinette, 69, stated this week.
After graduating with a bachelor of superb arts diploma from the Hartford Artwork College, she and her husband, artist Dennis Pinette, moved to Belfast in 1983. It was throughout a time of transition for town, which was within the final years of its hen processing business.
Though these days, properties within the fascinating downtown space promote shortly, and for sums of cash that appear eye-watering to old-timers, that was not the case again then. The younger couple was in a position to purchase a giant, dilapidated home close to the water for simply $19,000.
Settled firmly in Belfast, the Pinettes had a ringside seat for the transformation of town from its industrial hen business previous to the thriving, even gentrified, vacationer vacation spot it has change into at this time.
However as a newcomer after which a busy mother starting in 1988, Pinette didn’t essentially perceive what the adjustments occurring round her meant to the generational residents of town. That started to alter within the late Nineties, when she volunteered to assist together with her son’s fifth-grade class.
“The instructor stated, ‘Nicely, we’re considering of doing Belfast historical past.’ And I stated, ‘Oh, OK. I do know nothing, however let’s see what we will do.’ And I actually didn’t know find out how to train kids, so it grew to become extra my very own curiosity.”
Pinette dived in, studying about native historical past and the fascinating individuals who had lived within the metropolis.
“In order that led me into Grove Cemetery, and I’m strolling round and studying these gravestones and I’m going, ‘How come we don’t speak about these folks? How come I don’t learn about these folks?’”
There was Nathan Learn, an early engineer and inventor who was an innovator in steamboat, windmill, waterpower and threshing applied sciences, who died in Belfast in 1849. There was John Cochran, who participated within the Boston Tea Social gathering, two former governors of Maine and Civil Warfare veterans aplenty.
Her curiosity was piqued, and she or he needed to seek out out extra. Pinette acquired in contact with a member of the historic society, who pointed her within the course of a really previous girl on the town who was close to dying however nonetheless had all her schools — and reminiscences. That girl gave Pinette an summary of Belfast’s historical past.
Not lengthy after that, Pinette was given the important thing to the museum constructing, which lacked a web site, working hours and even a phone. And what occurred subsequent gained’t come as a shock to anybody who has volunteered for something in Maine.
“The following factor I do know, I’m on the board and I’m secretary, after which, you understand, a 12 months and a half later, I’m president,” she stated.
She and the society’s volunteers set to work, cleansing out the barn subsequent to the museum in downtown Belfast and assessing what was there. She and a few others took a museology course provided by the College of Maine and joined the skilled affiliation Maine Archives & Museums.
The Belfast Historic Society and Museum was on its strategy to being modernized, however it was a giant course of. As a substitute of the tidily organized reveals, pictures and bins of archived paperwork which might be there now, it was extra informal, Pinette stated.
Much more informal.
“There have been plastic rubbish luggage stuffed with pictures and letters,” she stated. “And the entire constructing was stuffed with three-drawer bureaus. The highest drawer would have a hammer, push pins and a tape measure. After which the underside drawers could be pictures and papers and books.”
It was a treasure hunt and a problem, and Pinette and the volunteers and interns had been as much as it. One man spent 15 years making sense of the archive materials, organizing paperwork and making a card catalog system. They created everlasting reveals out of the objects and started to place collectively shows that may deliver Belfast historical past to life.
“It’s been actually over the past 20 years that the museum has lastly come into itself, after which entered the digital world,” Pinette stated.
The pandemic, which slashed museum visitation to a tenth of what it usually is in the summertime of 2020, has been a problem. However she’s delighted that the world appears again on a extra regular footing this summer time.
Pinette is once more sharing her love of the group’s historical past, together with by providing hour-long strolling excursions at 10 a.m. Fridays via July and August. The tour teams meet on the Belfast Chamber of Commerce data workplace at 14 Most important Road, and she or he asks these to make a $10 donation to the Belfast Historic Society.
On the excursions, Pinette shares tidbits about Belfast historical past, occasions and structure, and true to kind doesn’t draw back from more moderen points which have formed town, together with the battle over Walmart that roiled the group within the early 2000s and the lack of the hen processing crops. Pinette will likely be giving a presentation in regards to the altering industrial waterfront between 1980 and 1990 at 7 p.m. Monday, July 25 on the Abbott Room of the Belfast Free Library.
“I’m beginning to perceive a bit of little bit of the angst of what’s occurred right here on the town, with shedding the industries,” she stated. “I’m extraordinarily sympathetic.”
