Lasting Impression
Last fall at the University of Maine,
secretary Karen Stormann made history. In Alumni Hall, she was sorting
through boxes of inactive files from the Office of the Vice President
for Administration and Finance when she discovered three bound volumes
containing the earliest board of trustee records for the University of
Maine, then called the Maine State College of Agriculture and the
Mechanic Arts. Fogler Library Special Collections Head Richard Hollinger
and archivist Brenda Steeves confirmed the ledgers' authenticity.
The documentation of UMaine's earliest
days will be part of a university archive being established in Special
Collections with the help of a $5,000 grant from the Maine Historical
Records Advisory Board. The college's first board had 16 trustees
elected by the legislature, each representing a county. The trustees
included Hannibal Hamlin, pictured left, who was selected president.
Hamlin, a Penobscot County lawyer, served in the Maine legislature and
the U.S. Congress, and as Maine governor, Abraham Lincoln's vice
president and a minister to Spain.
