LITTLETON, Maine — On a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, the mowed field in front of the Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum was crowded with antique automobiles, trucks and farm equipment for a one-day show. Hundreds of enthusiasts of all ages roamed the grounds, both serious collectors and curious hobbyists from near and far.
Amid the dusty action and blaring rock-and-roll, a row of antique McCormick Farmall tractors, restored to gleaming, bright-red elegance, drew a quiet, admiring audience of older-generation farmers. They recognized these machines as the familiar, hardworking tools of their trade, now preserved in a dignified and well-earned retirement.
And that is the goal of the Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum, where the remarkable collection is drawn from the fields, sheds, barns and homes of this deep-rooted farming region. Thanks to the foresight of local volunteers and collectors, the iconic agricultural implements, home furnishings and other paraphernalia of bygone days are safely on display where they can summon sweet memories and educate future generations.
The all-volunteer museum began as a hopeful dream, a solution to the growing concern that the traditions of the farming way of life would disappear with the advent of new agricultural technology and practices.
“Over several years, there was a group of farmers who met over coffee and talked about how all these tools and equipment would just get lost if they weren’t somehow preserved,” said longtime tour guide and former board member Karen Donato.
A museum seemed the only solution, but there were more questions than answers. How could a collection of farm implements be displayed? Where would the money come from? Who would do the work of asking for donations, of arranging transportation, of curating and restoring items as they were acquired?
“We saw a lot of stuff getting lost, just sitting out in the fields and deteriorating,” said museum president and longtime potato grower Francis Fitzpatrick, one of those early visionaries. “People call these things antiques, but we say it’s what got us started in farming — our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers.”
It took years to find the answers. Cedric and Emily Shaw, prosperous fourth-generation Littleton potato and dairy farmers, got things started in the late 1980s by displaying in their barn a selection of old items from their own farm and home. They called their collection “Pastime Museum” and invited the public in.
Before long, the Shaws were accepting donations from other farmers like farming implements, hand tools, milking stools, potato sorters, livestock harnesses and many other items. They also accepted household items — from rope beds and wringer washers to spinning wheels and pump organs to baby buggies and Flexible Flyers. By the mid-1990s, Pastime Museum’s collection was outgrowing the available space.
In 1999, the Littleton Consolidated School closed its doors, a reflection of the decline in the farm community’s population. Students were bused to nearby Houlton, and the 17,000-square-foot building — constructed in the more prosperous 1950s to replace about a dozen one-room schools in the area — stood empty for about two years while the Shaws and other concerned farmers tried, unsuccessfully, to raise the money to buy it. Eventually, they took out a bank loan for $50,000 to buy the building from the town, plus a little more to make needed updates.
The museum opened its doors in 2002, with the Shaws’ now-substantial collection filling three former classrooms. Within a year or so, long-distance trucker and tool collector Luther Grass donated an additional roomful of items acquired in his travels.
Household items fill another large section of the museum: kitchen utensils, cream separators, laundry-room equipment, period clothing, furniture and children’s toys. In a place of honor on a colorful coverlet rests a large doll, her long-lashed eyes closed against her cheeks, dressed in a hand-crocheted outfit.
“This was my doll,” Karen Donato said, smoothing a fold in the nubby fabric. “When I moved home with my mother in 1994, I found her in a box out in the garage. But the mice had gotten to her and chewed some on her chin, so I put her out in the open trash.”
The man who collected the trash spied the doll and turned it over to his wife, who was working as a caregiver to the elderly, homebound retired librarian of the Houlton Elementary School. The two women made a project of cleaning, restoring and dressing the doll. Donato’s not sure where the doll resided after it was restored.
“But one day, I came here to open up the museum and she was sitting here on the red bench that was donated by the Littleton Baptist Church,” said Donato.
And that’s the way of this unique museum. Each piece is touched with personal associations as well as collective memory. Each neatly-lettered identifying tag references a larger handwritten document filed in one of several bulging binders in the workshop area, where a cadre of dedicated volunteers record whatever is known about every single item. Whether it’s a disc harrow or a prom dress or a leather-padded barber’s chair, its known provenance is carefully documented — who it belonged to, where it was made or purchased, who used it, who repaired it, who brought it in, and so forth. And the donations keep coming in, as farm families and local business owners update their equipment, downsize their homes or retire.
“This has gotten so much bigger than anyone expected it to,” Donato said. “And it has taken so many people; each one has their special gifts and a vested interest in preserving these things.” From the group of local women who cook up a well-attended fundraising supper each month, to the detailed-oriented catalogers who document each item, to the guy who mows the grass out front and hangs the roadside sign for events — there’s not a paid staffer to be found.
The loan is long since paid off, thanks to the community suppers and some generous supporters. But the ranks of early volunteers are thinning. Some are in frail health, some have moved away and others, like founding donors and committed tour guides Cedric and Emily Shaw, have died.
Francis Fitzpatrick is hopeful that a younger group of volunteers will step forward to carry on the important work of preserving the region’s agricultural heritage.
“I think the idea of volunteering is more prevalent now than it was a few years ago,” Fitzpatrick said. “We have new families moving to the area to farm a few acres. There’s a lot of interest in growing food and knowing where it comes from. … If we don’t take in these things and take care of them, they’ll get bought by antique dealers and end up on the walls of a Cracker Barrel restaurant somewhere.”
And that, he said, would be a shame.
The Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum is located at 1664 U.S. Route One in Littleton, about 7 miles north of the I-95 Interchange at Houlton. It’s open June through September on Thursday through Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. From October through May, it’s open for community suppers, private tours, school field trips and other group tours by appointment. Call 207-538-0050 or 207-694-6099 for more information.
