YORK, Maine — As he ended his 50th day of protest recently with a 15-hour vigil in York Village, historian James Kences said he’s been gratified by the public response as he draws attention to the upcoming move of the Old York Historical Society archives from town.
But OYHS Director Joel Lefever said he’s concerned Kences is misrepresenting the organization’s situation, and is not just raising awareness but also calling the organization’s ethics and transparency into question.
Kences has become a fixture in York Village since he began his vigil in front of the soldier’s monument in October, wearing the red coat of a Revolutionary War-era British soldier from his days as a reenactor with the 10th Regiment of Foot. He is typically there two hours a day, holding signs protesting the archives’ move.
“It’s been one of the most revelatory experiences of my life,” he said, because he’s talked with everyone from elementary school children to people whose families span generations in York. He said he’s chosen to protest “because I believe the town’s historical heritage has to remain intact. Once you start taking parts of it out of town, something happens to the town’s sense of history.”
OYHS has sold its administrative building in the village, which includes the archives on the first floor. It is renovating the Elizabeth Perkins House into space for the staff. It is also renovating a portion of a building it owns in Kittery on Shapleigh Road for the archives. The museum’s collections are already stored there.
The archives include many family papers, diaries and other documents relating to the early settlers of York. OYHS has been collecting these items systematically since the late 19th century.
Kences has spent many hours in the archives over the years, in preparation for his history talks at the library and his work detailing a historical chronology of the town. “The process in the archives is a painstaking one. You’re looking at documents to draw from them nuanced information and often you don’t do that the first time you see it,” he said. “You make a note and say, ‘I need to look at that again and again and again.’
“There’s some intuitive sense when you read about that history, in York. When you take the archives out of York, you begin to lose that intuitive sense,” he said.
He admits his vigils have mostly been solitary. That could be changing, however. There have been several long threads on the Facebook page York Community Dialogue, started by people who wanted to know why the man was standing at the soldiers’ monument every day.
As a result, several people came to stand with him during his 50th-day vigil earlier this month. Among them was York resident Bill Phillips, a transplant from Scotland who said he was drawn to Kences’ passion for history.
“This is about the fabric of the town. Every person in York is a strand of that fabric, beginning at the start, from the first settlement here,” he said. “If it starts unraveling, there’s a strain on the community.”
He echoed Kences’ concern that “if you lose the history, it’s very hard to get it back again.”
York resident Kristin Nelson concurs, and plans to volunteer her time to generate social media buzz about Kences’ vigils. “The archives are about more than just sitting in a box. I understand the space they have (in Kittery) is climate controlled and perfect for the archives, but if they’re just sitting there out of people’s access, they’re not doing what the intended purpose was.”
Lefever said OYHS is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the archives. He said the entire 2018 operating budget is $523,000, which has to pay for not only staff but to support 11 properties with 18 buildings, two wharves, Steedman Woods and 75,000 objects and archival items. The organization receives no town funding to offset operating costs.
“There’s never been enough to maintain and staff the properties for many years. Our endowment decreased by 33 percent in 2007-2008 (during the recession), so all the climate control in the historic buildings was turned off,” he said. As a result, there was a moth infestation in the textile storage area that actually destroyed some of the textile collection, he said, and books turned moldy.
The research center, where the archives are located, is “completely out of space. We have things squirreled away in buildings, because there’s no room. The vault is too small.”
To raise money, he said, the board in 2014 sold the former York Beach post office that housed the OYHS collection, and bought the Kittery facility, which was four times larger.
To raise funds to renovate the Elizabeth Perkins House and the Kittery space for the archives, the board approved the sale of the York Village building earlier this year. Under terms of the sale, OYHS can remain in the building until May, when the staff will move to Perkins House and the archives will go to the climate-controlled facility in Kittery.
“We have been working hard on solutions we can do with the resources we have,” he said. The town of York, through the Board of Selectmen and town manager, will investigate whether the archives can come back to York as part of a town hall construction, as town records are similarly scattered due to overcrowding. But that could take a number of years.
Lefever said OYHS announced in 2014 that it would be moving the archives, yet “not one person at town hall, no major donor or concerned citizen has said, ‘We want to find the financial resources to fund a storage facility in York.’”
He’s concerned about some of the statements Kences has made about OYHS, saying they only present his side of the equation and don’t present an entire picture. “The more attention he gets, the more he gets agitated. I feel I need to say that. James is focused and inflexible.”
Kences would not disagree with that assessment. He said he stands for all the families who have given their family memorabilia to OYHS for the past 140 years who “don’t want to see them taken to Kittery. Not by any means. Those are the people who are heartfelt.
“One day I heard this man saying, ‘Red coat. Red coat.’ He was a Donnell,” Kences said. “He said, ‘I don’t want my family papers being taken to Kittery.’ I said, ‘I’m standing here for you.’”
Kences has started an online petition that can be found by visiting Change.org and searching for “We oppose the impending move of the York archives!”