Historical Society to Participate in Teddy Roosevelt Days
Maine has interesting connections to Teddy Roosevelt, our nation’s 26th President.
Roosevelt was known as the first “modern” President and his fascination with Maine began at an early age. Theodore Roosevelt first visited Maine as a young teenager when he attended summer camp in the Moosehead Lake region in 1872.
He was a sickly child and did a lot of reading, his favorites being stories of the rugged outdoorsmen. As a college student, he visited Maine three times to hunt in Island Falls where he developed lifelong friendships with his two Maine Guides, William Sewall and Wilmot Dow. Sewall and Dow later ran Roosevelt’s South Dakota ranch for him.
Throughout his adult life, Roosevelt expressed how much he treasured his visits to Maine and how much he valued the friends he made here. In a letter he wrote in 1918, he stated, “I owe a personal debt to Maine because of my association with certain staunch friends in Aroostook County; an association that helped and benefitted me throughout my life in more ways than one.”
One of Dow’s descendants, John Dow, gifted the Society with several Roosevelt artifacts that had been passed down through his family: a long-barrel Colt revolver, a birch bark moose call, and a most unusual mirror that hung over the mantle at the South Dakota ranch. The mirror is framed in red velvet and adorned with buffalo horns.
The Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine also has a connection with Roosevelt through an historic train car, the 1912 Portland-Lewiston Interurban “Narcissus”. The trolley car carried Roosevelt from Lewiston to Portland with brief stops in New Gloucester and Gray on August 18, 1914.
On August 5 – 7, the Trolley Museum will be hosting its second annual Teddy Roosevelt Days celebrating “the Naturalist & the Narcissus”. Presque Isle Historical Society will be transporting its Teddy Roosevelt collection down to Kennebunkport for the three-day event. On Friday, the event will run from 3 to 8 p.m. with special event ticketing required. Regular museum admission will admit visitors to the event on Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 5.
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