Museum L/A

Museum L/A is a historical museum related to the history of Lewiston and Auburn, Maine's past. Our tour guide was Mrs. Sue Smith, a retired History teacher from the Auburn School Department. She did a wonderful job presenting the information in a clear, concise manner, while maintaining the educational richness that the information has to offer. We toured through the big section of the mill. To see the vastness of one of the rooms, which was at least the size of a football field, was amazing. The original floors still had the spots visible where row after row of looms and machinery sat. The original signs were very interesting also. We talked about how much lint there must have been within these rooms with well over 300 machines all doing the same job at once. Fire was always a big concern, and Bates Mill had its own Fire Department.

We next went on to look at some of the amazing machinery that was used within the textile industry in Lewiston and Auburn. These were amazing pieces of machinery that were so intricate and advanced for their time. The next sections was about the shoe industry that was ever so popular within this region of Maine. We then moved on to the section about the history of immigrants into the region, starting with the Irish, who were brought up here from Boston by Mr. Bates to begin construction on his mills and the canal that runs beside them. This timeline concluded with a large section on the recent increase in immigrant activity brought on by the Somali and the Somali Bantu tribes form Africa, fleeing their homelands and coming to Lewiston and Auburn within the last 10 years. Finally, our tour concluded with a talk about the brick industry which also has thick historical roots in Lewiston and Auburn. Morin Brick Company was established in 1912 and is still in operation today, making about 50,000 bricks per day at their plant in Auburn.

Everyone learned some very cool things, which we will post onto our blog within the next week. Each student will be responsible for researching deeper into something they found interesting today during our tour. Some of the topics already decided are the cards used for patterning cloth at the mills, to Byssinosis, something related to inhaling the lint at the mill.