What Were the Biggest Cities in Maine 150 Years Ago?

Sometimes, the idea of time is really mind-blowing.

For many of us, it feels like 2001 was just a few years ago.  It wasn't!  Think of all the things that have changed for us in the last 25 years.  In just a quarter of a century, our TVs got a lot flatter.  Our phones got a lot smaller, then they got a lot bigger.  And, we went from having to use our landline to connect to the internet to having the internet everywhere.

And, that's just technology changes.

It gets even more wild when you think about how the world has changed culturally, politically, etc.

Knowing that makes it really hard to imagine what our corner of the world was like 150 years ago, doesn't it?

Maine in 1875

Following the US Civil War Maine, like a lot of places, went through a rapid period of change.  Soldiers returning from the war got married, built homes, and started families.  In some Maine towns, like Augusta, there are entire sections of the town filled with nothing but homes that date back to the 1870s and early 1880s.

In addition to the returning soldiers from the war, the state saw a big influx of emmigrents who left their homelands for a chance at a better life in the United States.

So, where did these people settle in Maine and how did it affect the population of Maine's towns and cities?

According to Maine Memory Network, there were a lot of changes in Maine in the late 1800s.  For example, a fire that destroyed much of Portland, leaving 10,000 homeless and changing fire insurance laws nationwide.  Togus VA Medical Center admitted its first patient in 1866 as the nation’s first veterans’ facility, while the University of Maine opened in Orono in 1868. Maine also saw Howard University founded by Mainer Oliver Otis Howard, the invention of earmuffs by Chester Greenwood, and the rise of opera star Lillian Nordica.  During this era, Maine’s French-Canadian communities grew with institutions like St. Peter and Paul Basilica and the newspaper Le Messager, while Wabanaki children were forcibly sent to residential schools, a painful chapter that lasted into the 20th century.

What were the most popular jobs in Maine in the 1870s?