The Curran Homestead Project is the result of the desires expressed in the will of the late Mary Katherine Curran. The Curran family purchased some 300 acres of land in Orrington from Arthur Conquest in 1914. The family operated a turn-of-the-century subsistence farm whose animals, crops, and woodlot provided the family with food, shelter, heat and enough cash to provide the necessities, including something to be saved for a rainy day. The Currans were among the sturdiest of a strong breed of farmers who settled on the rocky New England hillsides during the 19th century. They gave thrift, frugality and industry a new meaning even among a people known for those values. When Miss Katherine died in 1991, the family had accumulated an estate established mostly from dairy farming. Mary Katherine Curran’s will made bequests to educational scholarships and her church. Her expressed desire was that the remaining portion of the estate be preserved in its original form. The Curran Homestead Steering Committee, nurtured by the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program of Eastern Maine, responded to the objectives written in Mary Katherine Curran’s will. We propose to create a Living History Farm and Museum incorporating the house, barn and related buildings with approximately thirty-five acres overlooking Fields Pond, the core of the original homestead. A separate tract of land on the pond side of Fields Pond is managed by the Maine Audubon Society.   

The steering committee members became the founding Board of Directors of The Curran Homestead, Inc., a Community Education Project and a 501(c)(3) non-profit project Corporation. The goal of the project is to demonstrate for future generations the virtues of self-reliance, cooperation, industry and thrift which reflect the traditional American values practiced when our society was predominantly rural. The project will highlight the ageless value of volunteerism as an integral theme at the Curran Homestead. The founders believe it is possible to touch the lives of those who will be tomorrow’s leaders and citizens by recreating a turn-of-the-20th-century farm applying the technology of that era. It is said that those who forget the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them. 

The project, by showing the earlier technology (about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution), will demonstrate for young minds, and recall to older minds, how rural America lived off the land. There may also be a number of demonstration projects dealing with livestock and horticulture. 

The farm’s operation will be accomplished  with a volunteer force coordinated by a staff manager functioning under the guidance of a Board of Directors. Demonstration projects for school children and other groups will include such activities as gardening, haying, milking, maple sap to syrup and forestry as practiced on the family farm.   Also, there will be opportunities for visitors to participate in hayrides, cidermaking, square dancing, skating parties, ice-fishing, sleigh rallies, olde-fashioned country fairs and other recreation our ancestors enjoyed in their leisure time.

A Turn-of-the-Century Living History Farm & Museum at Fields Pond in Orrington, Maine

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