Located in a bucolic setting on Fields Pond in rural Orrington, ME, The Curran Homestead is a turn-of- the-twentieth century living history farm and museum. Its current status as a non-profit entity is the result of the wishes of the late Mary Catherine Curran, whose family operated a subsistence farm with a dairy, poultry, crops, and a large woodlot that provided income to cover necessities.  Alfred Curran, who pre-deceased his sister by five weeks owned the farm with his brothers since the time of their father’s death in 1941; he and his brothers as well as Catherine often found employment off the farm. Catherine worked for the Bangor Telephone Company for much of her adult life, and Alfred is known to have been a frequent “jobber,” in addition to running a dairy and firewood business, doing service in kind on Orrington roads to meet the farm’s property tax and intermittent work on the Maine Central Railroad. Among the five children of the Curran household, Frank was the only one to marry, have children, and seek a life off the farm as the eventual administrative head of Eastern Maine Medical Center. In 1959, a separate modern home adjacent to the western side of the main barn was constructed for Catherine to live in, and this structure still stands but is privately owned.  It would be Alfred and Catherine who would eventually survice their siblings and decide the future fate of the farm together.  When Miss Curran died in 1991, having recently acquired ownership; her will directed a portion of the homestead to be preserved in its original form. 

      The Curran Homestead, Incorporated steering committee proposed the creation of a living history farm and museum incorporating the house, barn, and related buildings on 31 acres. Much of the original equipment, furnishings, and tools extant were either donated to a museum or sold at the estate auction shortly after Catherine Curran's death and the incorporation of the non-profit living history farm and museum. The remainder of acreage of the original farm on the opposite side of the road, including a pond and island, was donated to the Maine Audubon Society as they had proposed to make use of the land as a bird and wildlife sanctuary.

The present Curran Homestead includes the original seven buildings from the time of the Currans: the barn, the main house, the Field house, the ell, a small livestock building, utility building, and a heavy equipment building.  Recently, two new structures were added. There is a smithy and a garden shed, and the first of these was funded by a grant from the Maine State Archives and the other by Home Depot. Volunteers were responsible for the construction of the buildings. 

          

The Field house has generally been thought to be the original farmhouse on the property. It was built in the mid-19^th century presumably by Peter Field, who purchased the land in 1804. Although the small, two story house has undergone much renovation since that time hiding and erasing much of its early character, including a large chimney and central cooking hearth appropriate to the time, there are signs of its early construction in the basement and on the second floor. These include some hand-hewn beams and early plastering visible in wall cavities on the second floor. The existing structure is more likely the last of a series of dwellings constructed by the Fields; earlier dwellings were likely torn down and new structures built in their place.  

The main and larger farmhouse on the site was inhabited by the Currans since the time of their move, with their father M.J. Curran, from the City of Bangor. The impetus for this was presumbably their mother's death and a more suitable situation to raise five children. The farm had been briefly owned by Arthur Conquest, whose son Edward had presumbably been responsible for the purchase believing that a horse farm would be a suitable situation for his father to retire to. Arthur Conquest had immigrated from England early in life. The extended Curran family ,who originated from Ireland in the 1830s, had actually owned and worked farmland in Orrington since shortly after their immigration, so the Currans of Fields Pond Road were third generation Americans by the early 20^th century.

      Unlike much of the rest of the country, rural Maine continued age-old agricultural practices long after other areas of the country modernized. Work horses are still used in the Maine woods by some sawyers to this day, and the small dairy farmer found the pace of a single or team of horses suitable to the small fields defined centuries before by a stonewalls until in some cases the 1970s. Certainly, the earliest tractors of the mechanized era remained in service long after they had been scrapped or abandoned in other regions. These phenomena were certainly the product of a relatively small state population and modest economic circumstances, and this is a focus of our mission for we celebrate these circumstances which ultimately resulted in a regional culture characterized by thrift, self-reliance, Yankee ingenuity, and persistence.