19th Century Curran Village, Orrington & Holden, Maine
372 Fields Pond Rd., Orrington, ME 04474
We will have our Annual Ice Harvest on Saturday, January 28, 2023, 10AM-3PM.
Because the ice harvest is always weather dependent, please check this website or our Facebook page: 19th Century Curran Village for updates.
Scheduled workshops can be found on our “Kids Workshops” and “Adult Workshops” pages as well as on our Facebook “Events”.
This last event of the season includes pumpkin painting, cider making, Model T rides, rides on our 1894 horse carousel,
engine demos, live steam with our steam traction engine, ongoing foot treadle sewing machine sewing demo, blacksmithing ( Pay to register, call: 207-205-4849, for a one day railroad spike knife making workshop on Saturday or Sunday from 9AM-4PM ), apple pie, apple strudel, stew and pork and beans, Wee Bit Farms of Orland sausages & burgers, and cider. See our progress in creating a museum village.
Hot Link: Fall 2022 Newsletter
This past July 18-22 , 19th Century Curran Village hosted its’ first week-long summer S.T.E.A.M. history camp. Our program included the following:
After already postponing the Ice Harvest event originally scheduled for January 29; we are cancelling our free public Ice Harvest Event scheduled for Saturday, February 5. We will harvest ice during the coming week so that we can fill our Ice House for programming this coming spring and summer, but this will not be the public event. If you want to volunteer to help with that, we could use some help. We will need people to saw ice once we have made the initial cuts wityh our Novo Ice Saw achieving the depth of 10 inches. The ice on Fields Pond may be as thick as 20 inches.
Those who were looking forward to sled rides with our visiting draft horses, we will have them back for our Maple Syrup and Irish Celebration on Saturday, March 19, 10AM-3PM. If we don’t have snow, we will offer wagon rides.
Saturday, January 29, 2022, 9-4, Blacksmith For a Day Workshop. Learn the basics of metal forging in this beginner’s or refresher for the initiated’s workshop. Safety, materials, coal fired forging or propane forging, methods and technique are addressed in our museum blacksmith shop under instruction from our longtime blacksmith Dwight King. Make “J” hooks and mount them to a shaped metal plate with hand forged rivets to complete a coat rack. Cost: $75. Bring a 2.5 lb. hammer (pein type or drilling/machinist’s), natural fiber clothing and outerwear, leather footwear, safety glasses/goggles, a mask, and work gloves (optional). Students must be 15 years of age or older. Get $25 off on the next blacksmithing class you take with us like our Feb. 12 & 13, 9-4 Make a Knife Workshop. Call now to register: (207) 205-4849.
On behalf of our Board of Directors and our Museum Director we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving! We have had a long separation from you and you from us, but we hope you are looking forward to 19th Century Curran Village’s re-opening in 2022. We wish you good health and a pleasant holiday as we all give thanks for our many blessings. We have been and continue to be busy creating a learning resource for you and your family this year. 19th Century Curran Village has grown exponentially in the last two years; we need your continued help to assist us in this growth. Please donate what you can for this 2021 fiscal year to assist us in not only meeting the goal of opening our doors in the spring but securing a future of sharing our many learning opportunities with you and your family. We tentatively hope to have a public event, our Annual Ice Harvest on Fields Pond, on January 29 from 9AM-3PM; there will be hands-on activity with antique tools, Belgian draft horses pulling our bobsled for rides in the Village, food to eat, and a warm place with social distancing practised as well as some interesting surprises from our collections. Our tentative plan is to have our 1894 horse carousel on exhibit; getting a ride on the carousel will have to wait until next year as electrical installation and excavation for underground piping for our air compressor that powers the carousel are on temporarily on hold. We hope to see you at the Ice Harvest when we can share the progress of 19th Century Curran Village at 372 Fields Pond Road, Orrington, Maine.
This summer (2021) for had the good fortune of receiving two significant donations of archival materials. John Bragg and Jonathan Eames of the one time family owned N.H. Bragg & Son Company, founded in Bangor, Maine in 1853, donated a number of late 19th century ephemera as well as some catalogs from the retailer in heavy equipment, tools, and mechanica supplies. We hope to receive a larger donation of archival materials in the future. The other donation came from Tracy Bigney and Rick Bronson. This is the lifetime circus collection of their father Richard B. Bronson, Sr. who passed away in 2004. The boxed collection had been in storage for more than a decade.
This significant circus collection found us, as it occurred to the donors that the relocation of our carousel building and 1894 Herschell-Armitage horse carousel might be a fitting match to their father’s collection. With the re-assembly and restoration of the octogonal, three story structure that has housed the restored horse carousel since 1990, we put in the effort of sheathing the interior walls with tongue and groove bead board (wainscotting) and putting a coat of white paint. The intention has been for some time to not only offer all visitors in the near future a ride on the carousel but to use the space as a gallery to exhibit archival and art long hidden in filing cabinets and back rooms vitually unknown to most. The carousel itself came with a donation of many other artifacts once belonging to Ivory Fenderson, its original owner. This included just about every document, receipt, photographs, and other material culture saved by the Fenderson family since the carousel was retired to a barn on their farm in Saco. Maine a hundred years ago this coming year!
Silent Auction Offering: One Week Get-Away,
March 19-26, 2021, Friday to Friday, Week #12 at
the Samoset Resort, Rockport, Maine, One
Bedroom Condo Unit with Pull-Out Couch, Kitchen,
Dining, Living Room Area, Value: $800.
Starting Bid: $275
Arrive by 2PM, Unit #602, 220 Warrenton St., Rockport, ME, (207) 594-2511
Place your bid by Email — klmarsters@gmail.com —by February 26 for a
chance to enjoy Week #12 at Samoset. Include a phone number in your
email bid. We will contact you on February 27 , if
you are the winner.