NEW BOOK

Ulster-Scots on the Coast of Maine, The means Massacre Background & Location

Volume 1, Edition 2 By John T. Mann

John Mann set out to write a report on the background and location of the so-called Means Massacre to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the 1756 event at Flying Point on Casco Bay. The result is an in depth story of interconnected families, forced by religious, political, and economic circumstances to abandon not just one, but two homelands.

The introduction of Ulster-Scots immigrants to the Kennebec Settlement intentionally put them at the center of conflict for the domination of North America. These families were forced to confront both the French and Indian alliance and then the British Empire in order to establish a place of their own on the Coast of Maine, America’s eastern frontier. The struggle of the Means’, and their extended family, to create a homeland with religious and economic freedoms and with the rights to property ownership are detailed here in family records and historical research.

First written and published by the Saint Andrews Society of Maine in 2006, Volume 1 (72 pages) has been updated and is now re-published (96 pages) and offered by the Maine Ulster-Scots Project.

Cost: $24.96 included Maine Sales Tax and USPO Priority domestic Shipping

International order cost: $54.00 includes international shipping

‘1718 – 2018’ Reflections on 300 years of the Scots-Irish in Maine' was produced following academic conferences at Bowdoin College, Maine and in Coleraine, Northern Ireland hosted by the Ulster University. These events marked the 300-year anniversary of the first large scale movement of people to Maine from what is now Northern Ireland.

 This important work is a compendium of presented papers by a range of American and Ulster based writers and historians and provides a unique record of historic links between Ulster and Maine which has the largest proportion of Ulster-Scots descendants than any state in the USA.

 This 256 page book is the first of its kind and provides a valuable source of information for historians and those interested in learning more about the links between Maine and the northern parts of Ireland. Some of the papers are academic, some poetic, and others personal with the aim to share the Scots Irish stories of those who played a significant role in shaping the state of Maine, New England, and the United States of America.

Cost: $28.40 includes Maine Sales Tax and USPO Priority domestic shipping.

International order Cost: $57.50 includes international shipping

SIDESHOTS: Stories from a Land Surveyor’s traverse through the District of Maine By John T. Mann

 Changing times create difficult choices for Mainers with multi-generational ties to the land. The economic, regulatory, and cultural changes that swept into Maine in the 1970s set the stage for the stories told in this 256 page book.

 John Mann uses his perspective as a Mainer and a Land Surveyor to bring us into the kitchens and barns of old Maine families. The characters we encounter are shaped by their relationship with the land. Their circumstances are sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, but always familiar to anyone who has roots in the old District of Maine.

 John is a gifted and remarkable Mainer and the Maine Ulster-Scots Project is honored to support the publishing of SIDESHOTS. His stories and memories will linger for generations and we are grateful for his passion for “saving and sharing” the stories of Maine people through the lens of Scots-Irish identity.

 Cost: $26.35 includes Maine Sales Tax and USPO Priority domestic shipping.

International order Cost: $54.00 includes international shipping

Condensed Review of ‘SIDESHOTS’ ~Kathy Smith

A new book offers a view of Maine today and in the past, and the connection between them, through the lens of a land surveyor.  Anyone who knows the author, John T. Mann, knows he can tell a story. He can read the land and connect that land to the stories about people that it holds. This book, Sideshots: Stories from a Land surveyor’s traverse through the District of Maine, invites you into his world.  

John moved his own young family away from the neighborhood that had been his family home since the mid-1700s, away from the coastal areas under development, to ”the back-country,” where the old relationships between the land and the people persisted but were under threat from new ways.  There he found gaps between land boundaries that were based on unrecorded traditions and the boundaries now being required based on public record and legislative action.  John became a bridge between the old and the new ways, and as he tells his stories we hear from people whose lives seldom make it into print.  We see them too in the remarkable drawings of Earle Mitchell. “If we don’t tell these stories, who will,” Earle writes in the end.

The stories come to us with words spelled out in the Maine accent, and once you get the hang of it, that adds to their authenticity and appeal. Using the professional lingo of the surveyor, John uses the term sideshots, his book title, to take the reader beyond the immediate land issue at hand to the backstories of those involved. In the process we also learn the complexity of the land surveyors’ expertise.