Page Farm and Home Museum Receives $475,000 Bequest
Contact: Patty Henner, 581-4100; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The University of Maine’s Page Farm and Home Museum has received a bequest of $475,000 from the estate of Henry H. Page, son of Edwin and Vesta Page, for whom the museum is named.
The bequest is a generous addition to the existing endowment established in the mid-1990s to help fund the non-profit museum’s annual operating expenses, public education outreach programs and artifact preservation and exhibits, says museum Director Patty Henner.
“This is an incredibly generous gift that is going to benefit, not only the Page Farm and Home Museum, but the school groups that visit it,” Henner says. “The impact is going to be huge and it could not be more appreciated.”
Henry Page, a former Hermon and Bangor dairy farmer turned businessman and real estate developer, and his wife Phyllis were generous supporters of the university’s farm and home museum and its programs, according to Henner. Henry and Phyllis’s son Gerry Page of Jay is a member of the museum board of directors.
In the early 1990s, when the Maine Center for the Arts was proposed near the site of the museum barn, Henry Page and his wife donated a significant amount of money to help pay to relocate the 175-year-old building, which is the oldest building on campus. In appreciation, the administrative committee overseeing the development of the farm and home museum asked the Pages to dedicate the relocated building. They asked that museum complex — which includes five buildings, an orchard and two gardens — be named in honor of Henry’s father and mother, Edwin and Vesta, according to Henner.
The family has continued to support the museum in many ways, Henner says, and when Phyllis Page died last January, the estate bequeathed the endowment to the University of Maine Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that exists to encourage gifts and bequests that nurture academic achievement, foster research and elevate intellectual pursuit at UMaine.
The mission of the Page Farm & Home Museum is to collect, document, preserve, interpret and disseminate knowledge of Maine history relating to farms and farming communities between 1865 and 1940. It offers an educational and cultural experience for the public and a resource for researchers of this period. Visits to the museum and many of its programs are free. Information about the farm and home museum is on its Web page (www.umaine.edu/pagefarm/).