Brewer Students to Visit UMaine Papermaking as Part of Mill History Project

Contact: Pauleena MacDougall, 581-1848; George Manlove, 581-3756

ORONO — After studying and touring the closed and functionally abandoned Eastern Fine Paper mill as part of their “Save Our History” project, about 90 Brewer Middle School students are scheduled see a modern paper-making operation during a visit Tuesday to the University of Maine.

Three groups of about 30 students will tour the paper-making operation in Jenness Hall at 9 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and 11:15 a.m., and will have a chance to participate in making sample sheets of paper, according to Pauleena MacDougall, associate director of the university’s Folklife Center, and Proserfina Bennett, managing director of the Process Development Center in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

The “Save Our History” project is an educational outreach project coordinated by the Maine Folklife Center at UMaine. It involves introducing the Brewer Middle School students to methods of preserving the history of Brewer’s now-closed Eastern Fine Paper mill through the stories and memories of former millworkers. The Folklife Center also has been conducting broader oral history research with former millworkers at other Maine paper mills in Old Town, Bucksport, Millinocket and Lincoln, in addition to Eastern Fine. The Bucksport mill is one of a handful in Maine that continues to operate.

With assistance from the Folklife Center, the Brewer students have been doing their own research since September for a class project on Eastern Fine and a group of its former employees. They visited the mill during the fall.

“When we toured the mill, it was dark and the students had to use flashlights,” MacDougall says. Touring the Orono research facility, “is an opportunity for them to see how paper was made in the Brewer mill.”

Students in Brewer Middle School teacher Richard Kimball’s seventh-grade class have made video recordings of former workers, photographed the mill inside and out, drawn floor plans and drafted news releases to recruit former millworkers with mill stories to share.

The Folklife Center has documented stories from millworkers, collected articles from mill publications dating back as far as 1880 and recorded their work as it progresses on DVD and on the Folklife Center website (http://www.umaine.edu/folklife/).

Since its inception, the project has received grants from the Maine Humanities Council, the UMaine Women in the Curriculum program, and a $10,000 grant from The History Channel’s “Save Our History” grant initiative, which funds the center’s work with the Brewer school students.

MacDougall says the purpose of taking the paper mill research into the public schools is to help students understand the importance and methods of historic preservation.

The experiential nature of the research makes the project more memorable for the students, and also will introduce them to the work being done at the Folklife Center, she says.

More information about the oral history and research into former paper mill employees’ experiences can be obtained by visiting the website or call the center at (207) 581-1891.