Some History of the Great State of Maine Quiz

Answer: Red Paint People

We don't understand much about the Red Paint People, who disappeared for unknown reasons around 1,000 B.C., just as we don't know much about their arrival around 3,000 B.C. or before. They used red ochre in funeral rites. They apparently were able to catch swordfish from boats, and also lived by eating more mundane birds, shellfish and roots and berries, and had tools made of bone or stone, though no pottery has been linked to them.

Answer: autopsy

French settlers arrived in 1604 at St. Croix Island, which has been given many names but is just off the coast of Maine near the Canadian border. A skull was discovered in 2003 that was neatly opened and reclosed, matching Samuel Champlain's memoirs that said the settlement's barber-surgeon was told to "open several of the men to determine the cause of their illness." It's an unusual "first," but someplace has to claim it!

Answer: Missouri

It's called the Missouri Compromise, but the Maine-Missouri Compromise is more accurate. On March 15, 1820, Maine split from Massachusetts and gained its own statehood, with William King as governor. Allowing one slave state and one free state kept the delicate balance of power between the two.

Answer: 0

Called a war, it was more of a diplomatic negotation with militia standing by. No shots were fired. American Daniel Webster and Britain's Lord Ashburton negotiated the Wesbter-Ashburton Treaty in 1842, in which both sides would compromise with land and money. Webster learned of a map in Paris that showed Britain was entitled to the land, while Lord Ashburton discovered a map that showed the Americans owned the land. Each concealed his map from the other, but realized they needed to negotiate quickly and fairly, and the crisis was soon resolved.

Answer: timber

Pine dominated Maine's timber industry, and the swift spring streams were used to float trees to the coast. There, they could be shipped whole, or sawn into timber or smaller pieces at the increasing number of sawmills before being shipped coastwise, or the wood could be used in Maine's growing shipbuilding industry.

Answer: potatoes

Maine's cold winters and short summers made agriculture difficult, but many items could be adapted to the climate. The potato was one, and when railroads increased in the 1840s, making shipping to the more southern states easier, agricultural production increased too. Maine continued to increase as a potato-producing center into the mid-20th Century, when Idaho and other areas superceded it.

Answer: False

On the contrary, Maine leaned strongly toward the union and sent a higher percentage of its young men off to war than any other federal state. Being an offspring of Massachusetts and full of small farmers who sympathized with free-soil politics similar to those in Wisconsin or Minnesota, Maine was a natural fit with the Republican party.

Answer: US Vice President Hannibal Hamlin

Lawyer, career politician, and veteran of the Aroostook War, Hamlin had long been anti-slavery and switched from the Democrat to the new Republican party in 1856. He was chosen to balance the Lincoln ticket geographically and to encourage Democrats to follow his example. Patriotic and bored, he joined the Maine State Guard, Co. A, while still vice president and served some time as a cook at Fort McClary, Kittery Point, Maine.

He was replaced for Lincoln's second term with Vice President Andrew Johnson, as part of an attempt to better balance the party with a southerner, and missed an opportunity to become president upon Lincoln's death.

Answer: False

There is a Portland, Maine, and a Portland cement, but the two have no connection. The cement was named because it looked like Portland stone from the Isle of Portland, Dorset, England. Portland, Oregon was named after the Maine city, though. The Maine city's seal is a phoenix, to show it rising from the flames of four big fires to become Maine's largest city.

Answer: 0

The raiders were captured and had to be sent to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor for their own safety. Though neither this raid or the Aroostook War had casualties, Mainers have hardly lacked bravery when they've been where the fighting was. Joshua Chamberlain, who coincidentally died in Portland, Maine in 1914, led the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry at Gettysburg less than a week later in a dramatic and famous bayonet charge at Little Round Top. The 1st Maine Heavy Artillery suffered more casualties in an 1864 charge at Petersburg than any other US regiment during the war.