8th Maine Regiment Memorial

Oh Dick Adams. On October 1, 2011, Libby had taken the class on a field trip to Peaks Island. It was a pretty cloudy day but easily tolerable. Our original plan was to visit the 5^th infantry Maine house and Battery Steele but for some reason the lady who worked at the 5th said it was closed. Like I said, it was cloudy and it eventually rained but the 5^th infantry house is inside, we would have been fine. Next to the 5^th, however, the 8^th infantry house was open. Currently, the house has a few hotel rooms so when we went in, there was a family playing board games in the main room of the house. The place was really cool and was right on the water. The deck was nice as well, it wrapped around a good portion of the house. Inside there were a few pictures of the 8^th infantry and a glass display of different Civil War things such as bayonets, uniforms, and guns. As we were about to leave to go to Battery Steele, Libby made the fateful decision to ask for a tour by the one and only Dick Adams. Oh this guy. He was the tour guide for the 8^th infantry house and was once a professor at Penn State University. This guy was as old school as it gets. He was in his 70s or 80s, way past his prime for being a professor, and maybe a little too old to be giving tours. As we started the tour, I had my notebook out ready to take some notes for this blog. 

Dick Adams (far left)

After about 5 minutes of him talking about those I-talians, different types of Asians, and how there was once an abundance of slaves in Maine, I gave up. To be honest, I don’t really know what I had learned about the 8^th infantry. He kept going off on tangents, usually about his personal experiences in life. He basically gave a 15min speech about every single picture in the house with many interruptions by two kids playing ping pong, which I thought was funny. As we got to about the 4^th or 5^th picture, I looked around the house and I realized that there were about 10 more remaining. I was dreading what was coming. As we made it around the house, we knew pretty everything about the random items in the house, even about the kitchen, but nothing about the 8^th infantry. After about 45min (I think), rather it felt like eternity, we were free of Mr. Dick Adams. It’s important to know however, I do not regret Dick Adams’ tour for it was one of the most unique tours I have ever had.

Historical Background:

The 8^th regiment of Maine was a volunteer infantry regiment who served out of Augusta, Maine for the Union Army. In 1871, the 8^th Maine Regiment Memorial Association was put together to keep the bonds that the members of the 8^th had with each other strong. In fact, the 8^th Maine Regiment house was completed in 1891 to solidify those bonds and was used as a place for the 8^th members to get together and to refresh their ties. After the Civil War, Brigadier General William McArthur had won $75,000 from the Louisiana State Lottery and had used $8,000 of his winnings to construct the house and $800 for the land. If I recall correctly, Dick Adams had said that many of the lotteries were rigged during the time and that this particular one might have been as well. Either way, McArthur had used that money to help build the 8^th Regiment Memorial house. The building consists of 3 floors and even to this day, the building still keeps the original 1800s style, as I saw for myself. According to Dick Adams, it was one of the first buildings to use steel rods to support the second floor. It also has an amazing wrap-around porch and the upper floor consists of 11 bedrooms and the lowest floor consists of a kitchen. Now, the building is a memorial to all those who had served in the 8^th and the memorial has a large collection of items that belonged to the 8^th regiment.

It should not be surprising that Maine has a memorial for one of their volunteer regiments because, after all, the people of Maine are such proud people who know the importance of supporting their own thus the 8^th Maine Regiment Memorial was constructed.

Members of the 8th

Sources: http://eighthmaine.com/defaul.aspx