NEW SWEDEN: Extracts from Maine Histories Written by School Children Sprague's Journal of Maine History Volume 9, April, May, June, 1921 No. 2 Page 88 Contributed by Androscoggin Historical Society http://www.rootsweb.com/~meandrhs Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm No study is more enticing than the achievements of men and the study becomes doubly interesting when it has to do with the beginnings of things with which we are now perfectly familiar. Many of the schools of our state, from the little country school on the hillside to the girls in our state normal schools, are doing research work in local history and are producing some very fine stories of the beginnings of their town. Miss Nellie Jordan, with her class in the Aroostook State Normal School, produced some wonderful books, each student taking for her own work her local town. In some instances, the book compiled is a community affair, each child contributing some fact or some paragraph or some source material from which the paragraph is written. I hope the work may be carried on in future years. Teachers who have not begun it will find explicit directions in our little booklet, "One Hundred Years of Statehood and One Hundred Leading Facts of Maine." I am giving herewith some of the paragraphs culled from the books sent in to the office by schools throughout the state. It will be noted that these paragraphs are finished exercises in English and show a very nice discrimination of leading facts. It is really worth something to the child or even to a high school stu-dent to make some original investigation from the sources of information, collect that data around a central idea and write it up definitely and purposefully. I am pleased to call the atten-tion of the teachers of the state to the following very fine paragraphs or extracts from Maine books. NEW SWEDEN (By Minnie O. Peterson) "In 1873, the colony had increased to six hundred. Fifteen hundred acres of land had been cleared, four hundred of which were laid down to grass. There were 22 horses, 14 oxen, 100 cows, 40 calves, 33 sheep and 125 swine owned by the colony. The commissioner recommended that all special state aid to New Sweden should cease as the colony could very well take care of itself."