MADAWASKA:  Extracts from Maine Histories Written by
School Children Sprague's Journal of Maine History
Volume 9, April, May, June, 1921 No. 2 Page 88-89

Contributed by Androscoggin Historical Society
http://www.rootsweb.com/~meandrhs
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
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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.

MADAWASKA (By Elsie Chassie.)

"One of the first attentions of the Maine governor
was to make known to his new subjects the
constitution under which they were henceforth to
live.  It was for this purpose that an Irish
Catholic of good education and well acquainted with
the French language, James Madigan, was sent to them
as a civil missionary. Madigan went over the country
giving lectures and teaching the people about the U.
S. Constitution, the administration and the civil
government.  He was for a time postmaster,
instructor, col-lector of taxes and magistrate for
the whole region.  But as soon as one locality was
ready to take up the administration of its own
affairs, he would pass his functions to the
citizens."