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MEMaine Famous People
Two world class careers out of one coastal town
Cape Elizabeth, just south of Portland, has fewer than 10,000 residents. John Ford was born there as John Martin Feeney on February 1, 1894, the youngest of eleven children of Irish immigrants, and went on to win four Academy Awards for directing, still more than anyone else. Joan Benoit Samuelson was born in the same town on May 16, 1957, had arthroscopic knee surgery seventeen days before the 1984 Olympic trials, made the team anyway, and then won the first women's Olympic marathon ever contested, in Los Angeles on August 5, 1984.
No president, but two vice presidents
No US president has been born in Maine. Two vice presidents have. Hannibal Hamlin was born at Paris Hill on August 27, 1809 and served as Lincoln's first vice president from 1861 to 1865 before being dropped from the ticket in 1864 in favor of Andrew Johnson. Nelson Rockefeller was born in Bar Harbor on July 8, 1908 while his family was summering there, and served as Gerald Ford's vice president from 1974 to 1977.
Margaret Chase Smith, born in Skowhegan on December 14, 1897, was the first woman elected to both houses of Congress. On June 1, 1950 she stood on the Senate floor and read her Declaration of Conscience against Joseph McCarthy when almost no other Republican would say anything, and in 1964 she became the first woman placed in nomination for the presidency by a major party. Edmund Muskie of Rumford, born March 28, 1914, was governor, senator, the 1968 Democratic vice presidential nominee, and Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State. James G. Blaine was born in Pennsylvania but built everything in Augusta, editing the Kennebec Journal before becoming Speaker of the House, Secretary of State, and the losing nominee of 1884.
Writers who came from Maine, and writers who came to it
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland on February 27, 1807, in a brick house on Congress Street that still stands. Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland on February 22, 1892, wrote Renascence about the view from the hills above Camden while she was still a teenager, and won the Pulitzer for poetry in 1923. Sarah Orne Jewett was born in South Berwick in 1849 and wrote The Country of the Pointed Firs about the coastline she grew up on.
Stephen King was born in Portland on September 21, 1947, was teaching high school English at Hampden Academy and living in a trailer when he wrote Carrie, and has stayed in Bangor ever since behind a wrought iron fence of bats and spiderwebs. Two other landmark books were written in Maine by people from elsewhere. Harriet Beecher Stowe drafted Uncle Tom's Cabin in Brunswick in 1851 while her husband taught at Bowdoin, and E. B. White wrote Charlotte's Web at the saltwater farm in Brooklin he bought in 1938.
A colonel, a gunmaker, and a bad first batch of boots
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was born in Brewer on September 8, 1828 and was teaching rhetoric at Bowdoin when he took leave to fight. On July 2, 1863 he held the extreme left of the Union line at Little Round Top and ordered a bayonet charge when his men ran out of ammunition. He received the Medal of Honor, served four one year terms as governor of Maine, and then ran Bowdoin for twelve years.
Hiram Maxim was born in Sangerville on February 5, 1840 and built the first fully automatic machine gun; his brother Hudson invented smokeless powder, and the two feuded in public for years. Leon Leonwood Bean, born in Greenwood in 1872, stitched leather uppers onto rubber bottoms in 1912 and sold a hundred pairs by mail. Ninety came back with the seams failed. He refunded all of them, which is where the Freeport company's return policy started. Chester Greenwood of Farmington was fifteen when he bent wire into the first earmuffs and eighteen when he patented them in 1877.
Names that do not sound like Maine
Anna Kendrick was born in Portland on August 9, 1985. Patrick Dempsey was born in Lewiston on January 13, 1966 and competed as a juggler as a teenager. Judd Nelson and Linda Lavin were both born in Portland. Marsden Hartley, one of the first American modernist painters, was born in Lewiston in 1877. Winslow Homer was a Bostonian who moved to Prouts Neck in Scarborough in 1883 and painted that surf for the rest of his life. Samantha Smith was a ten year old in Manchester, Maine, when she wrote to Yuri Andropov in 1982, was invited to the Soviet Union the following summer, and died in a plane crash near Auburn in 1985 at thirteen.
Questions about notable Mainers
Has any US president been born in Maine?
No. Two vice presidents were: Hannibal Hamlin, born at Paris Hill in 1809, and Nelson Rockefeller, born in Bar Harbor in 1908. George H. W. Bush summered at Kennebunkport but was born in Milton, Massachusetts.
Is Stephen King from Maine?
Yes. He was born in Portland on September 21, 1947, taught at Hampden Academy, and has lived in Bangor for decades. Most of his novels are set in fictional Maine towns.
Who is the most famous athlete from Maine?
Joan Benoit Samuelson of Cape Elizabeth, who won the first Olympic women's marathon in Los Angeles on August 5, 1984, seventeen days after knee surgery she had before the trials.
Was L. L. Bean a real person?
Yes. Leon Leonwood Bean was born in Greenwood, Maine, in 1872 and started selling his Maine Hunting Shoe by mail in 1912. Ninety of the first hundred pairs failed and he refunded every one.
Which actors were born in Maine?
Anna Kendrick and Judd Nelson were born in Portland, Patrick Dempsey in Lewiston, and Linda Lavin in Portland. Director John Ford was born in Cape Elizabeth in 1894.
The only state with a one syllable name
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