Old Porter Village

Dear Diary,

I was married in this old meetinghouse nearly 18 years ago.  When it was built around 1809 it was the center of the village.  It is opened one day a year on Labor Day Sunday and our historical society maintains it.  It is on the National Register of Historic Places. Town meetings were held here until well into the 20th century.  There was a school house across the road and I've added a photograph of the Town Pound...where stray farm animals would be kept until the owners could claim them.  Dotty remembers helping her mother serve lunch in the old school house when the religious group that founded the meetinghouse  held their annual meetings.

The village was abandoned and its activity moved but the old meeting house survives, one of the few in Maine of this vintage.  There are many abandoned towns in northern New England, some no more that cellar holes now.  I hope to explore some of these hidden and lost villages this year.

I do love photographing "remnants" in the landscape; pieces of history that have been left behind.  They speak of a time so distant, people long gone, and yet you can almost feel an energy in the place.  Genealogy is a bit like this, digging into a past that is long forgotten but still present on some level.  It is a way for me to touch the past and connect.