South Bristol Historical Society

11/07/2025

A page from the "The Lincolnite" Lincoln High School, South Bristol 1931 Basketball team.

10/17/2025

Old Bristol Historical Society Lincoln County Historical Association (Maine) Boothbay Region Historical Society Damariscotta Historical Society Newcastle Maine Historical Society Nobleboro Historical Society

“When Lincoln County Froze!”

Please join us on October 19th as South Bristol historian Dave Andrews shares the fascinating story of how Lincoln County established itself as a major center for ice production throughout the 19th century.

The program will be held at Sunday, October 19th, 4pm at the Bristol Congregational Church, 1261 Bristol Road, Bristol Mills.

Located in coastal towns, ice companies cut and stored huge quantities of ice for export to cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. At its peak, the Lincoln County ice houses could hold more than 125,000 tons of ice.

This free event is being co-hosted by the Old Bristol Historical Society and the South Bristol Historical Society.

10/17/2025

“When Lincoln County Froze!”

Please join us on October 19th as South Bristol historian Dave Andrews shares the fascinating story of how Lincoln County established itself as a major center for ice production throughout the 19th century.

The program will be held at Sunday, October 19th, 4pm at the Bristol Congregational Church, 1261 Bristol Road, Bristol Mills.

Located in coastal towns, ice companies cut and stored huge quantities of ice for export to cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. At its peak, the Lincoln County ice houses could hold more than 125,000 tons of ice.

This free event is being co-hosted by the Old Bristol Historical Society and the South Bristol Historical Society.

10/02/2025

1934 Commencement Exercise South Bristol High School

10/02/2025

Looking for the 1934 yearbook for South Bristol High School to help identify the members of the basketball team.

09/15/2025

THE ROLE OF RELIGION
IN COASTAL MAINE’S HISTORY
Sept. 21, 4pm

Old Bristol Historical Society (OBHS), in collaboration with the South Bristol Historical Society, is sponsoring a presentation by renowned colonial historian and author David D. Hall. He will talk about the significant role of religion in Coastal Maine, circa 1700-1950. The program will be on Sept. 21, from 4 pm to 5 pm, at the Bristol Congregational Church, 1261 Bristol Road, Bristol, Maine.

“As was happening elsewhere after 1789, Protestantism in Bristol was transformed in remarkable ways by the middle of the nineteenth century—'Americanized,’ according to foreign observers because a single state church had given way to denominations,” said Hall. He will detail how religion was an integral part of the everyday life of early New Englanders. In fact, it was a driving force in their near universal literacy as they needed to be able to read and study the Bible for themselves.

Hall has taught at the Harvard Divinity School since 1989 and was Bartlett Professor of New England Church History until 2008, when he became Bartlett Research Professor. He continues to study and write about religion and culture in early America, with particular attention to “lived religion.”

Old Bristol Historical Society thanks Aves Appraisal and Hammond Lumber Company for sponsoring this event.
Please note—due to fire code regulations, capacity at the church’s Fellowship Hall is limited to 88 people.

08/29/2025

Do you know anything about ice cutting or the selling of ice in Bristol? Where, when, who? Our friend Dave Andrews from the South Bristol Historical Society is collecting information for a talk later this fall.

Pictured here are Lloyd "Stubby" Hanna, Jesse Hoffman, and Lester Sykes on the New Harbor Ice Pond, c. 1930.

08/16/2025

SBHS hosted a presentation on Aug 13 by Capt. JB Smith who talked about his time sailing the Schooner Harvey Gamage and the Ocean Classroom Foundation. Capt. Greg Bailey was also on hand to talk about the future of the Harvey Gamage, now under the management of Marine Learning Project.
Photo: (top) Harvey Gamage launched 1973, Capt. Smith (center row, left), Capt. Bailey (lower right corner)

08/07/2025

Aug. 13th, 7pm - The Seagoing Career of Captain J.B. Smith

The South Bristol Historical Society will host a presentation by Capt. J.B. Smith on Wednesday evening Aug. 13th, 7pm at the Union Church Parish Hall in South Bristol.

Capt. Smith will talk about his seagoing career aboard sail training vessels such as Bill of Rights and Harvey Gamage, both built at the Harvey F. Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol. Smith was instrumental in the design and implementation of a program of education at sea which evolved to become the Ocean Classroom Foundation. Currently living in Nobleboro, he is still a captain for hire, and frequently steps in as relief captain aboard a variety of large sailing vessels including the historically reconstructed Virginia, “Maine’s First Ship”.

This event is free and open to the general public. For more information email [email protected].

07/12/2025

07/08/2025

Historical Society Annual Meeting
with Guest Speaker Neill De Paoli

The South Bristol Historical Society will host a presentation by historical archaeologist Dr. Neill De Paoli on Tuesday evening July 8th at the Union Church Parish Hall in South Bristol. DePaoli’s talk will follow a short annual membership meeting beginning at 6:30pm.

Dr. De Paoli’s presentation, “Coastal Summer Visits of Maine Indigenous Peoples during the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries,” will focus on the Wabanaki who frequented Maine's Midcoast to serve the summer tourist communities from the late 1800s well into the 1900s.

Since 1992, he has been collecting oral history, documents and photographs documenting the complex and fascinating story of the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians who spent their summers crafting and selling a variety of items such as baskets, root clubs, bows and arrows, and birchbark canoes to summer people and locals in South Bristol, Bristol and Boothbay. One family in particular lived and worked in Christmas Cove, and their location just downhill from the Holly Inn attracted both year-round and seasonal tourists who bought their Native crafts.

Anyone with memories of those Wabanaki who summered in South Bristol is encouraged to attend De Paoli’s talk and to bring their stories and any Wabanaki items to share. His presentation will include samples of some of those Wabanaki craft items, among them split ash & sweet grass baskets, a birch bark model or toy canoe, a root club and a crooked knife.

Neill De Paoli is a historian/historical archaeologist living with his wife in Kittery, Maine. He earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of New Hampshire. De Paoli has been the Historic Site Manager at Colonial Pemaquid State Historic Site, Pemaquid Beach, Maine since 2016. Over the last forty-five years, Dr. De Paoli has been studying English settlement and Anglo-Indian and Anglo-Franco relations in early northern New England. He has written over a dozen articles covering these topics. Dr. De Paoli is currently working on a biography of John Gyles, one of Maine’s leading Anglo-Indian interpreters/negotiators during the first half of the 1700s. He is also is heading a planning committee that is preparing a year long program “Voices Past & Present: Exploring the History of the Pemaquid Region.” The 25-30 events will be held throughout 2028 on the Pemaquid peninsula. They will explore the intertwining legacies of the Indigenous, Euramerican, and African-American peoples inhabiting the Pemaquid peninsula and offshore islands from 6,000+ B.P. to present day.

This event is free and open to the general public.