The Maine State Museum has exhibits that represent the many roles of women over the history of Maine - Abenaki women, women in lumber camps, in the cotton and woolen mills, in fish canning factories, in the home, and on the farm. Proposed to open in the near future is an exhibition on Maine Home Life, which focuses on the history of domestic life in Maine.

 Of special note is a statue in front of the Cultural Building. Samantha Smith, the young Maine student known worldwide for her peace work, is memorialized in a life-size statue. In 1983, Samantha wrote to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov congratulating him on his position and asking if was going to engage in nuclear war with the United States. Andropov responded and shortly after Samantha, at age ten, visited the then Soviet Union. Samantha's letter and her visit brought the question of peaceful co-existence to the thoughts of the American public. Samantha and her father, Arthur, died tragically in an airplane crash in 1985. Her statue is one of only a few in the state that honor actual Maine women and girls. Had she lived, Samantha would have been twenty-eight years old in 2001.



Site #21.1 Sources:

	Conversation with Professor Eileen Eagan, University of Southern Maine, at Washburn Humanities Seminar, June 7-9, 2001, Norlands Living History Center, Livermore, Maine, June 8, 2001.
	Maine State Museum. Broadside, Vol. 21, 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2001.
	Samantha Smith: The Girl Who Went to the Soviet Union. Online resource available at http://wwwsmi.lkwash.wednet.edu/Classrooms/FifthGrade/Eaton_home/Links/Samantha_Smith.htm. Accessed 2 September 2001.