Group at Mudgetts

Group at Mudgetts

Group at Mudgett's farm later the Girl's Home, on Northport Ave., Belfast Same group as LB2000.52.210 A group of politically minded women helped to found the Children's Aid Society of Maine and established the Girls' Home in 1893. The 40 acre Geneva Mudgett farm on Northport Avenue was purchased for this purpose in 1895. The Legislature appropriated $3000.00 toward the purchase of the farm, an unusually large sum for the time and a tribute to the political will of the women leaders. They converted the farm into a home for "friendless" (orphans) girls. Among the founders of the Society were Ellen Hamlin, the widow of former U. S. Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, the wives of two U. S. Senators, Mrs. Caroline Spear Frye & Mrs. Mary Chandler Hale and Mrs. Laura E. Sterling Fessenden, the wife of Maine's Secretary of State. The Society was the first institution in Maine with a statewide, non-institutional approach to child care, advocating more humane care by providing relief and assistance together with suitable mental and moral training to "friendless, destitute and needy children". The Society was founded and headquartered in Belfast. Of the thirty original officers and board nine were from Belfast. The home proved a great success and housed between 12 and 20 girls, aged between 5 and 16 years of age at any one time. Although it was never intended to be a permanent orphan asylum, many of the girls spent much of their childhood at the home. As a farm, much of the food consumed was grown or produced at the home with enough excess to sell. Because the State and Local Governments were beginning to offer child welfare services, the population at the home dwindled substantially by the 1930s and 1940s. In 1947, Linwood Brown, a consultant to the State Department proposed a union of The Children's Home of Portland (formerly the Female Orphan Asylum), the Belfast-based Children's Aid Society of Maine, Maine Home for Boys (formerly the Little Samaritan Society), and the original Sweetser Home for Boys in Saco. Margaret Stone, as President of the Children's Aid Society of Maine, shepherded the transition of the Society in its merger with Sweetser Children's Home in 1950. By September of 1950, five of the last six girls were placed in private homes and the last girl was transferred to a cottage at the Sweetser Home in Saco. The home in Belfast was closed and the farm sold with the proceeds funding the construction of an additional cottage in Saco. With a history dating to 1828, Sweetser is the oldest child welfare / behavioral health organization in Maine.