From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
Town Hall & Historical Museum, New Sweden, ME 1425
A view of the town hall (on left) and Kapitoleum and Historical Museum (on right) taken from across the street. A directional sign can be seen to the left of the Town Hall. To the right of the museum is another building which looks like a school. The town of New Sweden was a settlement project of the State of Maine to help re-populate the T15-R3 far northeast region of the state in the 1870s. William Widgery Thomas, Jr, Maine's . State Immigration Commissioner, who had served as President Lincoln's Civil War Consul in Sweden, recruited the first 51 settlers from Sweden. The project was conceived as a public policy response to steer ongoing Swedish immigration to Maine to replace population lost to westward migration. As part of the Homestead Act, immigrant Swedes were promised ownership of a 100 acre lot each, free of taxes for five years, on the condition they improve the land and return it to farming. Some perspective may be gained from the writings of Thomas himself: "No better immigrants than the Swedes ever landed on American soil. Honest and industrious, law-abiding and God-fearing, polite and brave, hospitable and generous, of the same old northern stock as ourselves, no foreign speaking immigrants learn our language more quickly, and none become more speedily Americanized or make better citizens...but how could Swedish emigrants be procured and how could they be retained within the limits of our State after they arrived here! I finally worked out a plan...and...for three years... preached in Maine the faith that was in me." At the outset, fearing taking on an impoverished population to farm the soil of land recently abandoned, the 1869 Legislature voted the bill down. The next year, Thomas persisted with his plans, and prevailed, and in May 1870 Thomas sailed for Sweden. Eventually 22 men, 11 women, and 18 children, themselves wishing to emigrate to the U.S, were judged to be qualified to emigrate: "...none would be accepted unless they brought with them the highest testimonials as to character and proficiencies in their callings...all bore certificates of character under the hand and seal of the pastor of their district, and all who had worked for others brought recommendations from their employers...In this way, a little colony of picked men with their wives and children was quickly gathered. The details of the movement, the arguments used, the objections made, the multitude of questions about our state asked and answered would fill a volume." The recruited men were all farmers, some skilled in trades and professions, including a "pastor, a civil engineer, a blacksmith, carpenters, a wheelwright, a baker, tailor, and a wooden shoe-maker. The women were tidy housewives and diligent workers at the spinning-wheel and loom." The settlers immediately built The Kapitoleum, the structure with the belfry, which served as an immigrant reception center, school, supply store, church, and town hall. Over the past 150 years it has been the region's cultural center and site of many midsommer and St. Lucia celebrations as well as Swedish musical and historical festivals. The building on the left, constructed later, took over as town hall. The Kapitoleum burned in 1971 and was rebuilt. The colony expanded fast during its first three years with an infusion of hundreds more Swedes. By the fall of 1873 New Sweden's population numbered around 600. The success of the colony by that year prompted Thomas to recommend that state funding aid be ended. Settlement kept expanding into the adjoining towns of Caribou, Woodland, Perham and township of Westmanland. By 1919 New Sweden numbered roughly 1,000, and the area 3,000 in Swedish settlers. The town of New Sweden by then boasted "three saw mills, two starch factories, five large stores, two blacksmith shops, a creamery, a fine Grange hall, two post offices with rural delivery, four churches, an excellent band of musicians." [Maine Memory Network: Maine's Swedish Colony, July 23, 1870; "The Story of New Sweden", American History and Genealogy Project. ahgp.org.]
