History of Slavery In Maine
I stumbled across an article which might help explain how the mask got there, I'll copy and past an exerpt:
There were certainly more slaves in South Carolina than there were in Maine, and many may not even be aware of Maine’s history of slavery. True, no Maine city was home to the slave markets that existed throughout the South and closer to home in northern cities like New York, Boston, or even Portsmouth. Yet Mainers owned slaves and took an active and profitable role in the slave trade. And in Portland, slavery is found at the very dawn of the city’s history.
At the time it was called Falmouth, and it included the land where presently sit the towns of Portland, Falmouth, Westbrook, Scarborough, and Cape Elizabeth. The city was founded by two men and their families, and one of these families, that headed by George Cleaves, owned a slave by the name of Oliver Weeks. Cleaves and his partner Richard Tucker were evicted from the island that is still named Richmond’s Island off the coast of present day Cape Elizabeth. From the island they sailed a few miles north and, with the help of their slave, founded Portland when they built a trading post near where the Casco Bay parking garage now stands.
Slavery was legal in Maine because Maine was a part of Massachusetts until 1820, and slavery was legal in Massachusetts until 1783.
According to the estimates of Randolph Stakeman, a Bowdoin history professor who wrote “Slavery in Colonial Maine” in the fall 1987 edition of the
Maine Historical Quarterly, there were probably never more than 500 or 600 slaves in Maine at one time. The low slave population was partly due to the fact that not that many white colonialists lived in Maine either. Still, even back then, Maine was pretty white-bread: according to a 1764 census, blacks made up less than two percent of the population. Compared with southern states, this is extremely low.
(taken from
NEVER FORGET)
