Chebacco Chats

Chebacco Chats, our weekly web series, ran from 2020-2023 and featured authors, historians, and others who study and celebrate history, the great place that is Mount Desert Island, and the way the island impacts the wider world.


Season 4 (2023) considers the theme of Chebacco 2023, “The Maritime Edition”

Episode 1. March 2, 2023
"A Dark and Stormy Night”: Jefferson's Embargo in Frenchman Bay, 1807–1809 with Josh Smith

Episode 2. March 9, 2023
Always Ready, No Matter What: Lifesaving and the Establishment of the Coast Guard on MDI
with Jenna Jandreau

Episode 3. March 16. 2023
Racing Those Fast and Lovely Sailboats: Youth Sailing on MDI with Bill Horner, M.D.

Episode 4. March 23, 2023
Nova Scotian Preoccupation 1713-1762: Or, Why not MDI?
with Patrick Callaway

Episode 5. March 30, 2023
Risk and Reward: Cranberry Isles in the Age of Sail with Julia Gray

Episode 6. April 6, 2023
Poetry of Mount Desert Island with Carl Little, in honor of National Poetry Month

Episode 7. April 13, 2023
The Berwind Mutiny with Tim Garrity

Episode 8. April 20, 2023
The History of MDI Biological Laboratory with Jeri Bowers, David Evans, Ph.D., and Dr. Hermann Haller

Episode 9. April 27, 2023
Creating “The Maritime Edition” with Raney Bench and Willie Granston

Episode 10. October 19, 2023
Ralph Stanley: A Scholar and a Master of his Trade with Cipperly Good

Episode 11. October 26, 2023
“Painting That Mountainous and Sea-Girt Isle: Harrison B. Brown on Mount Desert Island” with Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr.

Episode 12. November 2, 2023
The Somesville Museum’s Heirloom Gardens with Joy Lyons

Episode 13. November 9, 2023
”From the Collection” with Patrick Callaway

Episode 14. November 16, 2023
“Plaister & Herring: The Lives of Capt. William Heath and Capt. David King” with Jessie Burchett

Episode 15. November 30, 2023 
“Lydia Stories: The Carroll Family History, 1761-1917” with Joan Grant

Episode 16. December 7, 2023 
“Jordans of the Pond” with author Jim Reeverts
 

Episode 17. December 7, 2023 
“Lucy’s Lens: Life on Mount Desert Rock 1906-1909” with Libby MacDonald Bischof
 


Season 3 (2022) considers the theme of Chebacco 2022, “Imagining What If....?” 

Episode 1. March 3, 2022.
Chebacco, Volume XXIII - What It Means to Imagine “What If?” with Raney Bench

Episode 2. March 10, 2022. Originally aired April 2020.
Maine’s Long Journey to Statehood with Liam Riordan.

Episode 3. March 17, 2022.
Eagle Lake Lodge: The Missing Carriage Road Gatehouse with Betsy Hewlett

Episode 4. March 24, 2022.
Electric Ideas and Trolley Troubles on Mount Desert Island with Sean Cox

Episode 5. March 31, 2022.
Ralph Stanley Commemoration with Southwest Harbor Public Library

Episode 6. April 7, 2022.
The Isle of Mount Deserted: Pleasures and Amenities of Life at Bar Harbor in 1920, after the Automobile Invasion. A prophecy. by Arthur Train.

Episode 7. April 14, 2022.
Boston Dreams: A Beginning, Middle, & End with Roberto Rodriguez 

Episode 8. April 20, 2022. Pre-recorded earlier in April 2022.
We Change with Them - with Jennifer Steen Booher

Episode 9: October 27, 2022
Sounding the Last Whistle: Canneries of Southwest Harbor and Bass Harbor with Raney Bench

Episode 10: November 3, 2022
The Maine That Almost Was: British Plans for Downeast Maine in 1775-1815, with Patrick Callaway, Ph.D.

Episode 11: November 10, 2022
Governor Bernard’s Failed Dream for Southwest Harbor with Thomas Urquhart

Episode 12: November 17, 2022
Imagining Sorrento: The Black Resort That Never Was with Sam Younger & Karen Sieber 

Episode 13: December 1, 2022
Net-Pen Salmon Farming in Maine: The Historical Context with Natalie Springuel

Episode 14: December 8, 2022
The Stone Barn Farm with Tim Garrity, and Renee Duncan of Maine Coast Heritage Trust

Episode 15: December 15, 2022 
Mount Desert Island’s Gilded Age of Yachting with Bill Horner, MDI


(2020-2021)

No. 45, Thomas Urquhart - Up for Grabs! Timber Pirates, Lumber Barons, and the Battles Over Maine’s Public Lands

No. 44, Sam Younger - The 1927 Land Auction: When the Harlem Renaissance Reached Sorrento

No. 43, Tom MacMillan - Remember the Conspirators: The Ku Klux Klan, anti-Catholic Progressivism, and the Republican Party in 1920s Maine

No. 42, Patrick Callaway - From the Collections: The MDI Committee for Peace

No. 41, Patrick Callaway - When Spanish Flu Came to Bangor

No. 40, Jenna Beaulieu - Beatrix Farrand and Garland Farm

No. 39, Marie Yarborough - Thomas Fraizer: The Man, The Mystery

No. 38, Roberto Rodriguez - James Melton's 1913 Peugeot skiff-mobile

No. 37, Raney Bench & Bill Horner - MDI’s Car Crises

No. 35, Tim Garrity - Centennials: Now and Then

No. 34, Betsy Hewlett - An Island Landscape Gardening Culture: The Legacy of Nurserymen from 1880 to 1920

No. 33, Bruce Jacobson - The History Trust

No. 32, Tim Garrity - George Hefflon’s Silent Mission

No. 31, James O’Toole - “Ter-Centenary”: Inventing Tradition for Maine’s Catholics, 1913

No. 30, Tim Garrity - The Norwood Cove Object

No. 29, Karen Sieber - Red Summer and hidden histories

No. 28, Iris Jamahl Dunkle - Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer

There are no episodes 26 or 27.

No. 25, Natalie Springuel – Stories From the Sea, Fishing Communities Revealed

No. 24, Patrick Callaway - The Civilian Conservation Corps on Mount Desert Island (first moments not recorded)

No. 23, Tim Garrity - John Gilley Fell at the Battle of the Wilderness

No. 22, Will Thorndike – Three Buildings: The Quiet Iconoclasm of Robert W. Patterson

No. 21, Catherine Schmitt – Searching for Spellman’s Birds

No. 20, Polly McAdam – When Canopies Rivaled Cathedrals

No. 19, Carolyn Rapkievian, Director for the Bar Harbor Historical Society - A selection of items from the BHHS collection

No. 18, Jane Bianco - Eliot Porter: All the Wild Places

No. 17, Carl Little - “Marguerite Yourcenar: Piranesi at Petite Plaisance” 

No. 16, Julia Gray - John Snow’s Postcard Basket: A Story of Wabanaki Presence and Persistence on Mount Desert Island 

No. 15, Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie - The Changing Flora of Mount Desert Island

No. 14, Roc Caivano - The Somesville Bridge

No. 13, Sean Cox - Foundation and Founder

No. 12, Rick Savage - A.C. Savage's “Memories of a Lifetime”

No. 11, Raney Bench - “Maine’s Gone Mad: The Rising of the Klan”

No. 10, Mark Silk - William Foy, an African American resident of Otter Creek and “perhaps the most consequential figure in American religious history ever to reside in Hancock County”

No. 9, Patrick Callaway - “An Uncertain Trumpet: Coastal Mainers, Nova Scotians, and the War of 1812”

No. 8, Darcy Stevens - “Fontaine Leval: A Revolutionary Story”

No. 7, Eloise Schultz - a conversation with poet Eloise SchultzChebacco’s  copy-editor and co-author of an introduction to “Before 1820”

No. 6 Jennifer Steen Booher interviewed by Raney Bench - “Historians of the Wabanaki Nations”

No. 5, Rachel Snell - “Judith Somes’ Sampler: Needlework and Education in Rural Maine before 1820”

No. 4, Erick Schenkel and Daniel Schenkel - “Owning the Dawnland: Shells and Maps, Misdeeds and Deeds”

No. 3, Brittany Goetting - “Committees, Churches, and Classrooms: Influential Women in the Early Nineteenth Century on Mount Desert Island”

No. 2, Liam Riordan - “Mount Desert Island and the Long Struggle for Maine Statehood”

No. 1, Bill Horner - “Dr. William Begg, HMS Tenedos, the War of 1812 and the ‘Battle of Norwood Cove’”