Season 4, Episode 9: Creating “The Maritime Edition” with Raney Bench and Willie Granston
Guests: Raney Bench, Director- Mount Desert Island Historical Society & Willie Granston, Board President, Great Harbor Maritime Museum
Air Date: April 27, 2023
Host: Bruce Jacobson, Project Manager for the History Trust
Raney Bench of Mount Desert Island Historical Society and Willie Granston of the Great Harbor Maritime Museum talk about the collaborative process of putting together Chebacco: The Maritime Edition. In this issue of Chebacco, we rely on networks of individuals and institutions and call attention to new stories. The resulting articles bring together resources from disparate collections and connect new pieces in the giant puzzle of this Island's rich past. Local history is being told in new ways, and what could be more exhilarating?
Many words are used to describe community history projects: challenging, exciting, difficult, convoluted, unexpected, and more. These words often focus on the individual experience, as one searches for answers, details, or stories. But on Mount Desert Island, history is also collaborative. One is rarely working alone, and the stories of our past are intertwined with those of larger dialogues. Those telling our stories belong to a coterie of stalwart, dedicated, and deeply interested people all working together with a similar goal: community history.
Collaboration comes in many forms, and the 2023 Chebacco is no exception. For the first time in its history, this journal is a collaborative effort between two institutions: The Mount Desert Island Historical Society and The Great Harbor Maritime Museum. Like all history projects, this has been challenging, exciting, unexpected, but the outcome has been rewarding.
About Our Guests
Raney Bench, is Executive Director at Mount Desert Island Historical Society and the editor of Chebacco XIV: The Maritime Edition. Raney has worked in several small New England museums in education, exhibits, collections management, and as an Executive Director. She graduated with a BA in Native American Studies from Humboldt State University, and a MA in Museum Studies from the University of Nebraska. Raney is passionate about the power of the past and how history impacts our daily lives.
A native of Mount Desert Island, Maine, Willie Granston is a PhD candidate in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Boston University. His studies focus on American architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and his dissertation focuses on the relationship between nineteenth-century New England resort architecture and period environmental awareness. A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, he earned his master’s degree from the University of Delaware, where he studied in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. He is involved in many different local history efforts and currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Great Harbor Maritime Museum in Northeast Harbor.
Chebacco articles by Raney Bench:
- Maine’s Gone Mad: The Rising of the Klan, 2014
- Sounding the Last Whistle: The Canneries of Southwest Harbor and Bass Harbor, 2022
- Imagining “What if…”, 2022
Raney’s previous Chebacco Chat appearances
- Sounding the Last Whistle: The Canneries of Southwest Harbor and Bass Harbor, 2022
- What It Means to Imagine “What If?”, 2021
- MDI’s Car Crises with Bill Horner, 2021