Eminent Mainers

Among others, you'll meet Princess Salm-Salm, born Agnes Joy in 1840, who first achieved notoriety as a circus performer playing the accordion while riding a galloping horse, went on to marry a prince, and ended up the first woman awarded the Prussian Medal of Honor. Maine—boring? Never!

Maine is a rural backwater? Meet Hiram Abrams, born in Portland in 1878 the son of a Russian immigrant real estate broker, attended public schools, left school at age sixteen, sold newspapers, bought a cow and started a dairy -- and eventually became the founder and president of United Artists. Or Aurelia Gay Mace, born in 1835 in Strong, a Shaker from an early age, credited with the invention of the wire coat hanger. Aurelia achieved national fame in 1890 when she mistook Charles Lewis Tiffany for a tramp, gave him lemonade, brushed his clothes, insisted that he sit down for the noon meal, and sent him off with a box lunch. Tiffany responded by sending her a set of engraved silver. Meet Milton Bradley who was born in Vienna (Maine) in 1836, educated at Harvard, worked as a mechanical engineer and patent solicitor, became interested in lithography, developed a board game, The Checkered Game of Life, and founded the Milton Bradley Company. Or Louise Bogan, who was born in Livermore Falls in 1897, moved to Greenwich Village as a young woman, took up the bohemian life,occasionally drove the get away car for a fur thief, and ended up as the poetry critic for the New Yorker Magazine. And many more...