Romantic Notes Found at College of Southern Maine Date Again to the 1800s

A romantic thriller has been solved.

In December 2024, a collection of non-public love letters had been found stashed between partitions and floorboards on the College of Southern Maine’s Gorham campus. The notes had been discovered within the Academy Constructing, which was beneath renovation on the time. Native historians decided that they’re seemingly from the nineteenth century.

The constructing was constructed in 1806, and as soon as served as a university preparatory highschool for upper-class college students. Stephen Longfellow, the daddy of acclaimed poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, initially secured the land grant to construct the varsity, Bangor Each day Information studies.

The notes contained secretive scribbles despatched between teenage faculty crushes, suffering from phrases like “my darling.” The letters additionally carried worries about unrequited affections and the trainer’s feedback. The notes are believed to be from the constructing’s time as a highschool, earlier than it was bought to the state of Maine and bought as college property in 1878, Bangor Each day Information reported in 2024.

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Now, the college is working to protect the stunning discovery for locals and college students alike to watch. Dr. Libby Bischof, a historian on the college, instructed ABC 8 WMTW, “Educating historical past right here, as a Maine historian, it is unimaginable to have these buildings as a result of they grow to be our school rooms, the panorama turns into our classroom. And you do not have to think about what the previous appear to be.”

Susie Bock, a coordinator of the college’s particular collections division, is at present working to protect the notes and doubtlessly digitize them for widespread entry, per the information station.

“Folks’s data and curiosity modifications, interpretation of the first assets goes to alter, however that is why it is necessary to maintain the first assets in order that we are able to do these interpretations,” stated Bock. “It is an necessary a part of protecting historical past from being erased.”