Malaga
Research material
In the summer of 1911, then Governor Frederick Plaisted and
a group of officials visited the homes and families living on Malaga. These
officials decided that eight of the islanders were feeble minded. They were
placed in the Pineland Center for the Feeble Minded in Pownal, Maine. It is
unlikely they were feeble minded, but may have been sick as one of them died of
Bright's Disease (kidney failure) within a year of leaving the island. It has
also been written, though unconfirmed, that James McKenney may have told the
state workers to take the Marks family as they had something that was wasn't
catching but that no one wanted to be around. Seven of those deemed feeble
minded were from the Marks family.
Specifically and most horribly, seven members of the Marks
family and an elderly woman, Annie Parker, were sent to Pineland, then known as
the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded.
Lizzie Marks
Jacob Marks
Eason John
School house
Scholarship
List of families
Newsletter
Scholarship
Pics 1908-1911
Loudville church built 1913Gothic revival
Loudville church
Living Status
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Deceased
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Listed by name in link within under "The History of
the Malaga Island Preserve". Also noted within the link is her family's
placement at the School for the Feeble-minded in New Gloucester, Maine and
the conditions of their removal from the Island.
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Last Name
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Blackwell
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Listed by name in link within under "The History of
the Malaga Island Preserve". Also noted within the link is her family's
placement at the School for the Feeble-minded in New Gloucester, Maine and
the conditions of their removal from the Island.
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First Name
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Charlotte "Lottie"
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Listed by name in link within under "The History of
the Malaga Island Preserve". Also noted within the link is her family's
placement at the School for the Feeble-minded in New Gloucester, Maine and
the conditions of their removal from the Island.
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Poem Benjamin Darling
The truth
A Century After Malaga Island
Explusion, an Apology
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09/13/2010 Reported
By: Josie Huang
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Malaga Island is a tranquil nature
preserve in Casco Bay, off the shores of Phippsburg, where local fishermen
store their traps. But for those familiar with its history, Malaga Island
represents a dark time in Maine's not-so-distant past. In 1912, the state
evicted the island's mixed-race fishing community.
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"Let me just say that, I'm sorry -- I'm sorry for
what was done. It wasn't right and we're raised better than that." That
was the apology offered by Gov. John Baldacci, nearly a century after the
eviction.
Baldacci traveled to the island on Sunday afternoon, where he met with nearly 30 of the islanders' descendants. They stood together on a bluff on the northwestern tip of the island -- everyone from toddlers to senior citizens. "It's reprehensible what happened to your families and, you know, the spirit with which you bring to today is a spirit that others can learn from," Baldacci said. At the time of the eviction, Malaga, whose familes were black, white, Native American and of mixed-race, was viewed as a blight on the Midcoast, where out-of-staters were vacationing. A eugenics movement linking race and poverty to intelligence helped fuel news reports describing islanders as ignorant, as well as immoral and lazy. "To have the governor say 'I'm sorry,' three times, 'it was wrong,' -- I think it just broke the curse," says Marney Voter of Windham. Voter is a descendant of Benjamin Darling, a former slave and earliest settler of Malaga. She's 57 and says growing up, her father fiercely denied his heritage. And it was easy to do. Darling's descendants looked white. "Our parents suppressed it, our parents wouldn't talk about it. My father was a bigot," she says. But Voter says she and her siblings are different. "We're the first generation in our family to proudly say that we are descended, that we have a black heritage. It might not show anymore but it's our namesake, Darling, my maiden name is Darling." Today, the thickly-wooded, 42-acre island, shows little trace of the community that once stood there. Houses were removed as part of the eviction. Several islanders were committed to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded. That's also where bodies exhumed from the island's cemetery were reburied. "I'd just like to read the names of those who were buried here and left the island in boxes," said Rachel Talbot-Ross of the NAACP in Maine. "Ann Parker, Harold Murphy, Elizabeth Darling, George Griffin, Hannah Mark. Elizabeth Darling, three of the Easton children, Calvin and Laura Tripp, Roxanne and Allen Griffin, Lucy Johnson, James Mark, Jake Mark, Jake Mark, Lizzy Mark, Etta Mark and five children from the Griffin family." Talbot-Ross and her family have been working for years toward getting greater recognition about Malaga Island. She credited Baldacci with being only the second governor to visit the island after Plaisted, the governor who authorized the eviction. "Thank God he had the wisdom and really the heart and soul to do it, and so we're pleased that he did it today," she said of Baldacci. The state Legislature also helped to bring more attention to Malaga Island by passing a resolution that recognized the islanders' expulsion. The Malaga Island Freedom Trail has been established by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which owns the island, and the Maine Freedom Trails, which works to preserve the African American legacy in Maine. And the island will be the subject of a special exhibition at the Maine State Museum in 2012, as part of the state's centennial events. |
Apology
Apology 2
Pineland speech
Cruise
The sign at pineland cemetery
Grave list at pineland
Eli McKinney
James Eli McKinney
PDF
kate museum curator
Story best left untold
Report of the council 1913
Good summary
Pineland cemetery
Annotated bibliography
Remaining buildings, including a once-viable school, were
destroyed by the state, and the graves of residents buried on the island were
exhumed and reinterred in un-marked graves on the grounds of the Maine School
for the Feeble-Minded.
A monument, paid for by an employee of the school,was finally
erected on the burial site by local historical societies, but the atrocity
survived in the mind of any Mainer with even the suggestion of a conscience.
The Darling family
Charlotte "Lottie" Mary Blackwell
(Marks)
b: 1894 Malaga Island – d: 1994
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