{"id":3205,"date":"2025-02-19T16:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T16:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/?page_id=3205"},"modified":"2025-02-19T20:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T20:50:08","slug":"timeline","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/timeline\/","title":{"rendered":"TIMELINE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Nature Lover\u2019s Dream of Opening a Museum | George Walter Hinckley\u2019s Childhood<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1858 \u2014 George Walter Hinckley (1858\u20131950) is born in Guilford, Connecticut. Growing up with a fascination with nature, Hinckley collects items he finds in nature, hoping one day he could display his collections.<\/p>\n\n\n

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George Walter Hinckley and his family, 1908.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

1868 \u2014 Hinckley, who had learned the names of every plant and bird that his father was familiar with, visits Mr. S. W. Loper, a geologist who ran the gristmill in town, and acquires three rocks, which he later considered as \u201cthe nucleus of a larger museum that was to be someday\u2014the museum for the multitude of young people then unborn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Moving Towards Creating a Museum |Good Will Hinckley School and the Display of Hinckley\u2019s Collection<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1889 \u2014 Hinckley founds the Good Will Hinckley School for underprivileged children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1889 \u2014 In the the Good Will Museum, Hinckley showcases rocks, fossils, and seashells in \u201ca small case with four or five pine shelves finished with black walnut stain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ca. 1890\u2014 After Good Will Cottage was opened as a home for fifteen boys, Hinckley  has a small case made and placed in a room in the cottage. The case consists of four or five pine shelves finished with black walnut stain. On these shelves the specimens and a few additional ones are placed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ca. 1890\u2014 Hinckley receives the first official donation, a mounted woodchuck, from Skowhegan taxidermist W. R. Gifford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1895 \u2014 Collections are moved to a large room on the second floor of Good Will School\u2019s Charles E. Moody Building. At that point, the collection consisted of 25 birds, 40 quadrupeds, and 650 specimens of minerals. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Reconstruction of the Charles E. Moody
Building after the fire, ca. 1911.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

A New Start After the Fire | The Start of the L.C. Bates Museum<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dec 31, 1904 \u2014 The Moody Building burns. According to Hinckley, the fire destroyed \u201cone of the finest natural history museums in the state of Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ca. 1905 \u2014 Unsolicited donations begin arriving from all over the country<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1905 \u2014 Collections are moved into a large room at the north end of the Quincy Manual Training Building, an industrial and manual training school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1914 \u2014 The manual training school is forced to close, so the whole Quincy Building is no longer in use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

November 1922\u2014 Lewis C. Bates (1843\u20131929) \u201calmost single-handedly financed the conversion of the Quincy Building [\u2026] into a building to house the museum, which was thereafter named in his honor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Quincy Manual Training building, 1911. Current location of the museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Important Contributors to the Museum | Ray W. Tobey and Charles D. Hubbard<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1915 \u2014 Charles D. Hubbard visits the museum after he designs a logo for the Good Will School based on Hinckley\u2019s request.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ray W. Tobey, Good Will-Hinckley, ca. 1915.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

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March 1919 \u2014 Ray W. Tobey, a former Good Will student, returns to work in the boys\u2019 grammar school and serves as a curator for the developing museum. According to Tobey, the average number of visitors per day is 23, and the museum has a total of 1,100 specimens on exhibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 1919 \u2014 Ray W. Tobey reports the number of visitors per day has doubled, and the museum collection now counts 1,550 specimens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1921 \u2014 Olive green signs with the name of the flora are made and placed next to their corresponding specimen to help young visitors identify plants. This marks the beginning of expanding the museum to include an outdoor section.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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1923 \u2014 Hubbard paints Impressionist backgrounds for the dioramas in 18 museum exhibition cases. All of the paintings are based on real Maine places. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Museum Opens to the Public<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

June 1924 \u2014 Trial period of opening L.C. Bates Museum to the general public. A signboard reads: \u201cBates Museum, Visitors Welcome\u201d with an additional sign below: \u201cNow Open.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

August 1924 \u2014 The museum receives an estimated 1,400 visitors during the 62 days when the museum is open to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feb 1943 \u2014 Ernest Hemingway\u2019s marlin is installed in the Fish Room of the L.C. Bates Museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1960\u20131978 \u2014 Good Will Hinckley is a prep-school and the museum is not open to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1978 \u2014 The school returns to its previous mission and the museum reopens to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ca. 1985 \u2014 The museum begins hosting yearly summer art and history exhibits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1996 \u2014 Charles Hubbard exhibit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1998 \u2014 Sprague\u2019s Journal of Maine<\/em> history exhibit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ca. 2000 \u2014 With IMLS support the museum\u2019s 32 dioramas with backgrounds painted by Hubbard are restored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2001\u2014 L.C. Bates receives NEH grants to purchase environmental monitoring equipment such as data loggers, preservation supplies, and funding for assessments by preservation experts and workshops on the proper care and handling of humanities collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goff, Rachel. \u201cThe Beginning of the L.C. Bates Museum.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hinckley, G.W. \u201cThe Story of a Museum.\u201d Good Will Record<\/em> XVII.2 (March 1904): 6\u20139.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Nature Lover\u2019s Dream of Opening a Museum | George Walter Hinckley\u2019s Childhood 1858 \u2014 George Walter Hinckley (1858\u20131950) is born in Guilford, Connecticut. Growing up with a fascination with nature, Hinckley collects items he finds in nature, hoping one day he could display his collections. 1868 \u2014 Hinckley, who had learned the names of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19805,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19805"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3205"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3230,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3205\/revisions\/3230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/lcbates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}