“Amid the Great Sea Meadows”: Re-Constructing the Salt-Marsh Landscape through Art and Literature

Abstract

Salt marshes played an important role in northern New England agricultural from the colonial period to the twentieth century. While some coastal residents depended upon the natural grasses or salt hay to provide them with additional winter fodder, others transformed wetland into farmland through reclamation. The activities of salt marsh farmers created a whole new landscape which, ironically; late nineteenth-century artists and writers portrayed as the last vestiges of a “natural” landscape along the northern New England coast. Their paintings, photographs, poetry and stories established the salt marshes as an important part of coastal New England identity and aided the development of an idealistic world called “Olde New England.” Kimberly R. Sebold, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Maine in 1998.