Mildred Burrage collection, 1956-1991

Full finding aid (pdf)

Collection Scope and Content

This collection contains scrapbooks Burrage maintained of her columns on arts and historical subjects that were written for The Boothbay Register and The Kennebec Journal, correspondence with the Maine Women Writers Collection, and articles about her.

Biographical/Historical Note

Mildred Giddings Burrage was born in Portland, Maine in 1890, the daughter of Henry S. Burrage, state historian and Ernestine Maie Giddings Burrage. She studied at the Mary C. Wheeler School in Providence, Rhode Island. She went on to study art history and painting with Eben Commins at the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She moved to Wiscasset with her sister, Madeleine Burrage, a jeweler and rock hunter. There, as member of the Lincoln County Cultural and Historical Association, she was instrumental in the preservation of the Pownalborough Court House in Dresden, and the Old County Jail and Jailer’s House in Wiscasset.

She was the long-time director of the Lincoln County Museum and founder and director of the Maine Art Gallery in 1957. Throughout her life she was a nationally exhibited painter. She developed her signature style, abstract mica and paint collages, in the 1950s. From 1956-1960 she was a columnist for The Kennebec Journal and The Boothbay Register. In addition, she was coordinator of the Lincoln County Bicentenary 1960 Program. She served on the Advisory Committee for Historic Sites to the State of Maine Park Commission; and was a recipient of the 1969 Deborah Morton Award from Westbrook Junior College. Burrage was the first Maine woman to receive the National Achievement Award from the National Association of University Women. She received a master of arts and humanities from Colby College and an award from the Maine Arts Commission. Burrage passed away in 1983 and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland.