Buxton Hollis Historical Society

05/18/2026

From our friends at the Bear Hill Church Preservation Group

Memorial Day Service 2026
Monday, May 25, 10:00 am

Bear Hill Church
32 Bear Hill Road
Hollis, ME 04042
The Memorial Day Service at the historic Bear Hill Church is an intimate, small-town gathering dedicated to honoring fallen service members and veterans. Hosted by the Bear Hill Church Preservation Group, the event occurs on the church grounds and includes an outdoor ceremony, guest speakers, a reading of “Roll Call”, and military honors. Please join us at the Bear Hill Church for this solemn remembrance.

05/06/2026

Hope you can join us on May 19th!
Buxton Hollis Historical Society
Presents:
Shoulder to Shoulder: Uncovering Free and Enslaved Blacks from Maine Who Served in the American Revolution

Presenters
Vana Carmona-Founder of The Prince Project, a database of more than 2,000 people of color who lived in Maine before 1800.
and
Kathy Ostrander Roberts-Town Historian of Kennebunk and author of Unmarked Graves and Forgotten Lives, The Enslaved Persons of Color in Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Arundel, and Wells, Maine.

As we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we explore the roles people of color played in the American Revolution. Both free and enslaved blacks and indigenous people served on both sides of the conflict. Many were from Maine.

100 Main Street, Route 4A, Buxton, ME 04093
Tuesday, May 19, 2026, 7:00 pm
Donations gratefully accepted.

04/16/2026

Please write-in a vote for BHHS on the Bangor Savings Bank Communty Matters More website bangor.com. Voting ends on April 30.

04/06/2026

A Dowsing Workshop with Rita Anderson and Sue Schaller
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
100 Main Street, Bar Mills, ME 04093
6:30 pm

04/06/2026

Public Hours for the 2026 Season
Thursdays from April through November

Thursday, April 9, 2026
4:00-8:00 pm

03/29/2026

REMINDER: TOMORROW NIGHT
The American Revolution in Maine
with Professor Alan Taylor

100 Main Street, Route 4A, Buxton, ME 04093
Monday, March 30, 2026, 7:00 pm

Please join BHHS, York County Museums, and Southern Maine Historical Societies for a live interactive Zoom program with two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian and writer Professor Alan Taylor. Professor Taylor is a Buxton native and graduated from Bonny Eagle High School. He is currently featured in Ken Burns’ series The American Revolution on PBS. Professor Taylor will join us from his home in California for a Question and Answer session on Maine’s role in the American Revolution.

If you cannot make the Watch Party event in person, please call 207-929-1684 for a very limited Zoom link that you may watch on your own.

Send a message to learn more

03/19/2026

Reminder:
Informational meeting for the Bar Mills National Historic District:
Sunday, March 22 at 1:30
100 Main Street, Buxton, ME 04093
Selective houses are included on:
Hollis-Usher Mill Road, Country Club Road, Bar Mills Road, 4A
Buxton-Bar Mills Road, 4A, Salmon Falls Road, Fountain Street, Towle Street, River Road, Depot Street, and Lower Egypt Road.

03/03/2026

What is a National Historic District?
A National Historic District may contain buildings, structures, objects, sites, and landscape features, or any combination of these resources. The district must possess a significant concentration of sites united by integrity of design, workmanship, materials, and location.
The National Register DOES:
Identify historically significant buildings, structures, sites, objects, and districts, according to the National Register criteria for evaluation.
Encourage the preservation of historic properties by documenting the significance of historic properties and by lending support to local preservation activities.
Enable federal, state, and local agencies to consider historic properties in the early stages of planning projects.
Provide for review of federally funded, licensed, or sponsored projects which may affect historic properties.
Make owners of historic properties eligible to apply for grants for preservation activities.
Encourage the rehabilitation of income-producing historic properties which meet preservation standards through tax incentives
The National Register DOES NOT:
Restrict the rights of private property owners in the use, development, or sale of private historic property.
Lead automatically to historic district zoning.
Force federal, state, local, or private projects to be stopped.
Provide for review of state, local, or privately funded projects which may affect historic properties.
Guarantee that grant funds will be available for all significant historic properties.
Provide tax benefits to owners of residential historic properties, unless those properties are rental and treated as income-producing by the IRS

Send a message to learn more

03/02/2026

Several years ago the Maine Historic Preservation Commission determined that the Bar Mills areas of Hollis and Buxton qualified as a National Historic District. On Sunday, March 22 at 1:30 pm BHHS will hold an informational meeting on what a National District is, what it means to property owners, and what are the possible benefits of a district.

02/03/2026

SAVE THE DATE:
Buxton Hollis Historical Society
Presents
The American Revolution in Maine
with Professor Alan Taylor

100 Main Street, Route 4A, Buxton, ME 04093
Monday, March 30, 2026, 7:00 pm

Please join BHHS, York County Museums, and Southern Maine Historical Societies for a live interactive Zoom program with two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian and writer Professor Alan Taylor. Professor Taylor is a Buxton native and graduated from Bonny Eagle High School. He is currently featured in Ken Burns’ series The American Revolution on PBS. Professor Taylor will join us from his home in California for a Question and Answer session on Maine’s role in the American Revolution.

If you cannot make the Watch Party event in person, please call 207-929-1684 for a very limited Zoom link that you may watch on your own.

Donations gratefully accepted.

01/19/2026

From our friends at The Prince Project:
The Prince Project Now Affiliated with the Slave Societies Digital Archive
The Prince Project database is now listed on the Archive’s website as a related resource for research on the Atlantic Slave Trade.
We at The Prince Project are honored to contribute our work to such an important and enduring archival resource.
Directed by Jane Landers of Vanderbilt University, the Archive was established in 2003 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2007, it expanded to include records from Cuba, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.
Today, the Slave Societies Digital Archive (formerly Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies) preserves the most extensive collection of serial records documenting the history of Africans in the Atlantic World. The Archive also contains invaluable information about the Indigenous, European, and Asian populations who lived alongside them.
The SSDA holds more than 700,000 digital images dating from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries, documenting the lives of an estimated four to six million individuals. The majority of these materials have been digitized, and the collection continues to grow through the inclusion of smaller personal and institutional archives

For more information on the Archive, please see:
Slave Societies Digital Archive
https://slavesocieties.org

For more information on The Prince Project, please see:
The Prince Project
princeproject.org
We are a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization
Donations can be made through our website.

In collaboration with partners around the globe, the Slave Societies Digital Archive is dedicated to the preservation and free dissemination of endangered records documenting the history of Africans and their descendants across the Atlantic World.