St. Croix teaching kits enliven history for seven area schools

CALAIS – Few people know the history of St. Croix Island, but that may be changing because of teachers like Jan Stanchfield.

The Calais Middle School teacher is passionate about the nearby island settlement that predates Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.

Her job was made easier Tuesday when Meg Scheid, an Acadia National Park ranger, presented the school with the St. Croix 1604 Interpretative Teaching Trunk.

Scheid showed Stanchfield and several of her pupils the kit, which includes maps and Samuel de Champlain’s journal accounts, as well as teaching guides in English and French.

The kits include a reproduction of a French mug and a Wabanaki birch-bark drinking ladle from the 1600s, French and Wabanaki footgear, and a beaver pelt.

The objects in the trunk are focusing on the two cultures that met on St. Croix Island: the French and the Passamaquoddy, Scheid said.

In June, Maine and New Brunswick plan to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the settlement of the island.

“That is significant for North America because it’s the beginning of permanent French settlement on our continent,” Scheid said. “And that is amazing that it’s here in Calais. So lucky Calais Middle School, lucky all the schools here in this community.”

Five years ago, the National Park Service developed the educational trunk, but for the past four years schools have had to share the kits.

Money for the project came from the St. Croix International Waterway Commission and the Maine Community Foundation Washington County Fund.

On Tuesday seven trunks were presented to schools across Washington County.

“We think it’s a wonderful way to explore our North American heritage through very hands-on materials,” said Lee Sochasky, executive director of the waterway commission. “We’ve really been happy to work with the National Park Service to bring this to as many schools as possible in our region.”

Eventually, schools in Aroostook County also will have the kits, which Stanchfield described as an important teaching tool. “The history of Calais is so important and our children don’t know it,” she said.

“I think it’s really cool,” seventh-grader Cal Shorey, 13, added. “It’s real neat that we have all the stuff we use.”

In 1604, explorer Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, accompanied by geographer Champlain and 79 others, sailed to St. Croix Island.

After the 1604-05 winter, which devastated the tiny settlement, the survivors left the island and established the Port Royal habitation on the shores of what is today the Annapolis basin in Nova Scotia.

St. Croix Island is located in the St. Croix River at Red Beach near the boundary between the United States and Canada. The National Park Service has built an interpretive center on the mainland across from the island.