Clubs provided social life in 1900s Bangor

The Twentieth Century Club was an up-and-coming organization a century ago. “The membership … represents the best that is in Bangor culture, intelligence and scholarship,” commented the Bangor Daily Commercial in an editorial on June 1, 1907. “Bangor business, professional and literary men need this club, the objects of which are to create a better public spirit and contribute to a better social order in this community.”

The 70 club members invited expert speakers to talk about some of the pressing subjects of the day including “The Problems of Girls vs. Boys” and “Some Problems of Factory Administration.” The progressive gentlemen of the Twentieth Century Club held a ladies night at the end of each season where the subjects discussed were a bit lighter. In 1907, they included reminiscences of the first world’s fair and a stereopticon talk on historic spots in Italy.

There were clubs for almost everybody a century ago – for rich and working class, natives and immigrants, men and women, whites and racial minorities. There were clubs devoted to self-improvement, socializing, workers’ benefits and political and charitable causes. Some specialized in arcane rites, while others catered to a certain occupation such as the Bangor Milkmen’s Association. A few erected elitist social barriers and boasted long waiting lists for membership.

The Bangor City Directory in 1907 listed 28 “fraternal organizations” and 54 “societies, clubs, etc.” not including churches or labor unions. Some of these groups, such as the Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Grange, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, were offshoots of national organizations. A large number, however, like the Twentieth Century Club, the Shakespeare Club, the Mendelssohn Club and the Gentlemen’s Driving Club were homegrown efforts.

Only a few, like the Twentieth Century Club, received regular coverage in the Bangor newspapers. Another with newspaper access was the Nineteenth Century Club, a woman’s group. Members had spent the year studying architecture. The group had political and charitable interests as well, becoming an associate member of the National Child Labor Committee and donating money to the State Federation of the Scholarship Fund, according to a report in the Commercial on June 1, 1907. Oddly enough, the Nineteenth Century Club outlived the Twentieth Century Club by a decade or so into the 1950s, if the length of its clipping file at the Bangor Public Library is an indication.

Other active women’s organizations receiving attention in the pages of the Bangor newspapers included the Norumbega Club and the Athene Club. The Norumbega Club’s members devoted their 1906-07 season to the study of early American literature and history including sessions on Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau and many other authors and orators. The Athene Club had been conducting classes in art and current events. It also devoted time and money to helping Bangor schools. In February, on the 100th birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, club members donated a bust of the poet to Bangor High School.

The Athene Club’s report of its activities in 1907 dealt with a potential conflict between men’s and women’s clubs that bothered guardians of proper social relations between the sexes. “In the early years of women’s clubs, many people looked upon them with suspicion, lest the result might be that women would grow to be very positive and aggressive in their opinions and the home and its duties would seem narrow and unimportant,” commented the report in the Commercial on May 7. “Time has proved that the work of the woman’s club lies not in interfering in work properly belonging to men, but in seeking to making her own life richer and more capable of grasping the broader interests of the world.”

The famous Tarratine Club, which had recently completed an ornate new clubhouse on Park Street, was not the only men’s social club in Bangor. Another was the Madockawando Club, which was organized in 1891 by a group of young businessmen. It had “quarters at two different halls on Main Street including rooms for reading, cards, smoking, billiards and banquets,” according to several Whig and Courier stories from the 1890s cited by historian Donald J. King.

Near the end of 1906, the club had 130 resident and 25 nonresident members and it was “never more prosperous, socially or financially,” according to a Bangor Daily News story on Nov. 6. At some point, however, when the going got tough for private men’s clubs, it merged with another club, the Melitus Club, and in 1918 it merged again with the Tarratine Club, according to the Bangor Daily News on April 11 of that year.

As the leaves changed color in the fall, the club season opened. The Commercial surveyed some of the club agendas on Sept. 17, 1907: The Home Culture Club would be studying the British Empire as well as the works of Whittier; the Schumann Club would study opera and hold concerts in its efforts to uplift the musical tastes of Bangoreans; the Athene Club would be studying art and current events as usual. Later that fall, the Twentieth Century Club invited William D. Hurd, dean of the College of Agriculture at the University of Maine, to speak on “The Relation of Agriculture to Public Health.” In such ways did Bangoreans educate and entertain themselves a century ago.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net. Donald J. King’s University of Maine thesis, “Leisure Time Activities in Bangor, 1865 to 1901,” is a major source on clubs during this time period.