National media celebrated the C. F. Hathaway Company as America’s oldest and last major shirt manufacturer when it closed its Waterville factory in 2002. Over twenty years later, the Maine State Museum received a donation of dozens of Hathaway shirts and the company archives.
 

The Maine State Museum has recently joined with museums from around the world to bring a new exhibition – The Berlin Wall: A World Divided – to international audiences.
The exhibition was organized by a Spanish company, Musealia, in partnership with the Berlin Wall Foundation. The Maine State Museum is lending several items from its Samantha Smith collection to be displayed in a 26,000 square foot space in the exhibition’s first venue in Madrid, Spain.

Members of the public frequently contact museum staff with inquiries about items in the collection. Often, the resulting research leads to the discovery of new, exciting information.
This is just what happened last spring when an individual contacted museum curator Angela Goebel-Bain to ask about measurements of a Civil War great coat that was donated to the state of Maine nearly 90 years ago.