International Longfellow Society

Founded in 1914 by Arthur Charles Jackson who bought the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow birthplace in Portland, Me. The society was dedicated to purchasing and preserving the Longfellow Birthplace, which was built around 1784 and located on the corner of Fore and Hancock streets. Around 1917-1918 the society conducted an aggressive recruitment campaign in order to pay the taxes and mortgage on the property. They were unsuccessful and the building was demolished in 1955. Longfellow's childhood home, on Congress Street in Portland, has been preserved and is currently run by the Maine Historical Society as Wadsworth-Longfellow House. In the 1970s, the society discovered it was not tax-exempt and as such, donated its treasury, a sum of about $2000 to Westbrook College which housed the Maine Women Writers Collection. The money was to be used for the purchase of books about and by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and other Maine authors.

From the description of International Longfellow Society collection, 1974. (Maine Historical Society Library). WorldCat record id: 324998618

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