The Frances Perkins Homestead was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2018. Today the Frances Perkins Center is seeking support to make the property to a national monument. (LCN file photo)
The Frances Perkins Center, the nonprofit managing the family homestead of the nation’s first female cabinet member, is seeking to make Frances Perkins’ former home in Newcastle a national monument.
The campaign asks for President Joe Biden to use his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to name the homestead a national monument.
If the Frances Perkins Center gets its wish, the homestead will join the national park system and would be one of three national parks in Maine along with Acadia National Park and Katahdin Woods 12and Waters National Monument. The Frances Perkins Center would donate the buildings and surrounding property to the federal government to be managed by the National Park Service. The nonprofit would keep some of the 57-acre plot with the anticipation of building a visitors’ center.
“We have an opportunity to create a new national monument honoring one of the most influential women in U.S. history, right here in Maine,” Frances Perkins Center Executive Director Giovanna Gray Lockhart said in a statement.
Frances Perkins plays with family dog Balto outside her Newcastle home. “The Brick House” was built in 1837 as a wedding gift to Perkins’ grandparents, and Perkins visited in the summers as a child. (Photo courtesy Frances Perkins Center)
Though Perkins was born in Massachusetts, she spent her summers as a young girl in Newcastle.
Perkins served as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of labor from 1932 until Roosevelt’s death in 1945. She is credited with helping to create New Deal programs like social security, minimum wage, and the 40-hour work week.
Perkins died in 1965 and is buried in Glidden Cemetery just up River Road from the homestead.
The select boards of both Newcastle and Damariscotta sent letters addressed to President Biden endorsing the idea. Both letters highlight the additional tourism a national monument designation could bring to the area.
“Designating this site a national monument would also be important to the local economy in Lincoln County, Maine – an economy still recovering from devastating damage to its shore, infrastructure, and working waterfront following storms in 2023 and 2024,” said State Sen. Cameron Reny in a statement. “Now, more than ever, our economy benefits from ‘Vacationland’ tourism.”
The Frances Perkins Center has a petition on its website at francesperkinscenter.org asking for signatures on the proposal. The petition closes Tuesday, Aug. 20.
