Wednesday, October 8, 2025 at 7:00 pm ~ Join us at Yarmouth History Center for our Annual Meeting and Lecture on October 8 at 7:00 pm. We will begin the evening with a brief business meeting for members to elect new and renewing board members and to vote on minor changes to our by-laws.
Following the meeting, we will welcome Maine writer and independent researcher Avery Yale Kamila to the History Center for a fascinating talk about Yarmouth-born Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893) and her remarkable career as a writer and newspaper editor in the 1830s. Oakes Smith is a fascinating figure who, although famous in her own time, has only recently been rediscovered in ours as an influential poet, novelist, lecturer, essayist, and playwright. Avery Yale Kamila will share her talk, titled “Moral Treason”: Oakes Smith’s Early Editorship, the Anti-Matrimonial Society and the Graham Riot, and discuss how she uncovered evidence about Oakes Smith’s editorial career when archival copies of her newspaper, the Portland Courier, from this time period have yet to be found.
Avery Yale Kamila is the founder of the Maine Vegetarian History Project and recently co-curated the Maine Historical Society exhibition Maine’s Untold Vegetarian History. Her research into Maine’s vegetarian history inspired her to delve more deeply into Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s life and times. Kamila is the long-time former author of a popular Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram food column. Two decades ago, she served as the Yarmouth beat reporter for a short-lived Portland Press Herald weekly.
All programs are free and will take place at the Yarmouth History Center (118 East Elm Street, Yarmouth) at 7:00 pm. The lecture series is generously sponsored by the Leon and Lisa Gorman Fund.
