Malaga Island: Maine’s Embarrassing Legacy
Students learned of Malaga Island through fieldwork and reading the historical fiction book, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. Students sifted through primary and secondary documents, some of which were contradictory, to retell the story of why and how the handful of islanders was evicted in 1912. Students visited the Phippsburg Historical Society, the Pattern Free Library in Bath, the cemetery at Pineland Center in Freeport, and interviewed several Phippsburg residents with connections to the island. They used their findings to create a website and documentary-style film about Malaga Island.