page_title: Ethel Wilson Gammon
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Ethel Wilson Gammon / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Main building of the The Norlands estate.
context_page_description: Ethel "Billie" Wilson Gammon was an American educator and living history museum founder and director. In 1974 she founded the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center on the former estate of Israel Washburn in Livermore, Maine, and served as its volunteer executive director until 1991. Her educational and outreach programs brought 40,000 visitors to the site annually by the end of the twentieth century. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 1997.
context_section_description: After high school, Wilson taught in elementary schools in Parkman, Livermore, and Augusta. She also taught third-grade Sunday school at North Livermore Baptist Church for 23 years.
  As a teacher at the Payson-Smith School in North Livermore at age 19, Wilson boarded with Clinton and Elizabeth Babb, the former farmer and housekeeper of The Norlands who lived in a cottage on the estate. The stories that the couple told her about the Israel Washburn family piqued her interest in the estate. In 1953 one of the Washburn descendants asked her to help repair the library at The Norlands and open it to visitors, which she began doing one afternoon a week in summer 1954. On the other days, she cleared away debris and discovered reams of historical papers and records which shed light on life in mid-nineteenth-century Maine. In ensuing years, she developed a vision for restoring the mansion, library, church, schoolhouse, barn, and two carriage sheds on the 450-acre (180 ha) property, and using them for educational purposes. In 1973 she convinced the Washburn heirs to sign over their property to a nonprofit educational foundation called the Washburn-Norlands Foundation, and opened the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center in 1974. She pursued fundraising and grants to further renovate the buildings, and between 1991 and 1996 raised $125,000 for an endowment campaign which received matching funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
  Gammon designed educational and outreach programs that immersed visiting students, teachers, and tourists in what it was like to live in mid-nineteenth century Maine. She developed six-month and one-year student internships that awarded college credits for on-site living and study. According to a 1999 article in the Indianapolis Business Journal: "Pennsylvania State University students in Parks and Recreation Management trek to Maine every January to cut ice". Gammon also created three-day-weekend programs for teachers and students, as well as for paying tourists, in which participants experienced historical living and study. Each weekend group was divided into two families, the Waters and the Prays, and each participant took on the identity of a historical personage. Gammon herself enjoyed playing these historical roles; one of her favorite characters was that of Mercy Lovejoy, an early nineteenth-century Maine pauper. Thousands of Maine schoolchildren also engaged in role-playing during annual field trips to the site. By the time of Gammon's retirement in 1991, over 40,000 people were visiting The Norlands each year.
  Gammon wrote numerous pamphlets describing the history of the Washburn family, The Norlands, and life in Maine in the mid-nineteenth century. She served as executive director of the living history museum on a volunteer basis from 1974 to 1991. Though she retired on her 75th birthday in 1991, she returned in 1996 as interim director. She was instrumental in the opening of the Washburn Humanities Center at The Norlands in 1992.
caption: Main building of the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center
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