Frances Perkins National Monument
U.S. Department of the Interior.
On inauguration day of his first term in office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” speech and made a move that was unusual for the times but that reshaped the country: he nominated a woman to his cabinet.
That woman – Frances Perkins – was sworn in the same day and became one of the driving forces behind the New Deal, Social Security, and the 40-hour workweek. Long before she became the nation’s first female cabinet secretary, Perkins was a trailblazing social worker, labor advocate, and state official who fought for safer working conditions, the rights of women and children laborers, and unemployment insurance. She was instrumental in crafting workplace health and safety laws in New York that would be modeled by other states and the federal government, and she was the first woman appointed to an administrative position in New York state government. With that role, she also became the highest paid woman ever to hold public office in the United States.
Perkins was born and spent most of her childhood in Massachusetts, but both of her parents were from Maine. The family’s saltwater farm in Newcastle where she spent her summers was in her family for more than 250 years and was the place she considered her true home. She is buried in a cemetery nearby.
In 2020, the nonprofit Frances Perkins Center purchased the 57-acre property from the Perkins family and raised funds to restore the house and barn and establish educational exhibits and walking paths through the grounds for the public. While the property was already a National Historic Landmark, the center launched a campaign to gain further recognition and protections by bringing part of it into the National Park System as a national monument. That designation happened in 2024, placing 2.3 acres—including the 1837 brick homestead and a barn—under the protection of the National Park Service. The rest of the property, including the remains of a family brickyard, continue to be maintained by the Frances Perkins Center.
The buildings of the Frances Perkins Memorial Monument in Newcastle are open seasonally, but the grounds and trails through woods and fields down to the banks of the Damariscotta River are open year-round.
