“Crew at Camp,” circa 1900. The two cats in this portrait of a logging camp in Maine were charged with keeping vermin out of the food stores. Contributed / Patten Lumbermen’s Museum

At a time when most people never had their portrait painted or photograph taken, Sandy the Maine coon cat had her whiskered image captured in Portland in 1903.

Finding this gold-framed pet portrait in the Maine Historical Society’s archive spurred questions for curator Tilly Laskey.

“I found this in our collections, and I was like, ‘Why do we have a painting of a cat?’ It seemed really kind of superfluous … but this also shows what an importance animals had to people.

“So I think that this planted the seed for thinking about what other photographs we had of people and their pets, or just portraits of pets,” said Laskey.

“Sandy the cat,” Portland, 1903. Sarah Stevens painted this portrait of Sandy after the cat died. She wrote, “My heart is broken, dear little friend, good-bye, Sandy Stevens, 1903” on the back of this artwork. Contributed / Maine Historical Society

Opened on Feb. 11, Maine Historical Society’s exhibit “Best Friends: Mainers and Their Pets” is a collection of photos and paintings depicting a variety of Maine pets and their owners in the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection shows both how relationships between pets and people have changed over the centuries, yet the mutual devotion between pet and owner is timeless.

“At (Maine Historical Society), we try to put exhibits up where anybody who walks in can find themselves one level or another,” said Laskey, who curated “Best Friends.”

Pet ownership is relatable to most Mainers. In Maine, 64% of homes have pets, with 36% of those having dogs, 44% having cats, and under 4% each of birds, reptiles, small mammals and fish.

“This, to us, seemed like a really good and kind of fun way to highlight pet ownership in Maine over millennia,” said Laskey.

Pet ownership in Maine started long before Sandy the cat was painted: The Wabanaki peoples domesticated dogs long before European colonization. Nor did all pets live so lavishly as to have a gold-framed portrait: For most of Maine’s history, pets have been put to work, from the Wabanaki’s dogs pulling sleds to seafaring cats hunting vermin on Navy ships.

Featured in the exhibit is a photo from 1928 of author Elizabeth Ricker and Togo, the husky sled dog who helped deliver medicine to Nome, Alaska, in 1925 during a diphtheria outbreak. While the sled dog Balto received most of the fame for heroically delivering the antitoxin to the sick children – Balto only mushed the last leg of the trek, while Togo completed the first and more dangerous 170 miles – at least Togo got to live out the rest of his days at the Poland Spring Resort, fostering the future of dogsled competitions in Maine.

“Team of trained moose,” Caribou 1942. Albert rescued both moose as calves; one from a black bear and the other had become entangled in a neighbor’s fence. He trained the moose to pull a sulky and a sleigh. Contributed / Caribou Public Library

The exhibit also explores what, exactly, is considered a pet. A black and white photograph captures a pair of moose that were rescued as calves and trained to pull a carriage in Caribou in 1942. Another depicts a child holding a racoon by a leash circa 1925, a popular pet in Maine in the 1920s following President Calvin Coolidge’s pet raccoon in the White House. A photograph from 1982 shows Andre the seal in Rockport Harbor, where he stayed near his human rescuer and trainer despite being able to swim away at will. The images blur the distinction between what is considered pet, livestock or wild animal.

“There’s a dog and a horse in this (photograph), and I’m like, ‘Which one is the pet?’” said Laskey, referencing a 1922 photo of Nettie C. Burleigh, the first female Legislator in Maine, holding the two animals close.

A love of pets also played a role in Maine’s political history. Percival P. Baxter, Maine’s governor from 1921 to 1925, was a large proponent of animal welfare. He was a founding member of the Animal Refuge League and wrote materials for a 1917 law mandating that children receive half an hour per week teaching “kindness to birds and animals.” When Baxter’s own Irish setter died, the governor had the State House flag lowered to half-staff and buried the beloved dog in the family plot on Mackworth Island.

“Governor Baxter and His Dog,” 1921. Maine Gov. Percival P. Baxter poses for a formal portrait with his beloved Irish setter, Garryowen. Contributed / Maine State Archives

To curate the exhibit, Laskey went through Maine Historical Society’s library and museum collections that goes back over 200 years, searching for key words tagged by catalogers such as “pet,” “dog,” “cat” or “animal.”

Laskey also parsed through Maine Memory Network, a digital museum that is a consortium of 350 organizations with almost 100,000 entries. Individuals can also upload their own stories and photographs to the online collection. As part of “Best Friends,” Mainers will be encouraged to add their own personal photographs and stories about pets to the digital museum, forwarding and expanding the record of the people and pets of Maine.

“I really do kind of see this as a gift to the future, because, you know, if somebody didn’t save these (photos), I wouldn’t have a show to put up,” said Laskey.

The exhibit makes clear that throughout time, people have loved photographing pets. A photograph from 1917 captures Elizabeth Andrews Neptune, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation, posing with a small black dog. Over 100 years later, the photograph resembles many photos that Laskey herself has taken.

“I love this one, because my dog looks a lot like that,” said Laskey, who has three cats and a dog.

“I think that we’re gonna hear a lot of that. People are gonna be like, ‘Oh, my cat looks like that,” or “This looks like my dog,’” she said.