“They Lynched Jim Cullen”

This chapter looks at the oral history that developed around the Northern Maine lynching. In spring 1873 James Cullen, possibly the only lynching victim in New England's history, swung into eternity at the hands of a mob in Mapleton, Maine. Cullen's lynching and the subsequent oral tradition of life and death on the Maine frontier provide a window into the cultural identity of the northeast borderland region. Northern Maine, like western states where vigilante justice was frequent, was a frontier region, and one theory of nonracial lynchings suggests that this was a recourse where legal systems were weak. But Maine's judicial system was firmly in place, and although Maine later abolished the death sentence, capital punishment was a legal option in Maine at the time of James Cullen's lynching.