EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Holly Hurd grew up in a small town in Idaho, and attended school at the University of California at Berkeley and later Cornell University where she received a PHD in Molecular Biology. She moved to Maine with her family in 2001 and, after raising two girls, she began volunteering and later working in the field of history. She graduated with a Masters Degree from the University of Southern Maine’s American and New England Studies program in 2013 and worked as an Educator, Archivist, and Curator at the Osher Map Library, North Yarmouth, Yarmouth and Freeport Historical Societies before becoming the Executive Director of Tate House Museum in May of 2020. She has published two illustrated history books and written various historical articles.

CONSULTING CURATOR

As THM's consulting curator, Laura Fecych Sprague has managed and helped interpret the historic furnishings collection of the George Tate House since 1980. She has also overseen many preservation efforts for the National Historic Landmark. An independent museum curator, Ms. Sprague has studied early Maine's material culture and decorative arts for many years, also contributing to research, exhibitions, and publications for the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Maine Historical Society, Maine State Museum, and the Portland Museum of Art, among others. She has published and lectured widely, and edited Agreeable Situations: Society, Commerce and Art in Southern Maine, 1780-1830 (1987). She serves on the board of the Maine Historical Society.

MUSEUM ASSISTANT

Austin Hardman is from Birmingham, Alabama and received his Bachelor’s Degree in History at the University of Alabama. He then received his Master’s in Museum Studies with a specialization in Collections Management from the University of Birkbeck in London. He and his wife relocated to Maine in 2023 after spending the last three years in England and while in the UK, he interned with the Science Museum and worked with the curator of the Stephen Hawking Office Collection. He has volunteered with the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, Birmingham Zoo, and is currently volunteering at the Maine Maritime Museum.

CHAIR

Joan and her husband, Jim, moved to Maine in 2002 after spending a career in the insurance industry for most of her working life. Joan’s connection to the Tate House Museum started in 2009 when she took the Portland History Docent course and felt a strong connection to the staff of the museum. She started as a docent and shortly after joined the education and publicity committees. She was asked if she would be interested in running the museum gift shop and has been doing that since 2011. She has held various positions on the Board of Directors over the years.

VICE CHAIR

Christie is a Stroudwater resident who completed the PHD program and became a THM docent in 2022. Her career has focused on promoting social justice and environmental issues. She currently chairs the US Board of BirdLife and also serves on the Board of BirdNote, a nonprofit that inspires listeners to care about and protect the natural world. She was most recently the Global Director of Sustainability at the law firm of Baker McKenzie. Prior to that, she was the Creative Director for Virgin Unite, a charitable foundation in London focused on climate change, conflict resolution, health, and education. She has also worked as a refugee advocate with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in New York and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan. She holds a BA degree from Sarah Lawrence University and also studied printmaking at the Universidad de Costa Rica.

TREASURER

Paul has recently retired from full time employment after a forty-year career in insurance company financial management. He was employed by UNUM, and later, at Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, where he finished his career as a Chief Finance Officer. Paul continues to manage a consulting company which provides financial management services to life and health insurance companies. He currently resides in Steep Falls, Maine and he has always had a keen interest in local history. After completing the Portland History Docent (PHD) program in 2022, he became a THM docent, and he also does tours for the Marrett House in Standish. Paul and his wife, Marie, enjoy visiting historic and presidential sites and state capitols. In addition, Paul is an avid collector of all things presidential.

SECRETARY

Eric is a member of the Stroudwater Neighborhood Association who has lived in the neighborhood with his wife Colleen since 2010. He grew up in Orono, Maine and is a graduate from the University of Maine and Southern New Hampshire University. For thirty-seven years, Eric has been employed by Milton CAT, where he has held a variety of marketing and sales related positions. One of his greatest enjoyments is collaborating with other employees across a variety of departments on projects that benefit the company and customers. He has a particular interest in the Tate House Museum and advancing the awareness of the significant role the Tate House and its residents contributed to the history of Portland, the surrounding community, and the State of Maine.

BOARD MEMBER

Charlie is an attorney at the Verrill firm, working in its Portland, Maine office, where he has practiced intellectual property law for over 30 years. Charlie’s interest in historic preservation began in his youth, growing up in a Federal period home in Salem, Massachusetts and working for a local museum during the summer while in college. Years later, after, moving to Maine to start his legal career, he and his wife and their three children moved into a c. 1782 transitional Georgian/Federal period home in North Yarmouth, where they restored ancient fireplaces and other features. Charlie has served on the Board of Directors of the North Yarmouth Historical Society for over a decade. Since their children have left the nest, Charlie and his wife have moved to a smaller house in Yarmouth.

BOARD MEMBER

Sam Chatto is the current assistant principal at Westbrook Middle School, and grew up in South Portland. In the past, Sam has worked at the Tate House Museum as an intern, volunteered at the 5th Maine Regiment Museum, catalogued items at the South Portland Historical Society, and participated in archaeological digs in Cape Elizabeth. He graduated from the College of William & Mary and spent two years as a Teach for America Corps Member in Jacksonville, Florida. He has taught middle school social studies and English at schools throughout the state of Maine. Sam currently gives tours of Eastern Cemetery in Portland for Spirits Alive, and, on occasion, gives walking food tours of the city. Sam lives in South Portland with his wife, two cats, and dog named Chamberlain.

BOARD MEMBER

Catherine Cyr received her A.B. from Bowdoin College where she investigated the intersection of material culture and society through a self-designed American Studies major. She completed internships at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as an undergrad, and later participated in the Chipstone Foundation’s Object Lab and the Historic Deerfield Summer Fellowship Program. Prior to graduating with an M.A. from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture in 2022, where her research focused on Maine-made objects and architecture, she worked at the Pejepscot History Center in Brunswick, Maine. She is now the Associate Curator at Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.

BOARD MEMBER

Richard T. Gilbane began his career in Providence, Rhode Island some forty years ago as a fourth generation owner of Gilbane Building Company, founded in 1873. His senior most staff position with the company began in 1981 as the founding vice president and manager of the Southwest office, a position his nephew Daniel M. Gilbane now holds. Mr. Gilbane has an M.S.C.E. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an A.B. from Harvard College. Now retired, Mr. Gilbane and his wife, Cate, have two grown children and live between Austin, Texas and Cape Elizabeth, Maine. They are both involved in several charitable causes, governance with their family companies, and civic participation.

BOARD MEMBER

Neil Quigley grew up in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts before attending college in Rhode Island at Bryant University,  graduating with a degree in Business Management.  After graduation Neil got into the banking world and has assisted numerous individuals and business with their financial needs, before moving to Portland in the summer of 2018.  In August of 2022, Neil was named Branch Manager, Assistant Vice President at M&T Bank Scarborough branch.  Neil is an avid New England sports fan, which triggered his interest in history since he was a young boy.  As a child, Neil loved looking up and researching old baseball stats of players long since retired.   As Neil grew older, that love of sports history, and being a New Englander, developed into a love of American History and the formation of our great country.

BOARD MEMBER

Virginia “Gini” is a retired Early Childhood Educator. She graduated from the Portland History Docents program in 2009 and afterwards became interested in the Tate House and Colonial Dames. She joined the Maine chapter of the Dames in 2011. Since that time, she has volunteered as a tour guide and served on the Tate House board.. She serves as Secretary of the Board of Managers of the Colonial Dames and is a member of the D. A. R. Elizabeth Wadsworth Chapter and Past Governor Maine Mayflower Society. She enjoys working in the 18th century Tate House garden, knitting, and cooking.

BOARD MEMBER

Sadhana is a retired dentist who has been a member of the Maine dental community since 1990. After training at the University of Pennsylvania and specialty training at Tufts University, she moved to Maine to start and run her own solo practice. Sadhana and her husband live in North Yarmouth and have raised their three children there. Sadhana has had an interest in history sparked by classes in British Royal Families as an undergraduate student. Born in India and immigrating to the US at age 5, Sadhana is inspired to understand the variety of cultural norms and way people live around our nation and the world throughout time. When traveling, she makes it a priority to learn the local history and visit museums to gain perspective and to appreciate the current lives of the people.

BOARD MEMBER

Jim is an electrical engineer and business leader involved in broadcast television and radio RF products and services for over 35 years.  His other lifelong passion is antiques and historic houses inspired by an antique dealer mother and a DIY father in a 1790s cape in NH.  He has owned several old houses including a c. 1773 center chimney colonial in Deerfield NH that is on the National Register where he had his antiques shop for several years.  In 2005 he deconstructed a c. 1800 twin chimney federal period house in Exeter, NH that was threatened by development and was subsequently reconstructed in Burlington, VT.  He served on the Tate House Museum board and Building Committee in the mid-2000s after moving to Maine in 1999.  Jim and his wife Jen enjoy sailing in the summer and working on their mid-20th century house the rest of the year. 

NSCDA-ME BOARD REPRESENTATIVE

Chris has been a Colonial Dame and involved with Tate House since 1993. She is a graduate of Smith College and raises funds for Maine student scholarships to Smith by selling fresh Georgia pecans. She worked in the real estate industry for many years and was a partner in Town and Shore Real Estate. Chris was involved in the purchase of the Means House in 1996 and she has been serving as a THM-Dames board liaison since 2005. She lives in Yarmouth with her husband Patrick and they raised two children in Maine. She loves the Tate House gardens and architecture. Her hobbies include fly fishing, golf, gardening, and spending time at their camp on Lower Goose Island. She serves on the board of the Pierce Pond Watershed Trust which is working to preserve land in northern Maine.

NSCDA-ME BOARD REPRESENTATIVE

Virgilia “Jill” Whitehead Bryant received her Bachelor of Arts in Architectural History at the University of Virginia in 1992. She then attended the University of Maine School of Law graduating with a JD degree in 2000. She has served on a number of boards including the Junior League of Portland (Treasurer), Falmouth Education Foundation (President and Treasurer), Colonial Dames of Maine (Treasurer), Falmouth Memorial Library, Elizabeth Wadsworth Chapter of the DAR, and West Harbor Pond Watershed Association in Boothbay Harbor. Professionally she has worked as a Tax Manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers (2002-2017) and is currently a Tax Specialist for Baker Newman Noyes since 2018.