CPS Unit Number 125-01

CPS Unit Number 125-01

Camp: 125

Unit ID: 1

Title: University of Maine Experiment Station

Operating agency: MCC

Opened: 12 1943

Closed: 5 1946

Workers

Total number of workers who worked in this camp: 19

Full list >
  • CPS Camps 125 and 100, subunit 6
    CPS Camps 125 and 100, subunit 6
    News and Views was a newsletter jointly published between Camps 125 and 100, subunit 6 in 1945.
    Digital image from the American Friends Service Committee: Civilian Public Service Records (DG 002), Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
  • CPS Camps 125 and 100, subunit 6
Summary:
CPS Unit No. 125, an Agriculture Experiment Station unit at the University of Maine outside of Orono, Maine operated by Mennonite Central Committee, opened in December 1943 and closed in May 1946. Men worked in the dairy barns and on experimental farms.
Location:
Orono, Maine, United States
Location Description:

Located at the University of Maine outside of Orono, Maine, the unit used the Phi Mu Delta Fraternity house as its headquarters.

Camp staff:

Directors: Francis Smucker, Roy Brubacher

The people:

The men transferred into the unit from Mennonite base camps.

 

Men in Mennonite camps and units, when entering CPS reported religious affiliation with various Mennonite denominational groups. 

 

On average these men had completed 10.45 years of education when entering CPS, with fifteen percent having completed 1-3 years of college.  Another seven percent had either graduated from college or completed some graduate education.  Fifty-nine percent reported their occupations on entry into CPS as farming or other agriculture work.  Twenty-three percent when entering CPS reported occupations in technical and professional work or business management, sales and public administration (Sibley and Jacob p. 171-72)

The work:

Ten men served in the unit, with some working in the dairy barns and others on experimental farms.  One of the latter was eighty miles and another one hundred fifty miles from the campus.

Camp life:

The men held their own Sunday school but attended church services in the city.  According to Gingerich, they appreciated the kind and cordial reception in the churches there. 

 

The men published Maine “News and Views” in 1945, a joint publication with men from the dairy herd tester CPS Unit 100, subunit 6, also at Orono.

Resources:

For more information on dairy farm units, see Melvin Gingerich, Service for Peace: A History of Mennonite Civilian Public Service.  Akron, PA: Mennonite Central Committee printed by Herald Press, Scottdale, PA 1949, Chapter XV pp. 190-212.

 

See also Mulford Q. Sibley and Philip E. Jacob, Conscription of Conscience:  The American State and the Conscientious Objector, 1940-47. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1952.

 

Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Camp periodicals database.