A sovereign island microstate founded in 1890 as an independent democratic pacifist-socialist community, Goldman Mill, aka the Microstate of Peace, sits in the Atlantic Ocean near Machias Seal Island, off the coast of Maine. It is made up of one larger and two smaller islands; the collective size is just over 26 km2 (about 10 sq mi) with an estimated population of about 42,600. That populace includes citizens, resident aliens, and visiting scholars. The microcountry is established as a single city-state in a similar fashion to Vatican City.
The Brief History
In early 1887, Josiah Foster and Emmanuel Goldman, two friends raised as garmentmakers in New York City, found themselves increasingly disgusted by the society around them. Industrialization was taking root within the United States — a potentially good thing, Foster and Goldman knew, but something worrisome too.
As industry flourished, the lifelong pals and erstwhile abolitionists saw other things growing: They saw (and struggled against) bigotry against women, Native Americans, people of various faiths, brown-skinned humans, immigrants, freethinkers, and those considered somehow “different.” They lamented the exponential rise of materialism and the lessening of concern for other people. They recoiled from the growing number of laws imposed on the citizenry merely to protect the pockets of the already wealthy.
The nation’s growing love of all things violent did not escape their attention. And they noticed too that as people gave up their plows for factory work, skies and streams were becoming dirtier. Foster and Goldman determined that remaining within a mainstream setting would be catastrophic for their loved ones.
After consultation and planning with their respective spouses, Genevieve Cooke Foster and Chaya Cohen Goldman, they decided to remove themselves from a situation all four knew was destined for ruin and ignominy. The Fosters and Goldmans packed their belongings and set off to find land that they could call their own and where they could build the type of community they needed in order to thrive, an independent and self-governing communal town based on progressive-pacifist values and free from mainstream consciousness.
In time the wandering families finally found what they sought: A wind-tossed riverboat journey carried them to a heretofore untouched and uncharted set of green microislands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of Canada and the United States that featured rolling green lands surrounded by cerulean waters, a small but majestic mountain range, acres of dense forest land, and rich, fertile soil. This place was a paradise to the progressive travelers, and best of all, the area was cut off from all mainstream towns and not under the jurisdiction of any other nation.
“My lands, Josiah,” Emmanuel exclaimed after researching the matter. “No one has control over this place. We can claim it as our own! We must, in the name of peace and love and humanity.”
So they did. All these years later, we remain the beacon of peace, diversity, and cooperative coexistence for the world.
This is the state web site, the virtual Goldman Mill State Hall, where links to village information, GM’s radio station, the Mill Messenger newspaper and other media outlets, shopping, our citizen service department, and other services can be accessed.
We wish peace unto you – Pax Vobiscum.