By Christina Tree, Globe Correspondent

IF YOU GO . . . Resources

BRUNSWICK, Maine -- The Civil War began and ended in Brunswick, Maine, or so say local historians. A case can be made.

''Come sit right here where Harriet Beecher Stowe had a vision of the death of Uncle Tom,'' Mildred Jones said, ushering me into Pew 23 on the broad aisle in Brunswick's Neo-Gothic First Parish Church.

After the service, Harriet Beecher Stowe, I learned, hurried home to her Federal Street home and began penning the death chapter of what became ''Uncle Tom's Cabin,'' the book some say started the Civil War.

General Joshua Chamberlain, a longtime parishioner in this same First Parish Church (check out Pew 64 on the South Aisle) was, moreover, the Union general chosen for the honor of receiving General Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

''Chamberlain made his troops salute the defeated soldiers, something that's still remembered by Southerners,'' Erik Jorgensen said. ''They come in and tell us that Chamberlain was the only decent Union general.''

Director of the Pejepscot Historical Society, Jorgensen has seen the dramatic rediscovery of Joshua Chamberlain over the last decade, and overseen restoration of Chamberlain's home, which stands across Maine Street from the First Parish Church.

In a low-key Yankee way, both Chamberlain's story and the fanciful buildings that evoke his memory are spectacular. Until relatively recently, however, Maine's most distinguished Civil War hero, who returned home to serve as a four-term governor, then as president of Brunswick's Bowdoin College, had faded almost totally from popular memory. In the 1940s, his former home was divided into seven student apartments and was about to be demolished in 1983 when the Pejepscot Historical Society salvaged and opened it to the public.

True, both John J. Pullen's ''The 20th Maine'' (1957) and Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning ''The Killer Angels'' (1974) had rekindled interest in Chamberlain, but it was Ken Burns's PBS Civil War series that endeared this sensitive but decisive scholar-soldier to hundreds of thousands of Americans, a status solidified by Jeff Daniels's portrayal of Chamberlain in the movie ''Gettysburg,'' based on ''Killer Angels.'' Every year now a new Chamberlain book or two appears.

Admissions to the Joshua L. Chamberlain Museum shot from 300 per season in 1993 to 5,000 in 1996 and have remained stable, fueling restoration of the home -- a hybrid Victorian Gothic/ Italianate mansion. Its two top floors date from the 1820s (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lived there briefly). Chamberlain bought the home as a young professor in 1859, moving it, raising it 11 feet, and adding the flamboyant first floor in 1871 when he assumed the presidency of Bowdoin College.

Looking at the back of the menu at Joshua's Tavern and Restaurant, a popular middle-of-town place, you can learn about Chamberlain's heroic charge at the battle of Little Round Top, Gettysburg. The historic society dispenses maps that pinpoint sites ranging from the dorm rooms Chamberlain occupied as a Bowdoin student to his granite gravestone in Pine Grove Cemetery, and Joshua Chamberlain Days are now observed every August.

Chamberlain the scholar-soldier-governor is, in fact, an entirely appropriate figurehead for a town that's home to the Brunswick Naval Air Station and to the current Maine governor, Angus King (who even bears an uncanny resemblance to Chamberlain), as well as to prestigious Bowdoin College.

Rather than occupying Blaine House, the governor's official residence in Augusta, King and his family continue to reside a couple doors up from Chamberlain's former house because, according to Mary Herman, the governor's wife, ''This is a great place to raise children.'' She notes the good school system, the physical and cultural difference Bowdoin College makes, and the fact Brunswick is a ''real place'' and ''not just a college town.''

Maine's largest town (population 21,500) is a mix of Franco-Americans whose great-grandparents were recruited to work in the town's textile and paper mills, of military and retired military families, of Bowdoin and retired Bowdoin faculty and alumni, of old seafaring families, and an increasing number of professionals who commute the half hour to work in Portland or Augusta (Brunswick is halfway between).

According to a recently released Brunswick Cultural Assessment Project report, the Pejepscot area, which includes neighboring Topsham and Harpswell, is also home to more than 500 artists and art-related groups. It is, in fact, the cultural nerve center of Maine.

''Pejepscot'' is said to be the name of the ancient Indian settlement at the base of the ''Great Falls'' in the Androscoggin River. In 1688, it was also the site of a Massachusetts outpost named Fort Andros and subsequently of a series of mills. The present town fans out from this spot, east along the river and Merrymeeting Bay and south along Casco Bay. It stops short of the three narrow land fingers and several bridge-connected islands that straggle south into the bay and collectively form the town of Harpswell.

Tourists heading up the Maine coast tend to see Brunswick, however, as the first stretch of Route 1 that they hit, after leaving Interstate 95. ''The new Route 1,'' as it's locally known, actually dog-legs around the town, bypassing it almost entirely.

When Route 1 jogs left (its only turn in several hundred miles), I suggest continuing straight along Pleasant Street until it ''Ts'' at Maine Street. Turn left here, and it's a minute back to Route 1 if you don't stop, but you will. Several good restaurants, art galleries, crafts and antiques shops, and book and music stores will snag you for a couple hours. Turn right on Maine Street, and you may be hooked for days.

The top of Maine's widest street borders a grassy mall, the scene of Wednesday evening concerts and of farmers' markets on Tuesdays and Fridays. The First Parish Church at the head of the street is a hinge between the town and the parklike Bowdoin College campus jut beyond.

A small college (just 1,530 men and women), chartered in 1794, Bowdoin is now a magnet for the best and brightest from throughout the country, but its campus is surprisingly welcoming to visitors, especially in July and August, when its buildings are filled with practicing and performing virtuoso musicians and when Picard Theater is the stage for the Maine State Music Theater.

Famed in classical music circles, the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival brings together 200 talented young performers and 40 internationally acclaimed musicians, faculty members at the world's top music schools.

''There are very few festivals in the US with this kind of breadth,'' Lewis Kaplan, the founder and artistic director, notes, explaining that the festival includes composers and vocal artists as well as chamber musicians, performing original and classical pieces.

For three decades the (usually sellout) Friday concerts by faculty and guest artists were held in the First Parish Church, but for the last few seasons they have been staged in the new Crooker Theater at Brunswick High School, which has sloped seating, good acoustics, and parking.

The Sunday ''Upbeat'' concerts, free Wednesday ''Bach in the Chapel'' concerts, and the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music series (featuring works by resident composers like William Bolcom and George Crumb) are, however, held in campus buildings.

First Parish Church also hosts an annual Summer Organ Concert Series Tuesdays at 12:10 p.m., followed by a tour of this graceful, neo-Gothic building designed in the 1840s by Richard Upjohn, architect of New York's Trinity Church. A dramatic departure from its Puritan predecessors, the church is open-beamed, mildly cruciform in shape, and has deeply colored stained-glass windows. (The large sanctuary window was donated by Chamberlain, one of the first men to be married here.) The Hutchings-Plaisted tracker organ was installed in 1883.

Picard Theater, Bowdoin's version of Harvard's Sanders Theater, is in neighboring Memorial Hall, an 1873 memorial to the college's students who fought and died in the Civil War, ordered built, of course, by Joshua Chamberlain. Relatively small with just 600 seats, it's been the stage for Maine's largest performing arts group for 40 years.

Steven Peterson, managing director of the Maine State Music Theater, winces at the suggestion that ''Chamberlain,'' the 1996 musical, be repeated every year. He explains patiently that this is a highly professional equity company striving for a mix of classics and new scripts. This season's productions include ''Anything Goes'' (through July 18); ''Show Boat'' (July 21-Aug. 8); ''In the Beginning,'' a world premiere with music by Tony Award winner Maury Yeston Aug. 11-22); and ''Master Class'' by Terrence McNally starring Rosemary Prinz (Aug. 25-Sept. 20). A Saturday matinee production of ''Tom Sawyer'' is set for July 25.

This is also the first professional summer season, running through Aug. 22, for the 27-year-old Theater Project, Brunswick's repertory company. Wednesday through Saturday performances are in an 80-seat ''black box'' theater in a vintage 1827 Baptist Church. Productions range from ''Whatever Happened to Art,'' an original musical mystery, to Shakespeare's ''Twelfth Night.'' Inquire about dinner theater and Saturday night cabarets.

Back on campus, be sure to visit the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. It's housed in the copper-domed Walker Art Building designed by McKim, Mead, and White with murals in its rotunda by Abott Thayer, Kenyon Cox, and John La Farge. Its core collection is one of the oldest in America (James Bowdoin III was an avid collector), and displays range from Assyrian bas reliefs and choice ancient Egyptian, Mediterranean, and Far Eastern works through early American portraits by John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart to Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, and Andrew Wyeth. Two major galleries are, however, being renovated this summer, and few works by 19th- and 20th-century artists are on view.

Bowdoin's Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum in Hubbard Hall is also well worth a stop. The trophy walruses and seals, polar bears, and caribou, along with artifacts like an actual sledge used by Robert Peary (Bowdoin, 1887) on his historic 1908-'09 expedition, commemorate pioneering explorations of the North Pole both by Peary and by Donald MacMillan (class of 1898) for whom 1908 marked the first of two dozen expeditions over 45 years. An interactive touch screen, photo blowups, and varied exhibits tell the story.

The Bowdoin Quad was for many years the venue for the Maine State Festival, but the three-day extravaganza of music, dance, and many other forms of traditional and innovative entertainment has moved to Thomas Point Beach, a 64-acre combination camping and events with a beach on the tidal new Meadows River. The festival is always held the first weekend in August.

Too bad the old Merrymeeting Park is gone! The 200-acre trolley park, which had a natural amphitheater, an elaborate casino, a zoo, and a waterside stage, lasted only six years, 1898-1906. But it is the subject of a current exhibit at the Pejepscot Museum, 159 Park Row. A second intirguing, somewhat ghoulish exhibit is devoted to the Medical School of Maine, which awarded more than 2,000 degrees during its 1820-1921 existence.

The Pejepscot Museum is a massive brick, tower-topped building that includes the Scofield-Whittier House, virtually unchanged since the 1925 death of Dr. Frank Whittier, a pioneer criminal pathologist who figures in the Medical School exhibit. Its high Victorian drawing room is hung with crystal chandeliers and heavy velvet drapes, furnished in wicker and brocade, filled with photos, books, and the clutter of three generations of a very real Maine family.

The interior of Joshua Chamberlain's house had, unfortunately, been almost totally altered by the time the historical society acquired it, and restoration has been painstakingly slow (there are still apartments on the top floor). Seven rooms are, however, now open. Only authentic Chamberlain furniture is displayed, along with exhibits like the general's bullet-dented boots, the governor's ornate mahogany and red velvet throne, and many small souvenirs that evoke the story of this amazing man who lived from 1812 to 1914 and who, you learn, showed courage and resourcefulness in dozens of Civil War engagements, ultimately rising to the rank of brigadier general. As governor, he helped establish the agricultural and technical college that is now the University of Maine at Orono, and as president of Bowdoin, he suggested many innovations, including admission of women.

But whatever happened to Harriet Beecher Stowe? The truth is that Stowe, a mother of six young children at the time, lived in Brunswick only from 1850 until 1852, while her husband, Calvin, taught at his alma mater. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House, at 63 Federal St., is presently an inn and restaurant that's undergoing extensive renovation. It's one of 24 stops on ''A Woman's History Walking Trail,'' an information sheet available from the Pejepscot Historical Society.

Historic sites aside, Brunswick's downtown is invitingly walkable with an unsually wide choide of restaurants, and several serious art galleries and crafts stores. Be sure to check out the Spindleworks Artist Cooperative, 7 Lincoln St.

Brunswick is, however, no tourist town. No kiosk proclaims the schedule of plays and concerts because most patrons know enough to buy the Times Record on Thursdays. The downtown Eveningstar Cinema screens art films for local consumption, and Grand City, a former Grant's, is still a genuine five-and-dime with a lunch counter and furniture and fabrics in the basement. The store stocks plastic sleds all summer, next to the boots and gloves, which clammers also need. Freeport's 125-plus outlets stores are just miles yet light years away.

While there are several fine places to stay in and around Brunswick itself, most lodging spots are salted away by the water in Harpswell, better known as ''the Harpswells'' because it includes so many coves, points, and bridge-connected islands. Bailey Island is known for its seafood restuarants, but otherwise these peninsulas, which define the eastern rim of Casco Bay, are surprisingly quiet and seem much farther Down East.

Published 07/12/98 in the Boston Suday Globe's Travel Section