LISBON FALLS – Guest speaker at the Lisbon Historical Society meeting on Wednesday, June 13, at 7 p.m. will be Merrill A. Lewis, president of the New England Moxie Congress, who will travel from Manchester, N.H., to give a presentation on “The History of the Moxie Bottle House.”

Merrill will tell the story about the almost 100-year-old 32-foot wooden structure and the campaign that is going on to preserve and restore the somewhat obscure example of American art.

“Moxie, the beverage that inspired the word, outsold Coca-Cola in the early 1900s and was marketed as ‘Distinctly Different’,” Merrill said. For a variety of reasons, not least of which was that it was bitter and vaguely medicinal in taste, it never made it as a serious competitor.

However, it continues as a minor but socially entrenched niche-market product primarily in New England, and especially in Maine and in the town of Lisbon. The drink has an almost fanatical following, so much that Moxie now is known as “Maine’s official beverage” and Lisbon continues to celebrate the drink with an annual Moxie Festival on a weekend in July.

Doors will open at 6:30 p.m at the Lisbon Historical Society Archive Museum, MTM Center, 18 School St. For more information, contact Dorothy Smith at 353-8510.

Archive hours are Thursdays from 1 to 4 p.m. Meetings are always held on the second Wednesday at 7 p.m. Both are free.