Odds and Ends From The MUSEUM!
By Trudy Wyman, Curator, Millinocket Society Museum
Millinocket has produced many authors through the years, and their non-fiction work covers a wide range of subject matter. Biographies, autobiographies, historical subjects and more have been written about by people born here or lived here for a period of time. Other authors (not local) have written about the Millinocket area. The museum has a collection of some of these books and would like to add others to the reference collection. The museum store sometimes has extra pre-owned copies available to purchase.
Biography/autobiography/memoirs have been written by Edgar Alward (Now I Am an Old Man: Odyessy of a Teacher), Dr. Lloyd Morey (Magic City Doctor) and Jane Rideout Jones (Beyond the Bedpan). Lumbering in the Millinocket, Maine Area, 1930 thru 1950 was written by Sylvio Caron and details many of his experiences during a lifetime in the log camps and a stint during WWII where some of those skills proved useful. Another book logging was written by Charles Glaster and titled The West Brancher.
Several books written by Catherine Luke Perry under the name Katy Perry highlight stories of her family and a number of local personalities of days gone by. Some titles are Drinking from a Tin Cup, Only One Icebox to Fill, and Mad Tuesdays. Perry also wrote several children’s books. A similar short memoir, Memories of a Kid from Up Across the Tracks was done by Mavis Gardner Martincovic.
Various other non-fiction topics were penned by Paul McCann (Timber! The Fall of Maine’s Paper Giant!), Michael Murphy (Our Real War: What Happened to America), and perhaps one of the longer titles The House of Lords and Ideological Politics: Lord Salisbury’s Referendal Theory and the Conservative Party, 1846-1922 by Corrine Comstock Weston.
Marion Whitney Smith penned books about Katahdin and the spirits that inhabit Maine’s greatest mountain as well as others about Thoreau and the West Branch and Chesuncook guides. Robert Donato wrote a book titled The Long Search, Abnaki Indians. We mustn’t forget Dorothy Bowler Laverty’s books on the history of Millinocket and the architecture of Millinocket.
Of the above-mentioned books, the museum has copies for reference of many, but still seeking others. The museum will accept any local area books or books by locals. Other authors not mentioned here due to space include: Bartlett, Barbour, Blackburn, Gerry, Hartt, Tsika, Haskins, McKeen, Edwards, Moody and more and probably others that have not come to our attention. And this is just non-fiction!
Let’s not forget the two William Geller books on the area log drives and sporting camps, the Duplissea book on Millinocket in the Arcadia series, the museum’s schoolhouse history book and cookbook! Help the museum collect more and learn of more local authors or books on the local area.
