No comments about Maine: Guess Where from the Air.

2 comments about Maine's Coastal Cemeteries.

1. This is an excellent resource for those who love history and how cemeteries add to our knowledge of everyday life in Maine's past.
   The author not only takes us on very interesting tours but has also added the local history, legends and folklore associated with each cemetery. I would highly recommend this book for those who love New England and it's rich colonial history.



2. As author Karen Wentworth Batignani points out in the introduction to this book, telling someone that you're interested in cemeteries immediately makes them think you're more than a bit morbid. But cemeteries are among are most important and informative historical locations, especially those from the New England area where are earliest settlers first lived. Karen takes on a whirlwind tour of 38 cemeteries along the coast of Maine. She begins with a primer on cemeteries pointing out how in the 1800's cemeteries were major tourist attractions and also provides a bit of history stone-carving styles and epitaphs.
   
   At each cemetery detailed, Karen provides information on how to get to the cemetery, notes on the landscape and a brief history of each region noting when the cemetery was founded and its earliest dated tombstones, as well as noting some of the more interesting residents buried there. The descriptions are helped greatly by hundreds of photographs showing the various styles of stonework. Since many of the older markers are too difficult to read in the photographs, dozens of epitaphs are re-printed in the book. In addition to the cemeteries, the book also notes any other destinations of note in the nearby area such as museums, historical homes, etc and even provides the hours of operation and phone numbers.
   
   Touring these cemeteries is an enlightening trip back in time to meet many remarkable and courageous men and women who braved incredible dangers from both French and Indian attacks to settle these new lands.
   
   In the York Village Burying Ground we find the grave of Jeremiah Moulton, who was just four years old when his parents were massacred by Abenaki Indians. Young Jeremiah was allowed to go free because the Abenaki found him to be amusing. It's a mistake they would regret as Moulton would go on to become a vaunted Indian fighter. He died in 1765 at the age of 77. And then there is the grave of Samuel Moody, a true hellfire and brimstone minister cut from the same cloth as Cotton and Increase Mather.
   
   Off the beaten path is the New Town Cemetery in the tiny town of Arrowsic, population 501. Buried here is Brig. General Samuel McCobb who was a part of General Benedict Arnold's disastrous expedition into Quebec.
   
   In Ancient Cemetery in Beautiful Wicasset, you will find the burial place of Ezekial Averil who was a bodyguard to none other than George Washington and lived until the ripe old age of 95 before passing away in 1850.
   
   The harbor town of Machias features the O'Brien family cemetery, founded by Morris and Mary O'Brien in the mid 1700's. Machias was the location of the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War as Jeremiah O' Brien led a group of men on the successful attack of a British vessel.
   
   Cemeteries hold many great stories about the past if we take the time to listen to them. Whether the cemetery is spread over many acres or perhaps tiny like the Pioneer's Burial Ground with its two dozen markers, this is an informative and fascinating excursion into Maine history.
   
   Reviewed by Tim Janson

No comments about Maine Fishing Maps: Rivers and Streams (Maine Fishing Map Books).

No comments about Maine's Historic Places.

No comments about Acadia National Park & Mount Desert Island.

No comments about Daytrips and Getaway Weekends in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine (Daytrips & Getaway Weekends).

2 comments about Sightings: A Maine Coast Odyssey.

1. Although the islands off the Maine coast have been photographed many times, no one has captured the islands and their people like Peter Ralston in Sightings: A Maine Coast Odyssey. There is a fundamental honesty and integrity to these photographs unavailable anywhere else. The beauty of the photographs comes from the tension between an unforgiving environment and the rugged individualism of the remaining year-round island residents' struggle to survive a declining fish population and a growing, homogenizing second-home tourist population. Sightings reflects Peter Ralston's unique perspective as both an observer and a participant in attempts to maintain the islander's unique way of life.
   
   Peter's humility and willingness to let the islands and their residents to speak for themselves results in deceptively-simple photographs which gain impact with each repeated viewing. The simplest photographs involve the viewer by inviting speculation about both past and the future. Sightings also chronicles with brief, unobtrusive text Peter Ralston's role as co-founder of the Island Institute and an artistic eye fined-tuned by his personal friendship with the Wyeth family.



2. I'm not big on coffee table books, nor am I really big on photo coffee table books, but when we saw this book in Camden, Maine, we had to pick it up. The pictures in this book are stunning, and they reveal Maine in a way that most tourists never get to see.
   
   This book is not a collection of the same 30 pictures you see on postcards and prints whenever you go to Costal Maine. Instead, it reveals seldom-visited islands off the coast, pictures of fishermen and lobstermen doing their daily rounds, and popular tourist destinations (Boothbay, Camden, Rockland) in the dead of winter. The Maine nobody but the locals get to see. This photographer has got quite an eye, and an uncanny way of catching feeling in even the most seemingly benign photos. He beautifully captures the feel of Monhegan in a picture that simply shows dozens of sheets blowing on clotheslines. He even manages to turn what would be seen as grotesque by the average tourist, such as the skull of a cormorant, or the mass of feathers from a dead seagull, into surprisingly beautiful captures of the Maine coast. This is a book of few words, mainly letting the pictures do all the talking (which is good, because what words there are in the book are sort of... Schmaltzy).
   
   This book captures the beauty of the Maine coast with photos of the coast at sunrise, the sea during a storm, and lobster traps submerged underwater, but also carries with it at times a mournful feel, as he also captures the longing for a time long departed from the coast. Abandoned schoolhouses, fallen barns, and desolate tourist attractions in the dead of winter provide a somber glimpse of the life experienced by the locals, but never seen by the average visitor. You get the definite impression that if the real coast of Maine, which reflects the lives of its residents and the true identity of the coast away from heavily walked tourist Mecca, were put into a book, it'd be this book.
   
   I'm truly glad that we plopped down the money to get this book, in spite of its rather high price. This book represents the Maine my husband and I know from our trips, and is a refreshing break from standard tourist takes on an area we personally know and love.

1 comments about A Bride's Passage: Susan Hathorn's Year Under Sail.

1. Susan Hathorn speaks for herself through her diary, but Ms. Petroski provides background and insightful comments that explain some of Susan's more obscure references. Newly married, Susan accompanied her husband on his ship to England and the West Indies. She kept this diary for the whole year of 1855 while she was on the ship and then when she was left behind in their hometown in Maine because she was expecting a baby. I found it absolutely fascinating although a lot of Susan's time was spent at mundane tasks. Susan sure had a thing for sewing! I recommend this book highly to anyone who is interested in the lives of women in the 19th century.

No comments about Maine Life At The Turn Of The Century (Images of America (Arcadia Publishing)).

No comments about Maine Coast (Portrait of America).