`Isaac Simpson’s World’ an important social history

BOOKS IN REVIEW

ISAAC SIMPSON’S WORLD, The Collected Works of an Itinerant Photographer, edited by Geraldine Tidd Scott, The Kennebec River Press Inc., Falmouth, 184 pages, $30.

Nearly 50 years ago I taught school at Portage, a small community of 800 inhabitants whose livelihood was either farming or woods operations. My salary was $20 a week. During the spring or fall sportsmen came for fishing or hunting. Visiting the post office one day I saw an old trapper who had a dozen or so beaver pelts stretched on frames. Not long after, the local game warden confiscated them. My most striking recollection was first hearing, then seeing a giant Lombard steam-powered tractor hauling 40 or 50 carloads of logs to Portage Lake. I boarded with Uncle Sam and Aunt Clara Stevens, the town’s oldest residents. Uncle Sam in his mid-80s drove an ancient Ford, and he and his wife one Sunday took me to Fish Lake for a picnic. My board and room cost $7 a week and often we dined on partridge or venison.

Aroostook County, created after the Aroostook War in 1839 is reportedly the largest county east of the Mississippi. Settlement began after the construction of a Military Road from Old Town to Houlton completed in 1831. Not until 1894, however, did Aroostook become famous for its potatoes, with the construction of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. The county was Maine’s last frontier with settlements beginning in the 1840s and slowly inching northward to Mars Hill, Hodgdon, Presque Isle, Caribou and Van Buren. Even to our present day these places retain in the rural areas its pioneer hospitality in contrast to Maine’s southern communities. One of my recollections at Portage was having an invitation to a bridal reception at the town hall from a couple I didn’t know. Since Portage had only one general store I bought a couple of bath towels. A few days later the new bride thanked me relating that she had received 39 towels.

Geraldine Tidd Scott, who is responsible for seeing this book published, was born in Houlton and has written a history of Hodgdon. While in its preparation she became aware of Isaac Simpson’s collection of photographic plates, and realizing their importance to social history selected 250 for this book.

Scott has arranged her book into related categories such as family and neighbors, architecture, social life, schools, stores, recreation, farming, lumbering, trades, and transportation and industries, which include railroads, tanneries and mills. Her text provides the information the reader needs to identify people, places and historical background.

Simpson was an amateur photographer practicing it to supplement his income to provide for his large family of 14 children. During his life (1874-1957), Simpson demonstrated he was ambitious and eager to make a living, trying several trades, but mastering none. He became a blacksmith, carpenter, mason, mechanic, woodsman, and indulged in photography as a hobby, but improved his talent and traveled up and down the county taking pictures of family groups, woodsmen and lumber operations, and hunting and village scenes. What seems remarkable is that Simpson had a keen eye wherever he traveled and recorded not the spectacular, but the ordinary events of rural early 20th century Aroostook County. In consequence, this becomes an excellent social history. Someone has written that one picture is worth a thousand words; this book bears out the truth to this statement. Such books on photography are popular today and in great demand. This book has an excellent bibliography as well as an index. Scott’s persistence in seeing her book through publication deserves great praise.

James B. Vickery is a free-lance writer who resides in Bangor.