Pictorial history of Bangor a fascinating, informative book

WOODSMEN AND WHIGS: HISTORIC IMAGES OF BANGOR, MAINE, by Abigail Ewing Zelz, Marilyn Zoidis and Diane Vatne, Photographic Printer, Donning Co., 191 pages, $32.50.

The last 20 years have seen the venerable Bangor Historical Society take on new life and vitality. No better outcome of this near rebirth could have been predicted than the publication of this new pictorial history by three people associated with the society: Abigail Ewing Zelz, curator; Marilyn Zoidis, past director; and Diane Vatne, current director.

“Woodsmen and Whigs, Historic Images of Bangor, Maine” is a fascinating and remarkably informative effort to recover for us, in picture and text, the daily lives of Bangor people at work, in their homes, in their neighborhoods, at church and at leisure, principally over the last 140 years.

The authors use more than 300 photographs, many published here for the first time, to record the daily lives of the people who made this city. We have all seen published pictures of the river drivers and prosperous lumbermen. In this volume we see, many of us for the first time, the immigrants building the bridges for this river city, laying the rails which would make it a commercial center, then building neighborhoods and schools for themselves. To chronicle the depth and diversity of life in a city such as Bangor over a 200-year span is a tall order for any historian. To collect this history in photographs is a vital first step before the complete story can be told.

The owner of this volume will find a remarkable amount of useful information in the text which accompanies each photograph. You see the first car through the toll gate on the new Chamberlain Bridge in 1959. You learn when the tolls came off (1971) and when the Veterans Remembrance Bridge opened (1986). Pictures of Bangor schoolchildren come with a capsule history of education in the city. If a photograph shows activities at a church or synagogue, you will learn when it opened, what happened to it in the fire of 1911 and much more, if it is significant.

Readers may be surprised at the general policy of not identifying people in photographs, be they woodsmen or whigs. A photograph concerned with urban renewal in 1964 shows a nameless city manager and a nameless city councilor pondering the fate of downtown. Perhaps someone should annotate a copy of this volume with names to accompany the faces and donate to the public library.

One significant departure taken by the authors in this immense effort has been to diminish the attention paid to individual prominence and family history which characterize traditional local histories. The annonymous brickyard worker and the store clerk are as big a part of the story as Mayor Flavius O. Beal — whose name doesn’t even appear in the index. In fact, the generally useful index will fail future students looking for pictures of the Rev. John Bapst or Mayor John Woodman.

The authors acknowledge the wide community support which made this publication possible. The photographs come not only from the society’s collections but also from the University of Maine, the Bangor Public Library and from the files of the Bangor Daily News. A significant number come from private collections which, we can hope, someday will find their way to the archives of the Historical Society. The authors owe much to the industry and pioneering work of James Vickery. The bibliography will benefit students for generations, leading them to the monumental architectural history of Bangor by Deborah Thompson and James Mundy’s fascinating history of the Irish in Maine, and hundreds of other sources.

Publication of “Woodsmen and Whigs” was underwritten by Key Bank of Maine and is sponsored by the Greater Bangor Area Chamber of Commerce and the Bangor Historical Society. Profits from the sale of the book will benefit the Bangor Historical Society and the chamber of commerce. Copies are on sale in area bookstores, at the Bangor Historical Society, the Greater Bangor Chamber of Commerce, and at Key Bank locations. Copies are $32.50 plus tax and $3 postage and handling, and may be ordered by mail from the society, P.O. Box 4000, Bangor 04401.

This is an immensely valuable contribution to Bangor’s history. To open this volume is a visual adventure. It will be a timeless benefit for students. It is well and permanently bound with an attractive dust jacket. No more delightful and lasting gift for the holidays may be found.

Robert C. Woodward retired as the head librarian at the Bangor Public Library in 1990.