Baxter’s biography offers clear picture> Book chronicles life of Maine governor

ALL FOR MAINE: The Story of Governor Percival P. Baxter, by Liz Soares, Windswept House Publishers, 101 pages, $8.95, ages 9-14.

When students of the Buker Middle School in Augusta turned to librarian Liz Soares for help researching the former governor and philanthropist Percival P. Baxter, it was soon discovered that there was no official biography available and little other information as well. Soares, a columnist for the Kennebec Journal, decided to write one herself. Recently published by Windswept House Publishers of Mount Desert, it chronicles Baxter’s early life in Portland, his years of public service as a state legislator and governor, and describes in detail his efforts to set aside for Maine residents the land surrounding Mount Katahdin.

Baxter’s initial attempts to convince members of the Legislature to buy and preserve the land met with failure. After his second term as governor, Baxter decided to purchase first the mountain, then subsequent surrounding tracts of land and donate them to the state. His first purchase in 1931 was from Great Northern Paper Co. for $25,000. It included the 5,760 acres which contained Mount Katahdin. His gift came with these four stipulations: It must always be used as a park; it must stay in a “natural wild state”; no hunting or trapping could be allowed; and no more roads could be built.

For the next 30 years, Baxter continued to buy up parcels of land, deeding each separately to the state in order to make his deed restrictions more difficult to circumvent. As circumstances required it, Baxter did allow some changes to be made in these restrictions, most notably regarding the building of roads as several of the owners of sections of land sought by Baxter refused to sell unless roads could be made to allow them access to their adjacent pieces of land. Baxter’s final purchase of land for the park was made in 1962, six years before he died. The total for the 200,000 acres purchased by Baxter for the park was $1 million.

In addition to the chapters describing Baxter’s interest in this section of northern Maine, Soares describes in detail his well-known love of animals. He made generous contributions to animal shelters and had dogs throughout his life. One of them, an Irish setter named Garry, died while Baxter was in office as governor, and he ordered State House flags to be flown at half-staff.

Mackworth Island, his family’s summer retreat near Portland, was donated by Baxter to the state and became the site of a school for deaf children, eventually named the Baxter State School for the Deaf. Other honors followed, such as the naming of a Portland elementary school and an Animal Refuge League Shelter for him. Throughout his life, Baxter remained modest and unassuming. He died in 1969 at age 92. At his request, his ashes were released from the summit of Mount Katahdin.

Soares has done a good job summarizing the highlights of Baxter’s long and productive life. The sections on his fight to acquire land for a state park in the Mount Katahdin area were particularly interesting. The earlier sections which dealt with his life were not as compelling, however. In these chapters, Soares includes events from Baxter’s growing-up years in a rather dry expositional manner, without the drama that a narrative style of writing might have added. Because these chapters make up the beginning of the book, they may not hold the attention of young readers.

Soares begins the book with a list of the major events of Baxter’s life and concludes it with a listing of places significant to the life of Baxter for readers to visit, both of which are helpful to students of Maine history. Clear photographs from Baxter’s life are included.

Though the book could have benefited from tighter editing to weed out typographical errors, it is well-written and offers young people a clear picture of this illustrious resident of our state.

Judy Eyerer is a free-lance writer who lives in Bangor.