BROOKLIN, by Brooklin Keeping Society, Arcadia, Charleston, S.C., 2003, 128 pages, $19.99.

I like old things, so I was prepared to enjoy the book of historic photographs the Brooklin Keeping Society has put together for the Images of America series. And I wasn’t disappointed.

“Brooklin” is chockablock full of photos, all with captions that adequately identify the people and places pictured.

Society members combed through about 1,000 photos, some of them from their own collection, others on loan from townspeople for the project, according to society curator Clare Sullivan, who proposed the project last year.

Sullivan got the idea from a friend in the Massachusetts town where she grew up, where they had put out a similar book.

“I got the idea that we could do this in Brooklin,” she said recently.

Sullivan organized the photos, but did not know the historic context for many of the photos. She relied on a group of Keeping Society members who met regularly through last fall, selecting and identifying photos for the book.

“It really was a group effort,” she said. “I did the organizing, and they provided the rest of the information.”

The group worked hard to ensure that the book represented all parts of the town and featured as many people from those areas as possible, she said. The book is divided into 10 chapters covering different sections of town, people and special events and, finally, a section on boats and boat-building in Brooklin.

“A lot of men from Brooklin were masters of exquisite yachts, like the Palestine, that sailed in the area because the master lived here even though the owners were in New York,” Sullivan said. “It’s an interesting piece of the town’s history.”

The book includes obligatory photos of residents, E.B. White and his wife Katharine, and James Russell Wiggins, notable transplants who chose to settle in the community. For the most part, however, the book is peopled with folks whose names have been linked to the town for generations and have been imprinted on local places such as Flye Point, Carleton Cove, Herrick Bay, and others whose surnames can still be found in the local phone book: Friend, Allen, Bridges, Eaton, Gray and others.

What I like about the book is that it contains nuggets of information about places that I know and enjoy. For instance, I’ve visited Naskeag Point for years just to watch the tide turn and never knew that a century ago a clam factory operated there. Nor did I know that Center Harbor once bustled as the hub of the town’s fish-packing industry or that there was once a roller-skating rink located next to the Baptist church.

The rink was torn down and the materials used to build the Friend Memorial Library nearby. That kind of information is the real strength of the book. Throughout, the captions accompanying photos provide mini-histories of the town and its people, making a link between what has passed and the town that exists today.

The caption with a photo of Center Harbor, for example, points out the Ramsdell sardine factory building located among others along the shore. I’d never heard of the Ramsdell factory, but I have heard of the Brooklin Boat Yard and the caption makes the connection: “…in 1938, Frank Sylvester and Frank Day bought the factory and started a boat yard. Arno Day, Frank Day’s son, rented buildings there for the same purpose. Joel White joined Arno Day. In 1962, White bought the buildings and the land and established the Brooklin Boat Yard…” which operates there today.

To my mind, those details are important, because in some indefinable way, they are part of the fabric of the place and, if we pay attention, can remind us of where we came from and how we got to where we are.

For readers who know Brooklin, the book offers a chance to reminisce and, perhaps, to pick up bits of local lore they might have missed along the way. For those who are not acquainted with the town, the book serves as a pictorial primer for a town they ought to get to know.