‘Great Struggle’ enlivens history of Unity family

THE SAME GREAT STRUGGLE: The History of the Vickery Family of Unity, Maine, 1634-1997, by Andrea Constantine Hawkes, 2003, Tilbury House Publishers, 306 pages, $30 (hardcover), $15 (softcover).

When I was a struggling freelance writer back in the ’70s, I used to pick the brain of a certain academic who seemed to live at the Bangor Public Library. Clad in a rumpled leather jacket, sports shirt, jeans and Hush Puppies, James Berry Vickery III looked more like Jack Kerouac than Alistair Cooke.

“The Great Bangor Fire of 1911?” the teacher, author and historian once asked in answer to my query. “Follow me, Dick.”

Off we went into the labyrinthine book stacks, where Jim always knew precisely which volume to slide off the shelf to further my understanding of local history.

Eventually, after I had garnered his trust, I was invited to his third-floor Broadway apartment, and later, to the Schoolhouse Apartments beside the library. I soon learned that he didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he was more than willing to share his eclectic knowledge – which trended from cowboys to Harley-Davidsons – when he wanted to.

“If you’d like to read a really good book, I’d recommend ‘A History of the Town of Unity, Maine,'” Vickery said one sultry day while we sipped iced tea.

“Who wrote it?” I asked, innocently.

“Well, I did!” he responded, somewhat indignantly.

Sadly, that 1954 classic about his hometown is the only book Vickery ever wrote. He spent most of his life, which began in 1917 and ended with his death in 1997, editing journals and pictorial histories, and writing articles for magazines and catalogs.

Fortunately, he kept copious notes for a posthumous history of his beloved family, which carefully have been woven into a new book that Vickery surely would appreciate. Bangor native Andrea Constantine Hawkes’ history, “The Same Great Struggle,” traces the illustrious family from 1634 to 1997. Punctuated with detailed notes, index, maps and enough old portraits to warm the heart of any genealogist, the book is being hailed as a deft melding of local family history set against a backdrop of war, migration and human strife.

This Thursday, Hawkes will give an illustrated talk on Vickery and his family at the Bangor Public Library. She also will discuss a forthcoming collection of essays on Vickery for Maine History, a quarterly publication of the Maine Historical Society, in which historians Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., William David Barry, Richard Judd and others remember their friend and mentor. Hawkes wrote the introduction.

Also included will be Vickery’s final article, edited by Judd, which chronicles the life and exploits of Jock Darling, the notorious outlaw of the Maine woods.

“I really tried to tell the history of Maine, New England and the United States through the use of this family’s history,” Hawkes, a resident of Arlington, Mass., said last week, referring to her book. “It’s all our families. I just used this particular one with students at the University of Maine in mind. I needed more to understand New England history.”

Hawkes never met Vickery, but admits that fact allowed her more distance when delving into such family forebears as David Vickery II, a Revolutionary War veteran who, with his wife, Sarah Stone Vickery, planted the family’s roots in the Waldo County town of Unity in 1794. Several generations would follow.

Strong women also people Hawkes’ book. A standout is Elizabeth Vickery, who was captured by French privateers in 1697 at age 18 and shipwrecked with her captors on Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Elizabeth grew up in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where the first four generations, beginning with George and Rebecca Phippen Vickery, lived until being lured to greener pastures in the District of Maine.

Later generations of his Berry cousins moved west to farm sheep on ranches in Montana. I always thought Jim Vickery’s heart was divided between Bangor, Unity and Montana, a state that he visited and loved.

Nearly all of the book’s remarkable pictures are from Vickery’s extensive collection. A notable exception is a 1989 Bangor Daily News portrait of him relaxing on an outdoor bench, gazing pensively into the camera’s lens.

Earlier pictures show him in uniform during World War II, and during his years as a schoolteacher.

“[Andrea’s] narrative has transformed the dry facts of births, marriages, and deaths into a compelling and compassionate human story, so local and at the same time so universal,” wrote Shettleworth, director of the Maine Historic Preservation, in the book’s foreward.

No doubt, Jim Vickery would concur.

Andrea Hawkes will discuss her book, “The Same Great Struggle,” at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 8, at the Bangor Public Library. Dick Shaw can be reached at 990-8204 and rshaw@bangordailynews.net.