Fannie Eckstorm: Studied nature, gathered folk songs, wrote of Maine’s flora, fauna, people

Fannie Pearson Hardy was born June 18, 1865, in Brewer to Manly and Emmeline Freeman Hardy. Her father was a fur trader, and Fannie took numerous trips into the northern Maine woods with him.

In these trips she first heard the folk tales and folk songs of the lumbermen, hunters and American Indians of the region. She also attended school in Bangor, and her daily trek to school took her past the docks and other working areas of the city.

Eckstorm’s interest in ballads was nurtured at Smith College, as was her love of nature, and she founded that college’s Audubon Society chapter.

Women began to attend college in the 1870s, according to the Maine Folklife Center, and most of the teachers at New England’s women’s colleges were taught by professors educated at Harvard. Educated women of the time had few careers open to them, according to the Maine Folklife Center’s exhibit on women folklorists. Collecting and writing about American culture as it manifested in ballads was a relatively acceptable practice for women, though they frequently apologized for treading on men’s territory.

After graduation in 1888 Eckstorm returned to Brewer and was for a short time. 1889 to 1891, superintendent of schools there, the first woman to hold such a position in Maine. She left in frustration, according to Jeff Hollingsworth’s “Magnificent Mainers,” because the city was too slow in making what she considered necessary improvements to Brewer’s schools.

She then wrote about the Maine woods and the state’s new fish and game laws for publications such as Forest and Stream magazine. Two of these articles recently have been reprinted in “Tales from the Maine Woods,” available from The Maine Folklife Center.

From 1881 to 1882, Eckstorm worked as a reader for Boston’s DC Heath publishing company. She married the Rev. Jacob A. Eckstorm, an Episcopal minister from Chicago, in 1893. The couple moved to Eastport after they were married, and in 1898, the Eckstorms moved to a pastorate in Providence, R.I., where Jacob Eckstorm died the next year.

Fannie Eckstorm and her two children moved back to Brewer after her husband’s death, and she resumed researching and writing about Maine’s flora, fauna and people.

She contributed articles to Bird-Lore and Auk magazines before publishing her first two books, “The Bird Book” and “The Woodpeckers” in 1901, which was the year her daughter died. Eckstorm’s fascination with the woodsmen, river drivers and American Indians of the Maine woods resulted in the books “Penobscot Man” in 1904 and “David Libbey: Penobscot Woodsman and River Driver” in 1907.

Eckstorm founded Brewer’s public library in 1908 and was active in the suffrage movement and in Republican politics.

She began collaborating with professor Mary Winslow Smyth of Elmira College in New York in 1925. Smyth combed the coastal areas while Eckstorm gathered woods songs. Two books resulted from these efforts: “Minstrelsy of Maine” in 1927 and “British Ballads from Maine” in 1929.

Eckstorm was awarded an honorary degree in 1929 from the University of Maine, whose Fogler Library Special Collections today house some of her work.

Although she continued to be interested in folk music until the end of her life, in the 1930s Eckstorm’s attention began to shift toward the language, history and traditions of Maine’s Indians. This interest resulted in two books: “Indian Place-Names of the Penobscot Valley and the Maine Coast” in 1941 and “Old John Neptune and Other Maine Indian Shamans” in 1945.

Besides the books already mentioned, Eckstorm also wrote a widely noted critique on Thoreau’s “Maine Woods” (1908), contributed to Louis C. Hatch’s “Maine: A History” (1919), and wrote articles on Indian legends. Other Eckstorm books are: “Indian Legends of Mt. Katahdin” (1924); “The Katahdin Legends” (1924); “The Handicrafts of the Modern Indians of Maine” (1932, 1980); “The Attack on Norridgewock, 1724” (1934); “Jeremiah Pearson Hardy: A Maine Portrait Painter” (1939); “Maine Maps of Historical Interest” (1939); “Two Maine Texts of Lamkin” (1939); “Who Was Paugus?” (1939); “Correspondence, 1941-43;” “Down the West Branch of the Penobscot, August 12-22, 1889” (1949); “A Handful of Spice: A Miscellany of Maine Literature and History” (1968); and “Tales of the Maine Woods: Two Forest & Stream Essays (1891)” (1999).

Fannie Pearson Hardy Eckstorm died of heart disease on Dec. 31, 1946, and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Brewer.

Sources: Maine Folklife Center at the University of Maine in Orono at www.umaine.edu/folklife/womenfolklorists2.htm; Waterboro Public Library’s Maine Writers Index at www.waterborolibrary.org; “Magnificent Mainers” by Jeff Hollingsworth, Covered Bridge Press, North Attleborough, Mass., 1995.