There must have been something in the air in Bangor in 1883. That was the year the library became a public library and it was also the year that the organization now known as Community Health and Counseling Services brought together 24 different groups to unify charitable work.

Several years ago, CHCS executive director Joseph H. Pickering Jr. invited me to his office to see a collection of the agency’s records comprising a variety of works, including handwritten letters, minutes and reports. The materials dated from 1883 to 1966.

Since that time, CHCS received a grant from the Maine Historical Advisory Board with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to have these historical documents put on microfilm. On Wednesday, Nov. 7, at a presentation at the library, CHCS will give the library custody of this historical collection and a copy of the microfilm so that historians and future generations may have access to its story.

Along with the presentation of the papers, the library will have displays highlighting how help to the “poor and needy” has changed over the years. The CHCS story is particularly resonant because it offers insight into the ways people worked together to solve the problems of the poor and afflicted during this time period.

The library displays will include notes from “friendly visits” made to clients by CHCS staff during the earliest days of the agency, notes that shed light on such notable events as the Great Fire of 1911, the 1917 Halifax Explosion and the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918.

Quoting from the preservation application, “The CHCS story has to do with the ways in which first volunteers and later employees of the organization made decisions about how to provide aid to those in need. The early records include reports of inquiries into the circumstances of those requesting aid; the kinds of assistance provided; cases in which aid was or was not provided, with explanations; value judgments made by those deciding on specific cases; how to deal with fraudulent requests; and the like.

These issues are rich, because they reflect some of the questions and debates we still have in our culture about how to respond to those in need. They offer a sense of how answers to these questions and the values that inform those answers have – and have not – changed in the more than a century since the early records were penned.

This is an important part of Bangor’s history, and we are pleased that CHCS is giving us custody of these important records.

Barbara McDade is director of Bangor Public Library.