IMAGES OF AMERICA BREWER, by Richard R. Shaw; Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, SC.; 2000, 128 pages, $18.99.

Arcadia’s Images of America series topped 1,000 editions last year – with good reason. The sepia-covered slim volumes really capture the essence of communities in historic pictures and accompanying information.

Just published is a most welcome addition, Richard R. Shaw’s volume on Brewer. Previously the author, who works in the editorial department at the Bangor Daily News, put on his historian hat to do individual books on Ellsworth-Blue Hill and the lower Penobscot River region, and two volumes on Bangor – one of them the best-selling of the dozens of Maine communities covered so far.

Though Shaw doesn’t live in Brewer, he certainly has a fondness for the city where some of his family have lived for 20 years.

“It’s a hometown,” he pointed out, a fact that is clear in the choice of the cover – a wonderful picture of the Brewer Band, taken about 1904. It is also timely, since the Brewer Community Band will play in Washington, D.C., this fall.

The photo has been published on other occasions, but some of the pictures are in print for the first time. Readers’ favorites – like Shaw’s – may well include those that tell a story.

A simple photograph of Henry “Cap” Morrill – a name known over recent years for the family’s fish market and restaurant – certainly tells a poignant story. Shown at his bar on South Main Street during the 1940s, the Morrill patriarch stands before a banner of three stars, indicating that his three sons were in Europe fighting the Nazis. A fourth son would soon join the army.

A 1973 picture of an anniversary gathering of Brewer High School’s Se Beowulf Club shows members of the group, formed in 1933 to stimulate interest in English, and later to promote service, leadership and character.

It’s the generations that make this one special, Shaw said.

Pointing to Marjorie Marsh Quigg, he added, “Here’s the lady that co-founded it, with some of the younger people.”

Certainly there was a story in the two-page photo of the 1919 launching of the Horace E. Munroe, a four-masted schooner built by the Bangor and Brewer Shipbuilding Co., and cheered from both sides of the Penobscot River on launching day.

Christened with a bottle of Poland Spring Water, the $200,000 vessel slid into the river so quickly that the crew couldn’t anchor it. Across the river it raced, punching a hole in Henry McLaughlin and Co.’s storehouse on the Bangor side.

Pictures of the Barbour Boatyard and its products are enriched by the inclusion of an 1883 portrait of Capt. Samuel H. Barbour with his wife and seven children.

“Industry really built that city,” Shaw noted, from shipbuilding and lumbering to the making of paper, bricks and ice.

Residents will enjoy old shots of familiar sights, reminiscing how some landmarks have taken on new identities. Part of a grammar school on South Main is now Van Raymond Outfitters, while the South Brewer Grammar School went on to be used as an annex to Epstein’s clothing store.

What makes the small city uniquely Brewer? Surely it’s the people, from educators such as Mildred Thayer and Fannie Hardy Eckstorm – both authors – to sculptor Charles E. Tefft. Expositions around the country benefited from his work, but Mainers cherish pieces such as the River Drivers and the statue of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin in downtown Bangor.

The picture of Tefft with the Hamlin statue makes clear how large the bronze casting really is. Tefft’s subjects included Brewer’s most famous native son, Governor and Civil War Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain.

Good for Shaw for including not only an elegant line drawing of the general, but pictures of his parents and silhouettes of his grandparents, as well as other pictures of the Chamberlain family members and homes.

Other unique aspects of Brewer – represented in the photos -include the first troop of the Boy Scouts of America, the Soap Box Derby, and of course the Bon Ton.

Actually three boats, the small Bon Ton I, Bon Ton II and then the Bon Ton III carried passengers between Brewer and Bangor in the early decades of the 20th century. The fare had increased from 1 cent to a lofty 3 cents by the time the ferry stopped operating after a fire in November 1939.

Anyone who has lived in this area of the Penobscot should enjoy such a memorable visit to Brewer’s days gone by. For people from Bangor, many of the pictures include interesting views of the Queen City in the background.

Shaw includes a wealth of information in each picture’s caption. Here’s hoping there are more Images of America books in his future.