FORT KENT – The director of the Acadian Archives calls it “the single most important document for understanding life in 17th century New France,” and she’s more than pleased to have the resource available in the St. John Valley.

The work is the Reuben Gold Thwaites edition of “The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents,” covering the 40-year period of French settlement in the New World from 1632 through 1673.

“I never really dreamed we would get a donation of this kind,” explained Lisa Ornstein, director of the Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. “A resource of this caliber is usually only available at large, well-endowed university libraries.”

The set – 72 of 73 volumes published between 1896 and 1901 – was the gift of the Dyer Library in Saco.

The work originally was written by Jesuit priests as a private report on French settlements in what is now Canada, Ornstein explained.

“The early accounts were meant only for the eyes of a superior Provincial in Paris,” she said. “So impressed with the writings was the Provincial that he had them published, and the nonfiction work became an overnight best-seller.”

The resource includes records of missionaries’ travels, methods of organization, studies of people and of the language, actual instruction and spiritual support.

The books will be especially helpful to those researching family history or Canadian history.

“Genealogy is names, dates and places,” Ornstein commented. “These documents bring to life what people were actually living from day to day.”

The set had been in circulation at the Dyer Library in the early 1920s, but was moved to a private office shortly after one of the volumes disappeared in 1922.

In Saco, the collection committee decided recently to discontinue housing the books. Rather than sell them, the library decided to donate the volumes to the Acadian Archives. The set is worth an estimated $2,000.

Instrumental in the decision was St. John Valley native Jerry Morin, the Saco librarian who in the past has directed other gifts to the archives and the university.

“Jerry looks out for the Valley,” Ornstein said. “Whenever the library has materials they are no longer using that we could potentially benefit from, he is always advocating for us.”

The Morin family also has established a UMFK Foundation scholarship that is given annually to a university student.

Another recent donation from the Dyer Library was the Francis C. Harper 1900 edition of Dr. Gilmary Shea’s translation of “History and Description of New France,” by the Rev. P.F.X. de Charlevoix.

The Thwaites edition of “The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents” is also available on microforms at the University of Maine’s Fogler Library in Orono.

For information on the Acadian Archives, call 834-7535 or check the facility’s Web site at www.umfk.maine.edu/archives.