MAINE PHOTO ALBUM 1910s Photo Albums

A young and growing family unit in the nineteen-tens is storied across these 272 photographs. These images encapsulate the maturation of un menage cavorting around Maine and the New England Seaboard. ? The 14 1/4" x 9 3/4" album opens with six austere photographs from Harvard graduation in 1909. Then, to Kineo, Maine side-by-side in winter and summer. In one photograph icicles can be seen pitched off of roofs beside a horse and buggy carrying two men bundled in coats, and in the next two boys are seen in swimwear. Kineo, Maine could very well be an island in a lake if it weren t for a very narrow strip of land. There are photographs of the peninsula where there once stood the extravagant Mount Kineo House annex and cottage on the shore of Moosehead Lake. Many of the images were made at a high vantage point, likely on top of the mountain looking out. This historic grand lodge was destroyed in a fire in 1935. Images made in Kineo turn toward the mountain while others turn toward the lake. The group of travelers were sure to engage in bountiful recreation, hiking, rowboats, and fire tending were par the course. The peninsula no longer looks as it once did, nor do travelers typically dress in a bow tie and top hat. A certain quaintness place is preserved in these photographs, from stoic portraits to candid like souvenirs. In one image a man sits dutifully beside a beachfront shack with a pipe in hand, selling confections. Another portrait of older gentleman, clearly an eccentric type, dons a paper crown and a jacket chockfull of pins and whistles. Is this J.A. Labbie himself? The decorated man stands beside a sign which reads "Labbie Photographer upstairs" presumably in Boothbay, Maine. Otherwise, This historic document displays the amusements of this well-to-do family in the early twentieth century. Gun-toting on the beach, lounging for a picnic in tall grass, and running into the ocean. Some, though not all, pages provide handwritten detail of the location where the images were made. Besides Mt. Kineo, Maine, other named places include: Boothbay Harbor, Squirrel Island, New Meadows Inn Bath, Maine, Rye Beach, and Ft. Knox. One photograph which is regrettably not identified captures a huge billowing cloud of smoke which ascends from a mountainside engulfed in flames. Time passes as do milestones in this album of 35 leaves/68 pages. From youthful college graduate to man, wife, and adoring child. Images near the back of the album show several photographs of a woman in a wedding dress, and in the subsequent pages, a child is viewed aging from infant to toddler. The largest photos in this collection are panoramic landscape images which measure 9 1/4" x 3 1/2", though most measure 5 3/8" x 3 3/8". Six photographs are loose, tucked between pages. It appears that the images are not in chronological order. An additional fifteen leaves are blank at the back of the book.