PURCHASE a booklet at the non-profit organization Richmond Historical Society Archive Center at 17 Spruce Street, Mon.-Tues.-Sat. hours posted at the door, mostly between 9:30-1.
Purchase a copy of the LOST HOMES OF SWAN ISLAND booklet. Several interested historians worked to collect post cards & newspaper clippings. IFW has granted access to the island permission for those with personal watercraft.
Tidbits of history accompany the acrylic paintings in the booklets, done from black-and-white family photos, b/w postcards, and newspaper articles from 1940-1970 about the years of neglect and destruction of these historic homes.
Swan Island and the homes there are on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Take home a copy to learn about Swan Island’s history.
WE APPRECIATE YOUR PURCHASE and HOPE TO SEE YOU VISIT THE ISLAND SOON!
BE LOOKING FOR BOOK TWO of the Swan Island Trilogy …. coming out soon!
Book 2 of the Swan Island Trilogy ~ brings us back to the story of a girl, kidnapped by First Nations Abenaki people from Swan Island in the Kennebec River and ransomed to an affluent couple in Montreal. Hiking through the wild frontier with Abenaki guide teaching her his language and vital herbal remedies, and a French trapper with whom her language is natural, brings hardship to its head. Upon her return and being reunited with her biological father, life turns even more challenging.
Boarding with Reverend Jacob Bailey and wife Sally Weeks Bailey at abandoned Fort Richmond, she learns what life is about on the Maine Frontier in the 1700’s. A failed marriage followed her boarding for another couple of years with a retired Boston sea Captain. His tutoring her in speaking the English language clearly encouraged her to become a teacher. The remainder of her once-privileged life moves into a much more improved place from the rustic cabin her biological father offered. When she left Boston after the death of her first husband she relocated to New Hampshire, later remarrying.
The book includes growth of not only historic Swan Island, but of the general area of Swan Island. Details emerge about forts that were built along the river, grist and lumber mills, stores, shipbuilding enterprises, log cabins and brick homes, new towns and cities. Other major life changes, ways of thinking forward, and beliefs about owning property as time went on were challenging. Rich details about how civilization began to creep slowly to include lands farther and farther upriver and outward are revealed through the author’s extensive research.
The investors from Boston came first, followed by the land barons who then became the political voices of the New Frontier. Stories range from deep hardship to accumulated wealth, sometimes violent resistance to different religions. Great changes in laws were necessary and improvements in living conditions draw the reader into the story of how a tiny island became interesting to settlers with the fortitude to forge a life from the forest.
