"Readers with even a casual interest in Maine history will appreciate this important compilation . . ."
—Down East Magazine

". . . They have become a community again, all those generations of South Bristol, and it was Ellen that began it, by her curiosity and caring and love."
—Gordon Bok

When Ellen Vincent set out to document a working town's history, she hoped to find a place where the families and traditions were part of a generations-old continuum. South Bristol, Maine, a coastal village that spans shore and islands, is just such a place. Sometimes idyllic, at other times laden with hardship, this was a community where self-sufficiency was a virtue and neighbors were as family.

The oral history project that Vincent began grew as school children became involved in learning their parents' and grandparents' stories, a local historical society was begun, and a culminating exhibit of photos and artifacts and reminiscences drew just the response Vincent had hoped for: mixed-generation groups of people clustered around the photos and stories, putting their fingers onto them, talking and laughing and teary-eyed. Many wrote down their own memories and pinned them up on the walls. The community had come together to create a collective memory of place, spoken in the words of its people. Their strength of character and unflagging humor has carried them through many decades, and it resonates in the cadence of their tales.

Now between the covers of a book, this recollected history and its 300 vintage photographs brings you the heritage and stories of one town—but they are stories and images that will echo up and down the coast of Maine.

Ellen Vincent is an award-winning photographer and sculptor whose writing credits include photo essays and critical reviews for Country Magazine and The Washington Post. A native of Maryland, she currently lives in Wisconsin where she is Professor of Art at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She summers in South Bristol, Maine.