A photograph taken in 1979 in the Phippsburg village of West Point shows Dick Wallace and his son Gary standing on either side of a halibut that is a good foot taller than each of them. In another, taken in the 1930s in the Phippsburg village of Sebasco, Seth Wallace holds up a codfish that a note on the photo says weighs 60 pounds. A third shows men pulling a huge tuna into a mid-sized skiff in 1932. These impressive catches are prizes of an era gone by, but due to the efforts of some Phippsburg residents, in September they were part of a presentation, “Phippsburg’s Fishing Roots,” shown at the Phippsburg Sportsmen’s Club.
Several other pictures in the show record the days when mackerel were so plentiful near shore they could be caught in seines just off the coast of West Point, and fishermen gathered sea moss in coves and carted it in large wooden wheelbarrows to be spread out to dry on the shore. Boats built in West Point were launched by a group of men who rolled them on logs down the hill to Cat Cove, and Alvin Brewer’s plane could be parked on the ice near Sebasco. Men worked together to mend fishing nets, bait trawls and tend a lobster pound at Burnt Coat Island, and women sat together picking crabs or helped filet fish. Fishermen worked in their boats wearing black derbies, straw hats or driving caps, and dressed in vests and woolen pants with suspenders.
These scenes and almost 200 other photographs are the rich reward of a labor of love by Gloria Gray, a resident of Sebasco all her life (except for a brief foray after high school to work in the larger Maine world). Gray, a longtime member of the Phippsburg Historical Society, says she put the show together because she felt the historic shipbuilding industry of the town had received a lot of attention, but that the history of the fishing industry had been somewhat neglected. “I wanted to celebrate the lives and work of the fishermen,” she says. “They so rarely receive credit.”
It has taken five years. Gray started this consuming hobby when she collected family photos to make albums for her brother and sister. “I was collecting and copying photos from all my relatives,” she says, “and they had photos of other neighbors, so I copied them, too. It was so interesting I’m still doing it.” Once word spread that she was looking for more historical pictures, many people contacted her, loaning albums, boxes and envelopes filled with precious memories. She has copied all of them, footing the bill herself, and donating a copy of each to the Phippsburg Historical Society.
Like so many family photos, few were labeled with the names, places and time the picture was taken. Gray put the copies in plastic sleeves and organized them in notebooks for each village, concentrating particularly on Sebasco, West Point and Small Point. (Parker Head and Popham Beach, she felt, had been well documented.) Then she began to visit with older townspeople to see if they could help her identify who was where, when.
Two years ago, some of these photographs were displayed at the town’s Albert F. Totman Library. “On that day, a man came up to me and said, `If you need any help copying photos, I can do that,'” says Gray. She took up his offer, and a great partnership was formed. The volunteer was Peter Hutchinson, who has lived in Phippsburg much of his life and as a youth, had fished with some of the men in the display’s photos. He returned to settle near his parents after a career in the Navy and a second career in Maryland. When his parents died, he moved into the family home built by his grandparents.
Hutchinson has always had a keen interest in Phippsburg history, particularly in the area of the Basin, where his home is located. His property is surrounded by the nearly 2,000 acres recently donated to The Nature Conservancy (see box). He has completed several projects researching industries once located there and genealogical research on the families who lived in the area.
Experienced with computers, Hutchinson is the perfect complement to Gray, who is a genius at organizing photographs in albums but has limited computer skills and lacks the up-to-date technology to deal with photo software. Hutchinson not only scanned all of the pictures Gray has collected; he restored many by removing fingerprints, cloning bits of water, sky, wood or garments to cover cracks and folds, and lightening and darkening them when needed. He labeled each and organized them into folders for the different villages and other miscellaneous topics. Like Gray, he donated all his time and materials. “He’s wonderful,” says Gray. “If he hadn’t volunteered, all I could have done is put the pictures on boards.”
More than 100 people attended the show at the Sportsmen’s Club, which Gary Morong had converted from Hutchinson’s files to PowerPoint software. Many members of the audience were related to the fishermen and their families shown on screen; some were fathers and sons who still fish together. Gray limited the presentation to photos of people who are no longer living, except when a child was with them, but she also had displays of photos of people who continue to fish from Phippsburg, some in their 80s. She says she kept asking these contemporary fishermen for snapshots of them and their families. “They would turn up with a photograph of their boat,” she says. “They love their boats.”
While residents watched the show, people could be heard murmuring comments like “Look at that lobster!” or “What do you suppose that tuna weighed!” and “He was such a sweet man.” Occasionally, Gray asked if anyone could identify an unlabeled person or place. Usually, the mystery was solved, but if no one knew, someone always came up with ideas of another person to ask.
It was a poignant gathering, since almost all of the subjects of the photos are no longer present — not only the fishermen and their wives and relatives, but also the resources: the plentiful mackerel and tuna, many of the wharves that lined Sebasco and West Point (either washed away in a storm or no longer owned by working fishermen), the General Store in West Point, another store in Sebasco, beautiful dories and boats built and launched in West Point and Sebasco.
Thanks to Gray and Hutchinson’s ongoing efforts and the generosity of townspeople who have loaned photos and have helped locate names, places and times, this life in the first half of the 20th century and even earlier has been captured and preserved.
Gray and Hutchinson have added at least another 100 photographs to the show and are working hard to produce a DVD that will be given to the Totman Library, the Phippsburg Historical Society and the Phippsburg Elementary School. Gray hopes it can also be duplicated and sold, perhaps at the annual Historical Society and library open houses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, she continues to collect photos and hopes to produce a second show that links early fishermen with pictures of their homes and families and includes other occupations like farming, wood cutting and selling ice.
“Some people travel, some go skiing,” she says. “As a hobby, I used to do a Halloween House and have Halloween parades, but it got to be too hard and I gave it up. I decided to work on this project instead.”
Turning the pages of one of the five-inch thick notebooks, Gray says she feels she knows all the people in it. She stops at one picture of a strapping, handsome young man and adds, “I love this picture. It’s one of my favorites. I only knew him as a bent over old man.”
