Fogler Library Friends - The OliveTree

VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1, SPRING 2010

Fogler Library and the Bangor Historical Society Acquire Cassidy Family Papers

In a unique collaborative venture, Fogler Library and the Bangor Historical Society have jointly acquired the papers of the Cassidy Family of Bangor, a collection comprising approximately 420 cubic feet of records and constituting what is probably the largest archival collection pertaining to the Bangor area. Because of the size of the collection, the two institutions will share responsibilities for housing and providing access to the papers, with parts being held by each repository. Currently they are trying to raise the approximately $7,000 that will be require to organize the collection and re-house it in archival folders and boxes, in preparation for making it available to researchers.The papers were generated by John Cassidy, who immigrated to Bangor from Nova Scotia in 1859, and his son, J.W. Cassidy. Within ten years of his arrival, John Cassidy had begun acquiring timberland in northern Maine. He also invested in several ships. Katahdin Iron Works, a sawmill in Stillwater, and was one of the founders Eastern Banking and Trust. Before his death in 1918, he had amassed more than 200,000 acres of timberland; subsequent land acquisitions by his son, brought this total close to 300,000 acres.

The collection will significantly strengthen Fogler Library’s archival holdings relating to the logging and lumber industry in northern Maine, which are already substantial. Since the Cassidy’s were involved in most of the major industries in the Bangor region, however, the may represent one of the most important sources documenting the history and economy of the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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