Special Collections: Guide to the Edwin R. Starbird Photographs

Collection title: Edwin R. Starbird Photographs
Provenance: Gift of Dwight D. Demeritt, Jr., October 2006
Collection number: MS 1114
Dates of collection: 188-?
Size of collection: 1 box (13 photographs)
Preferred citation: Edwin R. Starbird Photographs, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University of Maine
Restrictions on access and use: Kept at Fogler Library's offsite storage facility. One week's notice required for retrieval.

Biography

Edwin Starbird was born in 1853 in Freeman, Maine. He began his working life as a teacher but in the early 1880s began studying photography with Francis E. Stanley in Lewiston, Maine. He then returned to Farmington and opened a studio for both portrait and landscape photography. Around 1883 he began a series of photographs called the Woods of Maine series which came to include nearly 600 views of the Rangeley area, Moosehead Lake, the West Branch of the Penobscot River and other wilderness places. In 1892 he left Farmington and opened a business in Brunswick, Maine, where he continued to work until 1911. After closing this studio, he moved to Apopka, Florida, where he died July 23, 1921.

Scope and Content Note

The collection includes one photograph from Starbird's Rangeley Lake Views series, one from his Views of Tim Pond and the Seven Ponds series, seven from the Woods of Maine series, and four from the area around Katahdin Iron Works.

List of photographs

1 Camp Parmachenee (Starbird’s Rangeley Lake Views series, published in Farmington, ME)

2 Seven Ponds: Camp Frank and John (Starbird’s Views of Tim Pond and the Seven Ponds series, Farmington, ME)

The Woods of Maine series

3 Spectacle Hamlet on the Kibbey Stream (published in Farmington, ME)

4 Looking down Monsungan [Munsungan?] Lake from Atkins Camp (Brunswick, ME)

5 On the Aroostook River (Brunswick)

6 [No title] No. 1604 (Brunswick)

7 Atkins Camps at Munsungun [Munsungan?] Lake, no. 1274 (Brunswick)

8 The camps at Millmegassett [Millimagassett?] Lake, no. 1451 (Brunswick)

9 Browns Camps on Pleasant River, Katahdin Iron Works, no. 1809 (Brunswick)

Katahdin Iron Works

10 Billings Falls on Pleasant River above Katahdin Iron Works, no. 946

11 Scene on the gulf just below Billings Falls, no. 947

12 The Big Jaws looking down stream at the Gulf at Katahdin Iron Works, no. 950

13 Hammond St. pitch in the gulf, Katahdin Iron Works, no. 1154

 

Finding Aids for selected manuscript collections in the Special Collections Department at Fogler Library are accessible online in URSUS, in a browsable Guide to Manuscript Collections. Please contact Special Collections at spc@umit.maine.edu or (207) 581-1686 for further information.

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Special Collections Staff: spc@umit.maine.edu | Revised: 01/17/2013