Reviews of the following books: The Voyage of Archangell: James Rosier\u27s Account of the Waymouth Voyage of 1605, A True Relation by James Rosier; Bates Through the Years: An Illustrated History by Charles E. Clark; New England\u27s Covered Bridges: A Complete Guide by Benjamin D. and June R. Evans; Styles Bridges: Yankee Senator by James J. Kieppe

Horne, Charles

Jones, David R

Maloney, W. Stanton

English

University of Maine

Maine HistoryVolume 44Number 2 Maine Institutions & Maine Politics Article 74-1-2009Book ReviewsW. Stanton MaloneyUnversity of New EnglandDavid R. JonesUniversity of Southern MaineCharles HorneFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournalPart of the United States History CommonsThis Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maine History by anauthorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact um.library.technical.services@maine.edu.Recommended CitationMaloney, W. Stanton, David R. Jones, and Charles Horne. "Book Reviews." Maine History 44, 2 (2009): 203-209.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal/vol44/iss2/7BOOK REVIEWSThe Voyage of Archangell: James Rosier’s Account of the Waymouth Voyageof 1605, A True Relation. By James Rosier. Edited by David C. Morey.(Gardiner, Maine: Tilbury House, 2005. Pp. 140. Cloth. $20.00.)On March 5, 1605 George Waymouth, the Captain of the Archangell,departed from Ratcliff, England in search of a suitable site for a colony ofEnglish Catholics. James Rosier, “a gentleman employed to documentthe voyage,” recorded the Atlantic crossing. The Archangell arrived in thevicinity of Nantucket Shoals on May 14 north of its intended landfall.Rosier describes the situation accordingly: “We stood off all that night,and the next day being Wednesday; but the wind still continuing be-tween points of South-South-West and West-South-West: so as we couldnot make any way to the Southward.”Taking the path of least resistance and following the prevailing winds,Captain Waymouth set a course to the north. On May 18, he found an-chorage at Mohegan Island in the Gulf of Maine and later at PentecostHarbor (Georges Islands). During the course of the next four weeks cap-tain and crew met and traded with local Native Americans, explored thesurrounding areas, replenished supplies of water and wood, recorded thedifferent species of fish, trees, and wildlife, dined on fish and lobster, dis-covered a “great river,” and captured and kidnapped five Mawooshen In-dians.Rosier’s narrative provides insight into the prevailing attitudes of themen of the early 1600s. The Eurocentric philosophy of the day is clear.Equally apparent is the sense of excitement that the crew felt as they dis-covered the quality and quantity of much needed natural resources.Rosier, in addition to providing a narrative, documented the wildlifealong the Maine coast.During the early part of the voyage, Rosier notes the specific locationsof the ship, based on Waymouth’s sightings. However, once theArchangell reaches Georges Islands the account lacks the specificity ofprevious sections of the narrative. The absence of navigational sightingscontributes to the mystery of the location of the “great river.”The editor, David C. Morey, is “an avocational historian who lives inTenants Harbor, Maine near the scene of the events in this book.”Maine History 44:2 February 2009Morey’s annotation, with over one hundred footnotes to supplementRosier’s account, enhances and expands the reader’s understanding ofthe original text, which was published shortly after the safe return of theArchangell to England. Morey also provides background material, inter-pretation, and context that help the reader understand the original text.Morey’s introductory chapter, “A Race for the American Coast”, intro-duces Waymouth’s voyage and Rosier’s narrative. The concluding chap-ters, the “Five Mawooshen Captives” and “The Continuing Controversy”reveal the treatment of the captives and the identification of the “greatriver.” Morey’s material serves as bookends and complements the Rosiernarrative. Over the years the Kennebec, St. George, and the Penobscotrivers have been identified as the “great river” of Rosier’s account. Untilrecently it was generally accepted that the river in question was the St.George. Morey challenges that position on the basis of linguistic evi-dence and the distances traveled; he suggests that the “great river” has tobe the Penobscot.Students of Maine history will find Rosier’s account to be a revealingrecord of early exploration and will find the documented interactionswith the Native Americans equally interesting. The key to this work is, ofcourse, Morey’s keen interpretation of the material. Without his insightthe voyage of the Archangell would be valuable only to antiquarians.Morey transforms Rosier’s account into an accessible work of history.W. STANTON MALONEYProfessor Emeritus, University of New EnglandBates Through the Years: An Illustrated History. By Charles E. Clark.(Lewiston, Maine: Bates College, 2005. Pp. 131. $18.95)Bates has always been co-ed, racially integrated, fraternity-free, andsituated in a mill town, features rarely associated with prestigious NewEngland liberal arts colleges. Bates is different, as this 150th anniversaryvolume makes clear. In the middle of the nineteenth-century, denomi-national colleges spread throughout America. Many were ephemeral,while others endured. Maine was undersupplied with higher education.The Freewill Baptists were religious liberals; their new college would ad-Maine Historymit women, blacks, and persons of other denominations. These wereselling points in the diverse catchment of western Maine.As was true throughout the nation, new colleges had to take the stu-dents they could get, ill-prepared as they might be. Bates began as a sem-inary, offering secondary-level education and creating a college-levelclientele as it went along. Unlike other colleges that diversified their aca-demic fields, Bates stuck to the liberal arts; these were the professionalpreparation of clergy and teachers, and there was sufficient demand forgraduates in these fields.Clark records the last half century’s progression from a local “poorman’s college” to an elite institution. The changes were deep: teaching-oriented professors supplemented and eventually supplanted publishingscholars; students with high standardized test scores were drawn fromincreasingly distant locales; endowments were acquired, and facilitieswere improved. Clark does not thoroughly explain how this happened,and some comparisons might have helped clarify this transformation.Why did some colleges take this high road and succeed, while othersfailed? Why did others carve different paths to success?In some ways Bates is History-Lite. In 131 pages it cannot match ei-ther David Stameshkin’s monumental works on Middlebury, or CharlesCalhoun’s detailed interpretative essay on Bowdoin (A Small College inMaine, 1993). Nonetheless, Clark focuses on big issues, not the antiquar-ian minutia and biographical reminiscences of so many commemorativevolumes. His analysis of WWII is a good example. Rather than relyingon the traditional roll call of veterans and lengthy anecdotes detailing atemporarily feminized campus, he addresses the cultural significance ofa worldwide conflict, the GI Bill, and a number of related issues.Clark’s account is not overly celebratory. The school’s vaunted liberal-ism broke down under social and economic pressure in the early to midtwentieth century. Blacks were not a problem—there would never bemany in Maine. But too many bright, ambitious Jews presented realcompetition for the offspring of WASP elites. Bates adopted the wide-spread, infamous policy of quotas. More truly religious prejudices occa-sionally marred Bates’ non-sectarianism. During the 1940s, a search fora Protestant professor of a secular subject caused an outcry.Clark also detects flaws in Bates’ image as a socially advanced institu-tion. The many ways in which co-ed has not meant equality are carefullyconsidered. Extra-curricular segregation by gender died a belated death.Bates faculty remained overwhelmingly white and male until surpris-ingly recently; women seeking role models would find them first atBook Reviews women’s colleges, then at public universities. But these are the imperfec-tions of a good record, and Clark’s is a convincingly favorable assess-ment.Some additional issues deserved more attention. Bates’ place in theregional economy and society could have been emphasized. Did atten-dance facilitate social climbing, reinforce established distinctions, orlevel social inequalities? How did gown affect town, and other towns aswell? These criticisms aside, it is a book that should satisfy not onlyalumni, but a broad, curious public, as well as an array of historians.DAVID R JONESUniversity of Southern MaineNew England’s Covered Bridges: A Complete Guide. By Benjamin D. andJune R. Evans. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2004,Pp. 344. Paper. $24.95.)New England’s Covered Bridges provides basic information and photosof historic bridges and recent replicas built to traditional designs. Thevolume’s introductory material is less comprehensive and indeed a littlescant. Eric Sloane’s “Covered Bridges,” written a half-century ago, sug-gested far more about the public interest in covered bridges. He arguedthat the structures could be interpreted as tools for imagining the past.(Our Vanishing Landscape, Dover reprint, 2004) In contrast, New Eng-land’s Covered Bridges leaves much to be desired.For those devotees who have been touring covered bridges for sometime, there may not be much new material. One may have the localguides, older discussions of the construction and meaning of thesebridges, but most of those guides only cover one or two locales. If thereader’s known region is not New England, but another of the great con-centrations of covered bridges in the mid or far west, this volume mayprove useful since the authors have previously catalogued and analyzedthe bridges of Pennsylvania. New England is a new study for them, notan old habit; their coverage should be uniformly thorough and reliableacross the region. A check of one locale may serve to test the quality ofthis book. This reviewer’s locale is Oxford County, where many of thestate’s remaining covered bridges are found.Maine HistoryPrimarily, this Guide guides. Even without the recommended supple-ment of Delorme state atlases, bridge enthusiasts can easily find theirway over back roads. The basic data on age and truss type, the occasionaldiscussion of construction or introduction of an anecdote help to bringthe bridges to life.To identify and find all or almost all the covered bridges of New Eng-land, readers should be certain to look here. To learn more about the his-tory of a bridge’s funding, construction, maintenance, and purpose in itslocale, covered bridge aficionados need to seek guidance elsewhere,starting with the references included in the Evans’ work. For those whosimply want to enjoy the bridges’ beauty, Covered Bridges is their guide.DAVID R. JONESUniversity of Southern MaineStyles Bridges: Yankee Senator. By James J. Kiepper. (Sugar Hill, NH:Phoenix Publishing, 2001. Pp. 270. Cloth. $24.95.)Students of Maine’s twentieth-century political history readily thinkof United States Senators Margaret Chase Smith and Edmund S. Muskieas the leading native figures of their times. Both were accomplished sen-ators, both claimed the national spotlight, and both sought their parties’presidential nomination. What such students may not realize is that athird Maine native in the last century was also a major figure in the Sen-ate, claiming the national spotlight and seeking, also unsuccessfully, hisparty’s presidential nomination. There is a twist, however, as StylesBridges, though born, raised, and educated in Maine, sought his politicalfortune in New Hampshire.Styles Bridges was widely regarded as one of the ablest and most sig-nificant senators of his generation, serving from 1937 to 1961. Despitehis reputation, very little was written about Bridges until ProfessorJames Kiepper’s biography, Styles Bridges: Yankee Senator. ProfessorKiepper has meticulously researched the details of Bridges’ life, whichbegan in 1898 on a farm in West Pembroke, Maine and ended sixty-three years later after a quarter-century in the national spotlight. Follow-ing graduation from the University of Maine and work as a county agri-cultural agent, Bridges moved to New Hampshire to edit a farm journal.Book Reviews Just over a decade later, Bridges was governor of New Hampshire andtwo years after that, one of its youngest senators ever.Throughout his life, Bridges overcame considerable adversity that in-cluded family tragedies, periods of ill health, the loss of his savings in the1929 stock market crash, and resistance by some of New Hampshire’spolitical elders to his political advancement. Kiepper frequently under-scores how Bridges succeeded with native charm, down home “smarts,”and Yankee thriftiness.Kiepper provides a brisk tour of Bridges’ accomplishments. In 1940,he was regarded highly enough to garner support for an unsuccessfulRepublican presidential bid. Two years later, President Roosevelt choseBridges and three other senators to secretly appropriate billions of dol-lars to build the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. By the1950s, Bridges was considered one of the half dozen most powerful po-litical figures in Washington, with a reputation as a consummate “bridgebuilder” in his own party and as a dealmaker with the Democrats.Though Kiepper clearly admires Bridges, his book presents the flawsand controversies in the Senator’s career. Perhaps most controversialwere charges of corruption arising from Bridges’ propensity to collectcash for favors done to benefit constituents. Kiepper points out (andforeword writer Robert Novak concurs) that Bridges’ money-taking waswell within the common practice of the day. The Senator was investi-gated a number of times, but always managed to clear his name. NewHampshirites continued to re-elect him by increasing majorities eachtime he ran.An admittedly minor criticism of this book concerns occasionallapses on dates. A 1954 Bridges re-election poster is reproduced here,but labeled from 1959. The photo of the opening of Pease Air Force Baseis incorrectly dated 1954, instead of 1956. Professor Kiepper erroneouslywrites that Senator Joseph McCarthy’s initial election was 1948, ratherthan 1946.These quibbles aside, my principal criticism of Styles Bridges: YankeeSenator is that it does not go into more detail concerning Bridges’ leg-islative achievements. How did Bridges manage (with three other sena-tors) to conceal two billion dollars in order to fund the A-bomb? WhenLyndon Johnson began his rise to the Senate majority leadership, biog-rapher Robert Caro writes that Johnson in his dealings found Bridges“too powerful and shrewd to be gotten around.” Kiepper points out thatBridges held court in a hideaway office near the Senate floor, wheremany of the legislative deals were made, but once again, there are few ac-Maine Historycounts of specific bills where Bridges’ intervention made the difference.In fairness to Kiepper, Bridges apparently chose to operate behind thescenes and without much fanfare. Kiepper cites Senator Hugh Scott’s (R-Pennsylvania) account of how Bridges mediated between the rantingconservatives and raving moderates of the Republican party to securemoderate Thomas Kuchel’s election as GOP whip in 1959 after the moreconservative Everett Dirksen had been chosen minority leader. Scott re-members Bridges quietly “working the room” and obtaining the desiredresult.Still, Styles Bridges: Yankee Senator shines most when we discover justhow effective Bridges could be when he put his charm and knowledge towork. Professor Kiepper provides rich detail of Bridges’ New Hampshirecampaigns, the senator’s thriftiness (he bought $30 suits and had themre-cut when the styles changed), and his impact on a whole generationof New Hampshire politicians. That alone makes this fascinating andreadable biography worth one’s time.CHARLES HORNEBangorBook Reviews 

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