Creating Acadia National Park: The George B. Dorr Research Archive of Ronald H. Epp

The Creating Acadia National Park Research Archive (CANPRA, a.k.a The Epp Archive, f.k.a The Dorr Archive) is a vast research archive on the life of George Bucknam Dorr and the creation of Acadia National Park. This archive has been donated to the Jesup Memorial Library.

The archive primarily consists of a collection of paper resources located and copied in federal, public, and academic libraries, archives, and historical societies in the United States and the United Kingdom, including manuscripts, interview and correspondence transcripts, maps, books, articles, and other diverse clippings. They were created over a fifteen year period prior to the publication of Creating Acadia National Park: The Biography of George Bucknam Dorr
(Bar Harbor: Friends of Acadia, 2016).

The archive is available online through the Jesup’s Online Archive, which is one of many available through the History Trust.

It is highly recommended to begin with the introduction by clicking the button below.

Series

Distinctive Collection Elements

A. The 1901-1945 Minutes of the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations (HCTPR). They supersede the documentation held in the HCTPR Archive at the aforementioned Woodlawn Museum. Its Trustee holdings were determined to be incomplete; relevant minutes and memoranda uncovered in other archives were incorporated into these holdings.

B. The Sieur de Monts Publications. Nearly two dozen land, sea, flora and fauna articles associated with park-building were edited or authored by George B. Dorr between 1915 and 1919. This collection is the most complete record of Dorr's earliest conservation writings undertaken to disseminate information about the new national park, including scores of unattributed photographs most likely taken by Dorr.

C. "George Bucknam Dorr: A Bibliography of Secondary Sources," December 2009. Compiled and copyrighted by Ronald H. Epp, this document lists alphabetically the resources utilized in preparing the first draft of Creating Acadia National Park (2016). On the issue of primary sources, the repository files (Series 5 & 6) provide the best guide. (Use the reader view icon on the left hand side of the PDF if you only see page 1)

D. The Spirit of Acadia Committee Notes. On November 15, 2004 ANP hosted at park HQ the meeting of 30 individuals to devise strategies for celebrating the men and women who inspired and created Acadia National Park. These notes form an outline of fuller documentation for what became a preliminary plan for the 2016 park centennial.

E. Acadia National Park Centennial. A collection of news clippings, event announcements, planning documents, and publicity for the 2016 A.N.P. centennial. This collection is available in print whereas the official record was deposited in the 2016 Acadia Bicentennial Time Capsule, scheduled for opening in 2116.

F. "A Guide to the George B. Dorr Papers & Old Farm Guest Book Directory." Compiled by Ronald H. Epp. 2006. Transcriptions, published writings, correspondence essays, fragments and memoirs of the first superintendent of Acadia National Park, including a list of over three decades of signatures and annotations from Old Farm guests. The Guide is a finding aid to the Dorr Papers at the Bar Harbor Historical Society; microfilm copies available at the Jesup Memorial Library and the William Otis Sawtelle Collections and Research Center, A.N.P.

G. "Becoming Acadia National Park: A Biography of George Bucknam Dorr" (2008). A rough chronological draft devised prior to the first written narrative completed later in 2010 in order to provide a detailed timeline of events. Researchers will find here historical threads not contained in the fabric of the finished manuscript, areas ripe for future research. [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

H. "Making Acadia National Park: Ms. Submitted" (2010). Two volumes. This is the draft available to publishers for consideration, later retitled, Creating Acadia National Park.

I. Creating Acadia National Park. Contains correspondence relative to securing an agreement with Friends of Acadia to publish Dorr's biography as part of the Acadia National Park Centennial (2016)

J. Creating Acadia National Park: The Biography of George Bucknam Dorr. Reviews and publicity for the 2016 centennial year.

K. Ronald Harry Epp (RHE) Acadia Scholarship. A complete curriculum vita precedes individual files (2001-2019) containing all publications, addresses, and interviews by RHE on the legacy of George Bucknam Dorr and the land conservation movement.

L. Ward Family Papers by Samuel Gray Ward. (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1900). Family history authored by Dorr's maternal uncle, S.G. Ward, that stretched from William Ward (1767-1825) to the final year of the 19th-Century. Only twelve copies were printed, and this photocopy is from the copy donated by the author to the Harvard College Library. This document is best appreciated when compared with RHE research notes taken from the Thomas Wren Ward Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

M. Puritan Aristocrat in the Age of Emerson: A Study of Samuel Gray Ward by David B. Baldwin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania dissertation, 1961). This dissertation was the first and still definitive account of 19th-century Ward family members. The file is supplemented by correspondence between myself and David Baldwin and his children; Baldwin's much cited "The
Emerson-Ward Friendship: Ideals and Realities," is included.

N. "The Dorr Collection." Several hundred pages of historical information on the Dorr family was deposited in the R. Stanton Avery Special Collections Department at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) on Newbury Street, Boston (several hundred feet from 18 Commonwealth Avenue, George B. Dorr's residence for more than a half century). The bulk of these family member biographical profiles were authored by GBD.

O. Castle Howard Correspondence between Howard and Dorr Families. Correspondence between the Ninth Earl of Carlisle the English artist George Howard, and his wife, Lady Rosalind Howard. Following the 1876 death of Dorr's brother, forty-eight letters to and from the Howards --spanning three decades-- were sent to and received from the Dorrs. RHE transcribed copies of the letters, and arranged them chronologically after editorial input from the Castle Howard curators. These documents provided the fullest rendering of Dorr family life in the final three decades of the 19th-cenury. Files also contain secondary resources about Howard family history, travel, social life, and the impact of the pre-Raphaelite movement on George & Rosalind Howard.