Author Archives: Don Taylor

Ancestor Sketch – Johann Jakob Huber (1850–1926)

For eleven years, Johann Jakob Huber stood behind an impenetrable brick wall. A single page from the Bürger-Familienregister der Kirchgemeinde Stadel has shattered it. Now we know he was born 5 February 1850 in Pfündlauf, Zürich — a farmer, a father of seven, and the man who kept all but one child from leaving Switzerland. Continue reading

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Faces from the Past – Meserve, Moulton, & Poland

Five cabinet card portraits from the SHS Photo Collection offer a glimpse into the lives of Scarborough families and their descendants in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Three Scarborough subjects — Charles Moulton, Hannah Libby Meserve Moulton, and (probably) Rosile Dolley Poland of West Scarborough — are joined by Portland physician Dr. Willis Bean Moulton, grandson of Charles and Hannah, and an unidentified young man from Lewiston whose identity remains a mystery. Continue reading

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Amanda Taft Whitney (1798–1872): An Ancestor Sketch

Born in Massachusetts in 1798 and carried west as an infant by her migrating family, Amanda Taft Whitney spent her life in Broome County, New York — raising ten children and outliving most of her generation. Her story is unusually well-documented. Read on to meet a woman the census records refused to forget. Continue reading

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Donna in the News – Bloomington, IN, April 1925.

Donna Darling and her “Bathing Girls’ Revue” brought a Hollywood-organized vaudeville extravaganza to Bloomington, Indiana’s Harris Grand Theatre in April 1925, dazzling audiences and earning recognition as the biggest vaudeville number ever seen on that stage. Continue reading

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Faces from the Past – Clifford, Dana, Jordan, & Kinney

The Scarborough Historical Society’s Linwood Dyer Collection holds a remarkable family album connecting Portland and Cape Elizabeth families across three generations. Through studio portraits, wedding photographs, newspaper clippings, and a vivid 1927 memoir, we trace the Hinkley, Dana, and Clifford families from Thanksgiving gatherings in 1860s Gorham, Maine, to the elegant Portland weddings of 1939. Continue reading

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