Francis Clergue, born in neighboring
Brewer, was a lawyer. He oversaw one of the most ambitious engineering projects in North America, the development of
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and Ontario as a major
hydropower and industrial center in the 1890s–1900s. Before that Clergue had organized the Bangor Street Railway (the first electric railway in Maine) and the Bangor Waterworks, and had tried and failed to build a railroad across
Persia and a waterworks in its capital,
Tehran.[3]
Waldo Peirce, painter and bohemian. He was a confidante of
Ernest Hemingway and was from a prominent Bangor family.
Jeremiah Pearson Hardy (1800–1887), portrait painter. He apprenticed under
Samuel Morse, lived and worked in Bangor for most of his career, sustained largely by the patronage of lumber barons.[5] His children Anna Eliza Hardy and Francis Willard Hardy, and sister Mary Ann Hardy, were also part of a 19th-century circle of Bangor painters. Other members of this circle included Florence Whitney Jennison and Isabel Graham Eaton, who was also an author.[6]
Walter Franklin Lansil, studied first under Hardy, and then at the
Académie Julian in Paris. He established a studio in Boston and became a celebrated landscape and marine artist.
Frederic Porter Vinton (1846–1911), left Bangor at age 14 for Boston, where he became that city's most sought-after portrait painter—producing over 300 canvases—and one of the original members of the
Boston School. He studied in Munich and with
Leon Bonnat in Paris, as well as with
William Morris Hunt.
Norman Cahners of Bangor qualified for the
1936 Olympic Team trials in track & field, but boycotted the event with Harvard track teammate
Milton Green, because the games were to take place in Nazi Germany. Cahners and Green were Jewish. Cahners is a member of the Harvard Varsity Athletic Club Hall of Fame.[8] He went on to build one of the largest publishing empires in America[9]
Jack McAuliffe, World
LightweightBoxing Champion in the 1880s–1890s and known as "The Napoleon of the Ring", learned to fight growing up as a child in a tough Bangor neighborhood. He retired with an unbeaten record. Another local boxer,
Michael Daley, became Lightweight Boxing Champion of New England, but was arrested in Bangor in 1903 for robbing a man at a local hotel
Laura Curtis Bullard, whose family started a successful patent medicine business in Bangor in the 1830s, eventually moved to Brooklyn and became a proto-feminist novelist and editor. She was a patron and confidante of
Susan B. Anthony and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and took over editorship of their newspaper The Revolution when it experienced financial difficulties
Frederick H. Costello (1851–1921), nationally successful writer of adventure novels for young adults, who for 30 years held a day-job as local (Bangor) manager of the R.G. Dunn credit reporting company
Owen Davis (1874–1956),
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright; lived in Bangor until he was 15, and his prize-winning play Icebound (1923) is set in neighboring
Veazie. Davis wrote between 200 and 300 plays, as well as radio and film scripts, and two autobiographies. He was inducted into the
American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was president of the Author's League of America and the American Dramatist's Guild[13]
Henry Payson Dowst (1872–1921), Bangor-born; was a novelist and short-story writer, and saw a number of his stories made into silent films. One was The Dancin' Fool (1920) starring
Wallace Reid. He spent his later life in a New York advertising agency, but was buried in Bangor
Blanche Willis Howard, best-selling late 19th-century novelist, was born and raised in Bangor. She eventually moved to
Stuttgart, Germany, and married the court physician to King
Charles I of Württemberg, thus becoming the Baroness von Teuffel
Stephen King, the author best known for his horror-themed stories, novels, and movies. His wife,
Tabitha Spruce-King, is also a writer, as are sons Joseph Hillstrom King (aka
Joe Hill) and
Owen King. The family donates a substantial amount of money to local libraries and hospitals and has funded a baseball stadium, Mansfield Stadium (home to the
Senior League World Series), and the Beth Pancoe Aquatic Center, both on the grounds of Hayford Park, for the citizens (especially the children) of the city. King's fictional town,
Derry, Maine, shares many points of correspondence with Bangor—the rivers, the
Paul Bunyan Statue, the
Thomas Hill Standpipe, the hospital—but is always referred to as separate from Bangor. King also features Bangor in many of his stories, such as The Langoliers and Storm of the Century. King owns radio stations
WKIT,
WZON, and
WZLO
Helen Maud Merrill (pen name, Samantha Spriggins; 1865–1943), litterateur and poet
Eugene T. Sawyer, the "Prince of
Dime Novelists", was born and raised in Bangor. In a 1902 interview, he claimed to have authored 75 examples of that genre, mostly for the Nick Carter series, once producing a 60,000 word novel in two days. His major innovation was to "begin the plot with the first word", i.e. "We will have the money, or she shall die!"[15]
Ruel Perley Smith (1869–1937), born in Bangor, author of the Rival Campers series of boy's book in the early 20th century. His regular job was as Night and Sunday Editor of the New York World newspaper[16]
Tim Sullivan, science fiction author, was born and raised in Bangor
George Savary Wasson, painter and author of four novels, lived and worked in Bangor in the early 20th century
Christine Goutiere Weston (1904–1989), author of ten novels, more than thirty short stories, and two non-fiction books (about
Ceylon and
Afghanistan), lived the latter part of her life in Bangor. She had been born in India and much of her fiction was set there.[17]
Jehudi Ashmun, professor and director of the
Bangor Theological Seminary which produced a number of influential ministers, missionaries, and scholars in the 19th century. Ashman later led a group of 32 freed slaves to the
American Colonization Society's African colony in
Liberia in 1822, and is considered one of the founders of that nation[18]Cyrus Hamlin, who graduated from the seminary in 1837, was the founder and first president of
Robert College in
Istanbul, Turkey, and later president of
Middlebury College (1880–85) in Vermont.[19] Seminarian
Daniel Dole (1808–78) left Bangor in 1839 to establish one of the earliest Protestant missions in
Hawaii, and ended up founding a local dynasty. His son
Sanford B. Dole led the successful coup d'état against the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893, becoming the first and only President of the
Republic of Hawaii and, later, the first American territorial governor. Daniel's nephew
James Drummond Dole became the "Pineapple King"[20]
John Bapst (1815–1887), a Swiss-born member of the
Jesuit order, was sent to
Old Town, Maine in the late 1840s to minister to the Catholic
Penobscot tribe. Soon he was conducting a roving ministry to 33 Maine towns, largely as a result of
Irish-Catholic immigration. In 1851 he was embroiled in a religious controversy over grammar school education in
Ellsworth, Maine, and was brutalized, robbed, and
tarred and feathered by a
Protestant mob, inspired by the
Know-Nothing Party, which was popular in coastal Maine. He fled to Bangor, where a large
Irish-Catholic community was gathering, and where members of the local elite presented him with a new watch, his previous one having been stolen in Ellsworth. Bapst stayed in Bangor until 1859, overseeing the construction of the large brick St. John's Catholic Church in 1855.[21] He left in 1860 to become the first rector of
Boston College. Later he became superintendent of the
Jesuit order in
New York and Canada, and died in
Baltimore, Maryland. The present
John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, formerly Catholic but now non-sectarian, is named for him[22]
Joseph Osgood Barrett (1823–1898), born in Bangor, was a
Universalist minister who became a prominent
spiritualist and
spirit medium in Illinois and Wisconsin. He was also a lecturer and author of books on
spiritualism, and editor of the Chicago-based newspaper The Spiritual Republic. He became known as an advocate of
women's rights with the publication of his book Social Freedom; Marriage: As It Is and As It Should Be in 1873[23]
Prescott Freese Dennett, of Bangor was one of 30 people indicted for sedition and tried in
Washington in 1944. Dennett stood accused of helping a German agent,
George Sylvester Viereck, distribute propaganda designed to keep the U.S. out of the war in Europe. The case ended in a mistrial
Howard E. Penley, of Bangor and
Dorchester, Massachusetts, was arrested and arraigned in Bangor on Dec. 23, 1943, for refusing to register for the draft. He was the New England District Secretary of the
Socialist Party of America and was opposed to war on political and religious grounds
Diplomats
Elisha Hunt Allen, Bangor politician; served as U.S. Consul to the
Kingdom of Hawaii 1850–1856, and then joined the Hawaiian government as Chancellor and Chief Justice 1857–1876. In that capacity he accompanied
King Kalakaua on his first and only trip to the United States in 1874. Allen returned to Washington as Ambassador of the
Kingdom of Hawaii to the United States, and died on the job during a
White House diplomatic reception in 1883. Allen's son,
William Fessenden Allen, who was born in Bangor, also served in the government of Hawaii, both before and after the Kingdom became an American territory
Patrick Duddy, of Bangor was the U.S. Ambassador to
Venezuela in the Bush administration. He was temporarily expelled from the country in 2008 by President
Hugo Chávez in a dispute over an alleged American coup plot
Edward Kent, former
Maine Governor; was U.S. Consul in
Rio de Janeiro 1849–1853, he lost two of his three children to
yellow fever. His wife died the year they returned to Bangor, and his surviving child soon after
Aaron Young Jr., U.S. Consul in
Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (1863–1873), who was formerly Maine's State Botanist and Secretary of the Bangor Natural History Society.
Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's vice president and Bangor politician, served as U.S. Ambassador to Spain later in his career
Inventors
Melville Sewell Bagley, invented an aperitif named
Hesperidina, using the peels of bitter oranges, which became the national liquor of
Argentina. It is still produced, with his image on every bottle
John B. Curtis, commercial
Chewing gum was invented in Bangor in 1848 by Curtis. Curtis marketed his product as "State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum".[25] He later opened a successful gum factory in
Portland, Maine. Coincidentally, Bangor-born
Frank Barbour, who became a director (and later chairman of the board) of the
Beech-Nut Packing Company, would launch that company's famous chewing gum line in 1910
Paul E. Watson, of Bangor, chief engineer of the
U.S. Army Signal Corps, headed the team that built the army's first long-range
radar in 1936–1937. This was the radar deployed in Hawaii at the time of the
Pearl Harbor Attack. The Army's radar laboratory was named "Watson Laboratories" after his death, and became the kernal of the present USAF
Rome Laboratory[26]
Journalists
Margherita Arlina Hamm, spent part of her childhood in Bangor, was a pioneering female journalist who covered the
Sino-Japanese War and
Spanish–American War for New York newspapers, sometimes from the front lines. She was also a prolific author of popular non-fiction books. A
suffragette, she was nonetheless a defender of American imperialism, chairing the pro-war "Woman's Congress of Patriotism and Independence" and writing an heroic biography of Admiral
George Dewey[27]
Ralph W. 'Bud' Leavitt Jr. longtime columnist and editor for The Bangor Daily News. Born in
Old Town, Maine, Leavitt became a cub reporter at The Bangor Daily Commercial at age 17 in 1934. Following the Second World War, Leavitt signed on with The News, where he filed, during the course of his career, 13,104 columns devoted to the outdoors, and where he served for many years as executive sports editor. Leavitt also hosted two long-running TV shows about the outdoors on Maine television
Edward Kent Jr., son of Bangor Mayor, Maine Governor, and Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice
Edward Kent, was appointed by his Harvard classmate
Theodore Roosevelt as Chief Justice of the
Arizona Territory Supreme Court, 1902–1912. He delivered a landmark ruling on water rights (the Kent Decree of 1910)
Robert Murray served as First District Judge and state legislator
Physicians and nurses
Charlotte Blake Brown (1846–1904), pioneering female physician who co-founded what became Children's Hospital of San Francisco in 1878, with an all-female staff and board of directors. In 1880 she also founded the first
nursing school in the American West. Children's Hospital merged with another institution to become
California Pacific Medical Center in 1991
Elliott Carr Cutler (1888–1947), son of a Bangor lumber merchant,[28] became Chairman of the Dept. of Surgery at
Harvard Medical School and a pioneer in
cardiac surgery, inventing a number of important techniques and publishing over 200 papers. He was elected President of the
American Surgical Association, and later became surgeon-in-chief at
Brigham Hospital in Boston. During the Second World War he was Chief Surgical Consultant in the European Theatre of Operations with the rank of Brigadier General. Another Bangor-born
Harvard Medical School professor, Frederick T. Lord, was a pioneer in the use of serum to treat
pneumonia, and was elected President of the American Association of Thoracic Surgery
Harrison J. Hunt, surgeon on the
Crocker Land Expedition to the Arctic in 1913–1917, and the first to return to civilization with news of his fellow explorers, who had been trapped in the ice for four years. Hunt escaped after a grueling four-month dog-sled journey accompanied by six
Inuit. He spent the rest of his career working at the Eastern Maine Hospital in Bangor, and authored the book North to the Horizon: Arctic Doctor and Hunter, 1913–1917 (Camden, Me: 1930). He is credited with finding the major biological specimens returned by the expedition—eggs of the
red knot, which established its migration pattern between Europe and northern
Greenland[29]
Georgia Nevins (1864–1957), nurse, nurse educator, hospital administrator, American Red Cross leader, born in Bangor
Robert Winslow Gordon, became the first Director of the Archives of the American Folk Song at the
Library of Congress. In the 1910s–1930s he was arguably the leading authority on this genre of music, personally recorded nearly a thousand folk songs and transcribing the lyrics of 10,000 more
Albion Woodbury Small, The "Father of American Sociology"; attended grade-school in Bangor. He was the first American professor of sociology, founder of the first dept. of sociology (at the
University of Chicago), edited the discipline's first American journal, and was President of the
American Sociological Society (1912–1913)[33]
Harris Hawthorne Wilder (1864–1928), zoologist; born in Bangor, was a pioneer in fingerprint analysis and forensic science
William D. Williamson, a
Brown University-educated Bangor lawyer who became the second
Governor of Maine, was also the state's first historian, producing a two-volume History of the State of Maine as early as 1832. It remained the standard reference throughout the 19th century.[34]
Richard Golden (1854–1909), comic stage actor; called by one turn-of-the-century theatre critic "the best character actor in America" is buried at Bangor's
Mount Hope Cemetery[40] His wife and partner
Dora Wiley, "The Sweet Singer of Maine" was the original prima donna of the
Boston Opera Company
Dick Curless, country singer; recorded the 1965 hit Tombstone Every Mile, also lived there
Howie Day, singer-songwriter; recorded the hit "
Collide", was born in Bangor, and got his start playing local clubs
Kay Gardner (1941–2002), flutist and pioneering composer of 'healing music' lived and died in Bangor
R. B. Hall, conductor of the Bangor Band, became an internationally famous composer of marches. His 'Death or Glory' remains a march classic in the UK and Commonwealth counties
Johnny Williams, father of film composer John Williams lived there according to his 2022 Lenox Library interview.
Soldiers and sailors
Charles A. Boutelle, Naval Lt. that accepted the surrender of the Confederate fleet after the
Battle of Mobile Bay, where he commanded an ironclad. Another Bangor sailor,
Thomas Taylor received the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery in the same battle. Boutelle became a long-serving U.S. Congressman and proponent of American naval power. Boutelle Ave. in Bangor is named for him
George Adams Bright, Rear Admiral; surgeon and medical director of the Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Carl Frederick Holden, Vice Admiral that began World War II as executive officer of the battleship
USS Pennsylvania during the attack on
Pearl Harbor. He became the first captain of the battleship
USS New Jersey, and ended the war as a Rear Adm. commanding Cruiser Division Pacific. He was on the deck of the
USS Missouri to witness the Japanese surrender in 1945
Molly Kool (1916–2009), first registered female sea captain in North America, spent the last years of her life in Bangor
Donald Norton Yates, Lt. General; helped select June 6, 1944 as the date for
D-Day, the Allied invasion of Europe, in his capacity as chief
meteorologist on General
Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff. He chose well—it turned out to be the only day that month the invasion could have been successfully launched—and was subsequently decorated by three governments. He went on to become the chief meteorologist of the
U.S. Air Force, Commander of the Air Force Missile Test Center at
Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, and retired as deputy director of Defence Research and Engineering in the Pentagon[48]
John Baldacci (1995–2003), US congress; Governor of Maine
Mark Alton Barwise, only elected member of the
Spiritualist religion known to have achieved statewide office in the United States: attorney who served in the Maine House of Representatives, and then the Maine State Senate, in 1921–1926. Barwise was a trustee (and senior counsel) of the National Spiritualist Association and Curator of its Bureau of Phenomenal Evidence. He also wrote prolifically on Spiritualism[49]
Holland "Holly" Hanson Coors (1920–2009), beer baroness and political donor was born in Bangor. The ex-wife of
Joseph Coors, Colorado brewer and founder of the Heritage Foundation, Holly Coors sat on that organization's board of trustees
Bettina Brown Gorton, wife of Australian Prime Minister Sir
John Gorton (who served 1968–1971) was from Bangor and graduated from
Bangor High School. She was the only wife of an Australian Prime Minister to have been foreign-born until
Annita van Iersel, wife of
Paul Keating (who served 1991–1996). She became Lady Gorton when her husband was knighted in 1977
Corelli C. W. Simpson (1837–1923), American poet, cookbook author, painter; opened the first kindergarten in Bangor
John H. Carkin, Oregon lawyer and politician, was born in Bangor
Joseph Homan Manley, protege and close associate of presidential candidate
James G. Blaine, was Chairman of the National Executive Committee of the
Republican Party in the 1890s, and Maine's "political boss;" he was born in Bangor
References
^James H. Mundy and Earle G. Shettleworth, The Flight of the Grand Eagle: Charles G. Bryant, Architect and Adventurer (Augusta: Maine Historic Preservation Commission, 1977).
^Deborah Thompson, Bangor, Maine, 1769–1914: An Architectural History (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1988).
^Joel Myerson, "A Calendar of Transcendental Club Meetings" American Literature 44:2 (May 1972).
^Edmund Pearson,
Dime Novels: Or, Following an Old Trail in Popular Literature (Boston: Little Brown, 1929); New York Times, Aug. 23, 1902, BR8, "The Spiritual Massage" and ibid, "Books and Men", July 26, 1902, p. BR12 (summarizes extensive interview with Sawyer published in The Bookman, v. 15, no. 6, Aug. 1902); Eugene T. Sawyer, History of Santa Clara County, California (Historic Record Co., 1922), p. 372.
^Frederick Freeman, A Plea for Africa (1837), p. 226; American Education Society, American Quarterly Register (1842), pp. 29-30.
^Carl Max Kartepeter, The Ottoman Turks: Nomad Kingdom to World Empire (Istanbul, 1991) pp. 229-246.
^Paul T. Burlin, Imperial Maine and Hawaii: Interpretive Essays in the History of 19th-Century American Expansionism (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2006).
^Wayne Reilly, "What's a Woman to Do?" Bangor Daily News, Mar. 1, 2008.
^His father was George Chalmers Cutler and his brother,
Robert Cutler, the first U.S. National Security Advisor (see Robert Cutler, No Time for Rest [Boston: Little Brown, 1966], pp. 1–18). For his connection to the Carr family of Bangor see
Francis Carr.
^New York Times, June 21, 1917, p. 6; Pittsburgh Press, September 23, 1917.
^MRS. ROBINSON-DUFF VOCAL TEACHER, DIES: Mary Garden, Mary McCormic, Nora Bayes and Other Stars Were Among Her Pupils. May 12, 1934. p. 16. {{
cite book}}: |work= ignored (
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