Harris W. Soule Papers

Harris W. Soule was born in Fairfield, Vermont, on April 14, 1900. A graduate of the University of Vermont in 1922, Soule became Windsor County Agent in 1923 and County Agent Leader of the Vermont Extension Service in 1931. Appointed state director of the Production and Marketing Administration of the USDA in 1945, Soule resigned in 1948 to enter politics in an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for Congress. After serving as Vermont Development Director from 1949 to 1951, he rejoined the USDA and was Northeast Area Director of the Commodity Stabilization Service at his retirement in 1962. An avid outdoorsman all his life, Soule spent much of his time at his camp on Clayton Lake, Maine. Having written numerous outdoors articles for New England magazines and newspapers, he gathered together his recollections in Northwoods Tales and Unusual Recipes, which was published posthumously in 1971. Harris W. Soule died in Burlington, Vt., on September 26, 1971.

Margo Holden lived at Clayton Lake, Maine. She and her husband Carl owned a camp which was near one owned by Harris Soule. She wrote articles about life in northern Maine and along the Allagash River.

Joseph Giguere was a woodsman, guide, and trapper of the Allagash region.

Ralph J. Sawyer was an employee of Brown Paper Company who built a camp around 1916 in Grafton Notch, Maine. He carried on a lengthy correspondence about an invention he dreamed up, a bottle which would fit inside a can to be used by salesmen to demonstrate to customers what was inside the can.