Edwin R. Starbird Papers

Edwin Roland Starbird, son of Amos and Mary Jane Gilkey Starbird, was born on September 15, 1853, in Freeman, Maine. He started his working life as a teacher in towns near Freeman, but in the early 1880's he began studying photography with Francis E. Stanley in Lewiston, Maine. After his training he returned to Farmington, Maine and opened a studio which did both portrait and landscape photography. He soon began to take stereo views and photographs of the area around Rangeley Lake, including the wildlife and sporting camps in the region. Around 1883 he began a series of photographs known as the Woods of Maine series which came to include nearly 600 views of the Rangeley area as well as Moosehead Lake, the West Branch of the Penobscot River and other wilderness places. This photo project, which lasted until around 1903, required Starbird to spend months living in the woods and traveling to remote areas by canoe or on foot. In 1892 he left Farmington and opened a business in Brunswick, Maine, where he continued to work until 1911. While there he photographed many buildings at Bowdoin College as well as other scenes in the nearby towns of Bath and Topsham. After closing his studio in Brunswick, he moved to Apopka, Florida, where he died on July 23, 1921.