Family Visit to Maine - Part 1

This year I visited Maine in May which is a sweet time to go there - a little rain, a lot of sun and no muggy hot days!  Besides spending time with family, I accomplished four 'family history' related tasks: hosting a picture party, interviewing two family members, taking pictures of ancestor's former residences and researching land records at the county courthouse.In this post, I will cover the first two accomplishments.

The picture party in which some of the Albert cousins were waiting to share family pictures -older than the 1980's- was a great success. They brought the family pictures to the home of Paul Albert in Westbrook, and here is where we hugged and laughed and reminisced about the fun times we all used to have together. Usually these experiences had a beach theme since our grandfather used to own two properties near Old Orchard Beach. If you go back farther to my mother's youth, many stories and memories center around properties my grandfather owned at another water location - Crescent Lake near Casco.The picture above is my mother Pauline as a young child sitting in front of the lake cottage.

The summers really stand out as special times for all the Alberts. Above is a comparison of the Pine Point cottage from yesteryear and the way it looks today. We are talking several renovations here.

Besides his family, there was nothing more important to my grandfather than his business, The Men's Shop.  He started the store in 1923 with two other men (named in the caption below) and it lasted for nearly seventy-five years. This is a story I wanted to tell in more detail so I decided to do some research and interview his son, Roland, and his grandson, Peter, who both chose to carry on the business and together served some sixty years at its helm.

End note: Thanks to Claudia, Nancy and Pauline for providing numerous pictures for scanning and sharing with everyone.I highly recommend a picture party event for other historians and genealogists to try with their families.