Courtesy / James W. Sewall Co.
Seen here is downtown Bangor in 1993.
December 19, 2019
Old Town firm donates archive of early aerial photos to UMaine
Courtesy / James W. Sewall Co.
Seen here is an aerial photo of downtown Bangor taken by the James W. Sewall Co. in 1965. The image is one of 1 million donated by the company to the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine. Only a small portion have been scanned into digital format to date.
By Staff
The James W. Sewall Co. in Old Town has donated over 3,000 rolls of film, containing about 1 million aerial images, to the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine.
The collection contains original aerial photography of Maine and New England captured by Sewall over the span of 65 years, according to a news release.
Founded in 1880, Sewall began offering aerial photography services in 1948. The photo archive the company produced captures aerial views of nearly every part of Maine, as well as various locations in New England, Alaska, Canada, and the southern and central U.S. Many regions were photographed multiple times over the course of decades.
“In turning over these archival materials, the James W. Sewall Co. is essentially entrusting its DNA to the University of Maine,” Sewall president George Campbell Jr. said in the release. “Under Joe Sewall, the company was an early adopter of aerial photography in this part of the country. Not only will Special Collections take excellent care of this important part of Sewall’s and Maine’s heritage, but will make it widely available to researchers as well. We could not be more pleased.”
Changing landscape
The archive will offer researchers and the public a vast collection that details changes to Maine’s landscapes and cities over the past century.
“[The Sewall archive] presents an incredibly exciting opportunity for faculty, staff and students to work with a truly unique resource,” Daniel Hayes, assistant professor in the School of Forest Resources at UMaine, said in the release.
“Maine’s forest has been in constant flux over the course of history, including the changing composition of tree species, insect outbreaks, land use change, shifting management practices, and climate change. The [archive] represents an unprecedented record of the continuing evolution of Maine’s forest landscape.”
The photos provide data about the growth and decline of the state’s great pulp and paper industry, urban development, transportation, forestry practices, tourism, the impact of the ash borer and other environmental issues, Anne Knowles, professor of history at UMaine, said.
Courtesy / Raymond H. Fogler Library
Seen here are rows of film canisters as they were stored at the James W. Sewall Co.
The archive will be cataloged and managed by the Special Collections Department at Fogler Library, and will be available to the public by late 2020.
The James W. Sewall Co. today is a multidisciplinary consulting firm serving government, energy and utilities, and the forest products industry with a staff of professional engineers, surveyors, technologists and other consultants. Sewall’s owner, Treadwell Franklin Infrastructure Capital LLC, focuses on developing and sponsoring the commercial infrastructure of the United States.
In November 2018, CAI Technologies, a municipal mapping and GIS services company in Littleton, N.H., announced its acquisition of Sewall’s tax mapping, web hosting and specialty natural resource mapping divisions. Sewall’s engineering, forestry and natural resources consulting divisions were not included in the acquisition.
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