Branch, Joan Collection

SummaryCollection contains [Forrest Colby--home movies], showing predominantly summer and winter activities at Pleasant Pond camp in western Maine, also summer and winter logging activities, and river trips in Maine. Other locations include England in the 1930s and China, particularly Shanghai, 1928-1935, with scenes of automobile and ferry travel, Shanghai Paper Hunt Club horse races, gardens, villages and homes.

Biographical/Historical NotesForrest Colby, grandfather of the donor, Joan Branch, lived in Bingham, Maine, and was Maine Forest Commissioner and a state senator in the early 1900s. Forrest Colby's daughter, Lena Mary Colby, married Joseph E.C. Swan in Shanghai, China, in 1923. The China footage was shot by Joseph E.C. Swan, the father of Joan Swan Branch, between 1928 and 1936. Joseph Swan was a founder of the Shanghai investment banking and brokerage firm Swan, Culbertson and Fritz. Joan Swan Branch (1925-2006) was born in Shanghai, China. Branch was the granddaughter of Forrest Colby of Bingham, Maine, who was Maine Forest Commissioner. Joan Branch lived in Mt. Kisco, New York. Creator Forrest Colby (1869-1938) lived in Bingham, Maine, and was prominent in the lumbering industry in Maine. He served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1909 to 1912 and in the Maine Senate from 1913 to 1916. Colby was an early conservationist and was appointed Maine Forest Commissioner in 1917. He and his wife, Carrie Belle Robinson, had two daughters, Lena Mary and Florence Haddash Colby. Creator Joseph Edwards Corson Swan (1898-1960) was a founder of the Shanghai investment banking and brokerage firm Swan, Culbertson & Fritz. He returned to the New York to form J.E. Swan & Co., which was dissolved in 1942. He then joined E.F. Hutton as a partner. He was president of the China Society of America, and a director of the Far East-America Council of Commerce and Industry. The film collection was donated to Northeast Historic Film by Joan Swan Branch in 1989 and 1990. She lived in Mt. Kisco, New York, and Bingham, Maine, and died in 2006.

Conditions Governing Reproduction and UseAuthorization to reuse and/or reproduce must be obtained from Northeast Historic Film. See http://oldfilm.org/content/stock-footage-licensing for more information.