Gillingham, Chet Collection

SummaryThe Chet Gillingham Collection consists of eleven reels of 16 mm. film shot between 1925 and 1953 by Arthur Douglas Gillingham, father of the donor. The collection contains both family movies and summer camp movies. The Gillingham family is shown both at home and at play. One clip shows Chet Gillingham graduating from the Higgins Classical Institute school in Charleston, Maine, in 1950. The bulk of the film depicts the activities at the North Star Camp, including hiking, swimming, canoeing, and other sports. These activities also included trips to Profile Lake at Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, and Glen Ellis Falls at Pinkham Notch, New Hampshire, in the late 1920s. The collection contains footage of the flood at Salmon Falls in Buxton, Maine, in the late 1940s.

Biographical/Historical NotesCreator Arthur Douglas Gillingham was the Boys Work Secretary for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Portland, Maine, active from the 1920s into the 1940s. In that capacity, he ran the YMCA North Star Camp in Waterboro, Maine, on Little Ossipee Lake. The donor, Chet Gillingham, was born in 1930. His eldest sister was born in 1920. Chet’s maternal grandparents, Alice and Hugh Smith, are depicted within the collection. Hugh Smith was a dorey fisherman in East Penobscot, Maine, and later worked at the Hollingsworth & Whitney Paper Mill in Waterville, Maine.

RepositoryNortheast Historic Film

AvailabilityThe Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Reproduction and UseAuthorization to reuse and/or reproduce must be obtained from Northeast Historic Film. See http://www.oldfilm.org/research for more information.