Joyce Butler papers

Collection

Identifier: Coll. 4245

Staff Only

Scope and Content note

This collection documents research collected and conducted by Joyce Butler on an array of Maine-related topics. Contents include news clippings, publications, pamphlets, printed articles, and notes. The material in Boxes 2-4 relates to Butler's research on various aspects of Maine’s 19th century social history, and includes a collection of notes on index cards organized both alphabetically and topically. Correspondence filed with this material indicates this research may have been conducted in preparation for writing a textbook chapter on 19th century Maine seafaring communities.

Dates

Creation: 1961 - 2017
Creation: Majority of material found within 1972 - 2000

Creator

Butler, Joyce (1933-06-27) (Donor, Person)

Access

Unrestricted

Copyright

Access to collections at Maine Historical Society is not an authorization to publish. Rights and reproduction requests may be submitted in writing to the MHS Image Services Coordinator or Research & Administrative Librarian, subject to format.

Biographical note

Joyce Butler was born in Portland, Me., on June 27, 1933. A 1953 graduate of Westbrook Junior College, she earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Boston University in 1955. In 1967, Butler moved to Kennebunk, Me., with her husband and three children. Soon afterwards, Butler began writing a column for The York County Coast Star on life in small town Maine. Her first book, Pages from a Journal (1976), was a collection of these columns.

In the 1970s, Butler wrote increasingly about Maine history, both for a column on Kennebunkport history for The Star, and in her lauded book, Wildfire Loose: The Week Maine Burned (1978) about the state’s devastating 1947 fire. During this time, Butler was appointed archivist at the Kennebunkport Historical Society, a position she held from 1975 to 1979. From 1980 to 1995, Butler served as curator of manuscripts and exhibits at Kennebunk’s Brick Store Museum, and in 1990, she was named Kennebunk town historian. Between 1996 and 2000, Butler was curator of museum collections at Maine Historical Society.

Butler authored multiple books, was a frequent contributor to others’, and published numerous pieces in regional magazines, newspapers, and journals. She worked as an archivist, historian, and curator, contributing significantly to Maine’s historical record.

Extent

1.65 Linear Feet (4 boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Provenance

Gift of Joyce Butler, August 11, 2022 (acc. no. 2023.080).

Related Materials

Maine Historical Society has many books and collections by Joyce Butler; these items can be found via the Minerva catalog. Of particular relevance to the material in this collection are the following:

Agreeable Situations: Society, Commerce, and Art in Southern Maine, 1780-1830, edited by Laura Fecych Sprague with essays by Joyce Butler, Call No. QJ M 709.74 Sp72

Laudholm: The History of a Celebrated Maine Saltwater Farm, 1642-1986, by Joyce Butler, Call No. Pamphlet 3782

Processing note

The collection arrived housed in five cardboard boxes and one metal two-drawer card-catalog unit. Most of the material consisted of books and pamphlets, which were separated for library cataloging. The manuscript material, including the items in the card-catalog unit, were processed as a single archival collection.

Much of the manuscript material was not foldered or labeled, though like-items were in piles or tucked into books, magazines, and pamphlets. These items are now housed in Box 1, their arrangement derived from context and/or type.

The items now housed in Box 4 arrived in a single 3-ring binder titled "Maine: Social History 19th Century Notes and Sources." Material was removed from the binder and original sections combined, though titles of the tabbed dividers were preserved on interleaving sheets within folders.

The card-catalog drawers, titled "19th Century Miscellaneous" and "19th Century Vocabulary," held notes written on 3"x5" index cards, now housed in Boxes 2 and 3. Their order and arrangement has been preserved, though deteriorating dividers were replaced and the cards were rehoused in archival boxes.