Islandport Press - Here For Generations: The Story of a Maine Bank and its City by Dean Lunt - Publishers of Northern New England Books and Media

ABOUT THE BOOK
Here for Generations: The Story of a Maine Bank and its City tells the remarkable tale of a town and a bank that have moved in concert for 150 years. It captures their sweeping history through triumph and tragedy and brings to life the fascinating people and events that have shaped their journey.

The bank's roots were set in the 1830s, when the bustling city of Bangor lured the best and the brightest of Maine's adventurers to its port and commercial center. Bangor was the Lumber Capital of the World, complete with all the intrigue of a riverfront boomtown-potential riches and busted dreams, wealthy lumber barons and rowdy lumbermen and sailors. Among those who arrived in this city on the rise were Elijah L. Hamlin, Joseph Wheelwright, and twenty-two other men. Most came from humble origins, but all came with a dream. Through hard work and vision they built businesses and institutions and emerged as the city's great leaders.

In 1852, these public spirited men of substance - businessmen, lawyers, artisans, and merchants - came together in a philanthropic effort to create Bangor Savings Bank, an entity designed to help the city's poor and its working men and women save money. Encouraging thrift was considered good for society during an era when there were no pensions, no unemployment checks, no social security, and no disability insurance. At that time most banks were strictly commercial ventures, aimed at businesses and designed to make money for investors.

Together, Bangor Savings Bank and Bangor have seen the rise and fall of the great lumber economy and survived the economic depression of the 1870s that nearly killed the bank. They experienced the Flood of 1902, rebuilt following the Great Fire of 1911, and hung tough during the Great Depression. And they watched the city become the region's premier service and retail hub.

Here you will find all the details of that drama, from the city's founding by Jacob Buswell, to the grand dreams of railroad evangelist John A. Poor, to the rise of Freese's as the Fifth Avenue in Maine, to the opening of the Bangor Mall. And you will also find the bank's rise from its simple origin as a nineteenth-century repository for Bangor widows, orphans, and daily laborers to a statewide leader in the twenty-first century - a prime source of financial services, mortgages, and the capital that fuels the economic engine of the Pine Tree State. It has been a remarkable ride.

EXCERPT
“ There was perhaps no better place to be in Maine, perhaps no better place to be in New England, than Bangor during the 1830s. The city was alive. It danced forward with an almost outsized sense of destiny and dreamed of not simply standing as a rival to Portland, but as a rival to Boston and New York. Queen City of the East was not some marketing slogan; it was a quest, even a destiny. People talked of building an eastern San Francisco on the Penobscot. ”