All photos in this article courtesy of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission
Between 1900 and World War II, Monhegan’s increasing popularity as a summer destination resulted in the production of a large number of postcards of the island. While many of them were mass produced through color lithography, small quantities of real photo postcards were made by the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Co. in Belfast and by photographers on the island, as well as in Boothbay Harbor and Rockland.
Printed from glass plate negatives, real photo postcards were sepia or black and white in tone and contained a clarity of detail not found in their color counterparts.
Of the photographers creating these real photo postcards, Josephine Davis Townsend’s work deserves particular attention. Born in New Harbor in 1899, she was the daughter of Ford and Lulu Davis. Ford Davis descended from a long line of Monhegan fishermen. He went to sea at the age of 9 and fished the waters from Cape Cod to Eastport.
Josephine Davis grew up in New Harbor and on Monhegan, located about 12 miles offshore, in Lincoln County, in Midcoast Maine. As a young woman, she learned photography from Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott, an artist and photographer who lived year-round on the island from 1902 until his death in 1925. While Triscott painted many watercolors of Monhegan, he took several hundred photographs there as well. Davis assisted Triscott in making prints from his negatives, which he sold to tourists along with his paintings.
When Triscott died, Davis acquired his camera equipment and his glass plate negatives. She carefully preserved the negatives, wrapping each one in newspaper to protect it from dust and breakage. They were acquired by the State of Maine from her nephew’s estate in 1998. A selection of Triscott’s Monhegan photographs appears in the book Rediscovering S.P. Rolt Triscott, by Richard H. Malone and myself.
Josephine Davis married Fred L. Townsend in the early 1930s. Seventeen years her senior, Townsend was a World War I veteran and a plumber. The couple quickly became part of life on Monhegan. Fred managed the island grocery store and served as the community’s constable and health officer. Josephine became the local tax collector and
operated a restaurant and gift shop, where she sold her Monhegan real photo postcards. She also wrote the island column for the Rockland Courier-Gazette.
Davis Townsend’s real photo postcards of Monhegan in the 1930s cover a wide range of island subjects and reflect her talent for photography. They picture the landing dock, the village, Swim Beach, Fish Beach, Lobster Cove, White Head, Black Head, and Lighthouse Hill. Special topics include the removal of a fishing boat from the rocks of Lobster Cove and the Summer Carnival of 1938.
In addition to her real photo postcards, there are many photographs that she took of the island. The most memorable of these are nine snapshots recording a visit of the artist N.C. Wyeth and members of his family to see author Sidney Baldwin in the mid-1930s. Included in these pictures are Wyeth’s son Andrew, his daughter Ann McCoy, and his son-in-law John McCoy. On the back of one of these photos, Davis Townsend wrote, “The dear dead days beyond recall.”
Davis Townsend died in 1981 at the age of 81. As real photo postcards of Maine have been rediscovered, her images of Monhegan have emerged as a significant visual record of the island during the 1930s. In the 2022 publication Real Photo Postcards from a Changing Nation, Leonard A. Lauder wrote that such cards “allowed for a whole army of citizen photographers to capture their towns and events—big and small—that shaped their everyday lives.”
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Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. directed the Maine Historic Preservation Commission from 1976 to 2015, and he has served as Maine State Historian since 2004.
