SORRENTO HISTORY BACKGROUND

SORRENTO HISTORY BACKGROUND

While surrounded by Sorrento's history growing up, other than noticing the older cottages and playing in the rubble of a foundation on the hill on Doane's Point behind our house, I did not take an active interest in the local history. Our father, George Younger, always seemed to have books about the history of the area around the cabin, and in my 20's I started to read these with more interest.

In college, I researched and wrote an unremarkable paper on the geography of the resort.  Another year, totally by chance, I did a research project on the Pullman railroad union strike of 1895 and the eventual imprisonment of its leader Eugene Debs.  It was only many years later that I realized there was a Sorrento connection among many of the players in those events from President Cleveland's administration, including the Secretary of War, the Chief Justice and even George Pullman himself.

One summer while on vacation in the late 1980s, Bayard Ewing was selling reproductions of the poster and map from the 1927 auction of Sorrento land.  I knew nothing about that period of the town's history and had these posters framed.  I gave the advertisement to my parents to add to their collection of local history and the map I kept for myself.

Both of these artifacts included mysteries that puzzled me that I thought would one day be fun to unravel.  In the mid-1990s Catherine Herson published her book on Sorrento that included lots more history.  As interesting as the topic was, there was never enough time during my brief stays each year to do any research.  It was not until many years later, with my kids off to college, that I spent the Winters thinking about Maine and doing more in-depth research using internet resources.  That led me to uncover more information than what was already available about the founding of the resort and the early years.