Item Data
- Collection Title: Ruth Storm Collection
- Item Title: Maine I
- ID Number: RS-001
- Date Range: 1938-1944
- Description: Three lesbian friends -- Ruth, Chennie, and Mabel -- enjoy Corea, Maine, c. 1938-1944.
- Biographical/Historical Note: In the mid-1930s Ruth Storm & longtime friend Mabel Griffin invited violinist, artist & copywriter Chenoweth "Chennie" Hall to join their annual Maine vacation at a camp for single adults, mostly ministers & schoolteachers, on Lake Alamoosook in Orland, Maine. Chennie found the locale & the company dull and when the camp held its annual lobster picnic on the rocky coast of Corea, Chennie announced she was staying. For the remainder of the vacation, the trio rented a Corea cabin. All three returned summer after summer thereafter. Chennie became the life partner of Miriam Colwell who grew up in Corea, and Ruth Storm ultimately retired to her cabin where she edited these reels and spent the end of her life in the company of Almeda "Meda" Benoit, her last partner.
In their early days in Corea the friends ate most of their meals at Katie Young's restaurant where Katie's daughter Louise Z Young waited tables. Louise thoroughly enjoyed the women from NYC and told her friend writer Miriam Colwell, then a teenager, that she had to come to the restaurant & meet them In the coming years, Mabel & Ruth bought adjoining lots on the water; Ruth built a cabin; and Chennie became romantically involved with Miriam Colwell. In 1938 Storm bought 1.5 acres in Corea & her friend Mabel Griffin bought 3 adjacent acres. Storm's earliest known footage -- "Maine I" -- documents the friends' early stays in Corea, siting the cabin & socializing as well as Chennie & Mimi's early days together.
Sources: Interview, John Lord, 9-3-2014.
Other interviews Miriam Colwell, Marianne New, Dale McCormick, Sheila McLaughlin, Tibby McCormick. Property records.
- Genres: Amateur Films
- Places: Corea, Maine & environs
- Access & Use: Contact Lesbian Home Movie Project (LHMP) info@lesbianhomemovieproject.org. No re-use without permission.
- Color or B&W: Color
- Related Versions:
- Running Time: 16:58
- Rights: Lesbian Home Movie Project (LHMP) holds all rights.
- Sound: Silent
- Subjects: Maine, Lesbians, Lobstering
- Creators: Ruth Huntington Storm (1888-1981)
- Collaborators & Participants: Participants:
Almeda "Meda" Benoit (1910-2007)
Mabel Griffin (1891-1942)
Chenoweth Hall (1908-1999)
Maynard Wasgut
Joe Young
Louise Z. Young (1919-2004)
- Source Format: 16 mm
- Format: 16mm
- Viewing Log: Flower garden. Bridge, possibly the Schoodic bridge. Ferry. Loading vehicles on ferry. Chenoweth "Chennie" Hall, violinist & artist, enters frame on the left, climbs ladder. Ruth Huntington Storm enters on right. Bronx elementary schoolteacher Mabel Griffin sits on rocks, holding a book. Ruth Storm in shorts and halter top on right. Mabel passes book to Ruth. Corea Harbor at twilight, Louise Young on left, Mabel Griffin on right. Barge carrying logs. Shots of Corea Harbor, onlookers, barges. (John Lord has hypothesized this footage records the dredging of Corea Harbor.) Rowing to barge. Bystanders on dock. Mabel Griffin views the octagonal "Mott place." According to John Lord, Percival Mott was a woodworker who just wanted to have an octagonal house. ) Mabel Griffin on lobster boat with Joe Young, a local lobsterman and photographer Louise Young's brother. Mabel in the bow wearing an outfit the NY police would have arrested her for wearing. A Redwing, a torpedo-stern lobster boat created in the 1920s by a Nova Scotian Will Frost who settled on Beals Island. John Lord, who was a boy at the time, proposed it might be Forrest Young's rum-running lobster boat, which was built for speed. Mabel Griffin now in a dress helping to bait a trawl? Maynard Wasgut is on the boat facing Ruth's cabin.
15:12 possibly the site of Ruth's cabin 17:02 Almeda"Meda" Benoit