page_title: Esther E. Wood
section_title: Writing
hierarchical_section_title: Esther E. Wood / Career / Writing
caption_attribution_description: A sunset viewed from our porch in Blue Hill, Maine.
context_page_description: Esther Elizabeth Wood was an American historian, educator, author, and journalist. She taught history and social science at Gorham State Teachers College for 43 years. After her retirement, she wrote four books, a newspaper column, and numerous articles describing the history of Blue Hill, Maine, where her family had lived for generations, achieving local celebrity as the "town historian". She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.
context_section_description: Wood retired in 1973 and returned to her Blue Hill farmhouse, where she lived the rest of her life. She had begun writing a column titled "The Native" for The Ellsworth American, recounting her memories of growing up in rural Maine, and continued producing this column for 24 years until 1992. She also wrote regularly for The Christian Science Monitor and Maine Life, and contributed stories to Sunday school publications and magazines. In addition, she penned four books dealing with the history and society of the Blue Hill region.
  Continuing to speak for local groups and events, Wood became known as the "town historian", although she disliked the moniker. Her family lore formed the basis for her historical stories, as she had heard her father's and grandfather's personal recollections of living in Blue Hill in the 1800s. According to Hugh Curran, a University of Maine professor who videotaped Wood for an oral history project: "Her memory straddled 200 years... The uniqueness to me was her almost total recall. She could speak for an hour and not repeat herself. She had an incredible memory".
  In 1977 she wrote a short history of her alma mater, the George Stevens Academy, for their student handbook, which has been printed in all subsequent editions.
  Wood's historical notes are often mentioned in tour books of the Blue Hill region. She contributed the report on historical and archeological resources for the 1991 Blue Hill Comprehensive Plan, which was reprinted in the 2006 Blue Hill Comprehensive Plan.
  Like her mother, who maintained a daily journal from 1893 to 1971, Wood wrote daily in her journal from 1973 to 2002.
caption: Blue Hill sunset, 2007
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