Parker Dodge Collection

Patent Attorney Parker “Pack” Dodge was among an early crowd of mostly Washington DC families with the means to remove themselves to picturesque—if rustic—environs on the Maine coast during the hot summer months. These early 20th century urbanites named their new community the Haven Colony. It was a place to do what all rusticators love to do: picnic, sail, explore, and play while the quiet workaday world of the countryside went on around them.

Dodge was an enthusiastic snapshot photographer who experimented with a number of camera formats throughout his many years at the Colony and back at home. Viewing these photos, we see that this amateur had a passable eye for composition and a relatable love for family (particularly the children in his family), landscape, adventure, and time spent on or near the water.

The cluster of cottages forming the Colony still exists in Brooklin, Maine, today, and the descendants of many original families still occupy them. Pack’s grandson John Dodge found his grandfather’s trove of some 850 film negatives in a shoebox while sorting through his late parents’ belongings in Nebraska in the early 2020s; he and his cousin Paul Gagliardi approached PMM with the negatives, where there is now a permanent home for what is essentially Pack’s story.