MF 042 Frederick Pratson Collection

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History: MF 042 Frederick Pratson Collection

Number of accessions: 3
Dates when interviews were conducted: 1972
Time period covered: Early to mid 20th Century
Principal interviewer: Frederick Pratson
Finding aides: Transcripts
Access restrictions: None
Description: Independent collection of folklore material contributed to the Maine Folklife Center by Frederick Pratson. Contains interviews in connection with donor’s “Oral and Visual History and Talent Development Program Among Indians and Inshore Fishing People of the State of Maine, The Canadian Maritime Provinces, and Quebec,” done under the sponsorship of the New England-Atlantic Provinces-Quebec Center at the University of Maine (Orono), 1972. The interviewees were a group of Nova Scotia fishermen, a Maine lumberjack, and a Micmac chief living on the Indian Island Reservation in New Brunswick.

NA0700 Lloyd Burke, Kingdom Burke, Kenneth Burke, Hauk Anderson, and anonymous man, interviewed by Frederick Pratson, July 20, 1972, East Dover, Nova Scotia. The group of inshore fisherman discuss their early 20th century experiences in and around East Dover; how they began fishing; how television spoiled social evenings; shoveling the road; being at sea during bad weather; working in a munitions factory during WWI; shipwrecks; impact of pollution; ghost stories; getting lost on the water; dangers of whales; running rum; pensions; working at the mercy of the weather; near-deaths at sea; sharks and the dangers of catching them; tales of pirate treasure; Halifax Explosion of 1917, sighting German submarines during WWII; and why inshore fishing was no longer economically advisable in 1972. RESTRICTED. Text: 115 pp. transcript with some gaps. Recording: T 0417 – T 0420 4 ½ hours.

NA0713 Willard Jalbert, interviewed by Frederick Pratson, September 16 -17, 1972, Round Pond, Maine. Jalbert, with additional input from his son, talks about life and work in northern Maine through the early and mid-twentieth century; fighting in lumberjack camps; experiences as a lumberjack foreman; interactions with wildlife; chopping trees and tending sled; lumberjack camp food and the prevalence of beans; 1961 trip on the Allagash River with Supreme Court Justice Douglas; experiences as an outdoor guide; plowing snow in lumber camps; qualities of a good lumberjack; qualities of a good Allagash guide; fishing; trapping, particularly beaver; recollections of his father; dams and dam building; reasons to fire a lumberjack; life in a lumberjack camp; and reading of a poem telling the story of the Jalbert camp on Round Pond. Text: 75 pp. transcript. Recording: T 0455 – T 0457 3 hours.

NA0714 Chief Peter Barlow (of the Micmac) and unidentified man, interviewed by Frederick Pratson, September 19, 1972, at the Indian Island Reservation in Rexton, New Brunswick. Barlow and the unidentified man discuss Barlow’s childhood at Indian Island Reservation in the 1920s and 30s; food; farming; innate nature of leadership; qualities of a leader; Andy Paul’s efforts to gain Indian rights and claims to government aid; land rights; moral obligations of white Canada to Indians; possible economic programs that would benefit Indians; their views on ‘Indian mentality’; stereotypes and prejudices; story of an old Mohawk raid; Indian involvement in French-English colonial fighting; spiritual philosophy; Barlow’s relationship with his father; his premonitions and visions of ghosts; discrimination in the Army; anger at government and the police; militant Indian organizations as gangs; loss of Indian languages; and Indian identity and inability to be white. Text: 97 pp. transcript (has significant gaps). Recording: T 0458 – T 0461 2 hours.