Ruth Montgomery

Close to 500 glass plate negatives from a sea captain’s daughter from Boothbay that document her life and travels.

Ruth Montgomery was a daughter of the sea; her father, Capt. Adelbert Montgomery, both grandfathers, and many of her uncles and grand uncles were deep-water ship masters, and most of them were from East Boothbay, Maine. Ruth was born in 1880 in East Boothbay. Her mother died when Ruth she was 3 years old and her father remarried to a school teacher named Mary "Mame" Thorpe. Ruth first went to sea at the age of 5, and she and her brother Frank accompanied their parents on almost every voyage thereafter. It is believed that she was schooled by "Mame" while at sea.

In 1895, when Ruth was 15, Ruth’s her father took command of the bark Carrie Winslow when Ruth was 15 years old. It was around this time that Ruth began making taking photographs. Her photographs capture the three voyages to South America in 1899, 1901 and 1903, ther last trip and the year her father retired from sea. Through her photographs one gets to know her family and see the faces of her relatives as well as view scenes from sea and her exotic travels to Buenos Aires and Rosario. She continued to make photographs on glass plates until 1916.

Ruth lived much of her adult life in Boston with her Uncle Charles and Aunt Annie. She worked as a clerk at the Boston Storage Warehouse where her Uncle Charles was a superintendent. She spent summer vacations in the home of her fraternal grandmother, Sarah Jane Montgomery, on Barlow’s Hill in East Boothbay. She eventually retired to East Boothbay in the house of her maternal grandmother, Ruth Montgomery, located beside the Boothbay Mineral Spring. Ruth died in 1967, at the age of 87, and was buried with her family in the Green Landing Cemetery in East Boothbay.

The Montgomery collection came to the Penobscot Marine Museum in 1990 as a donation from John Race Chesboro, whose twice-great grandfather, Captain Leonard Montgomery, was Ruth’s grandfather on her father’s side. Mr. Chesboro spent considerable time cataloging the plates and identifying persons, places and events captured by Ruth’s camera. The collection consists of nearly 600 4” x 5” glass plate negatives.