{"id":1535,"date":"2019-07-30T18:28:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T18:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/?post_type=collection&p=1535"},"modified":"2025-06-04T14:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T18:08:07","slug":"rosamond-thaxter-collection-1962-1989","status":"publish","type":"collection","link":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/collections\/collections-a-z\/rosamond-thaxter-collection-1962-1989\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosamond Thaxter collection, 1962-1989"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Full finding aid (pdf)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collection Scope and Content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The collection includes promotional materials for Sandpiper<\/em> (1962), Rosamond\u2019s biography of her grandmother, Celia Thaxter; an inscribed map and a boat schedule that were inserts in this volume; newspaper articles (originals and some photocopies) and obituaries about Rosamond; the Sept. 1966 issue of the Westbrook Junior College\u2019s publication The Mirror<\/em>, focusing on highlights from the Maine Women Writers Collection and including items about both Rosamond and Celia Thaxter; and photographs of Rosamond and her home, Champernowe Farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biographical\/Historical Note<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rosamond Thaxter was the granddaughter of poet Celia Laighton Thaxter. She was born on Cutts Island at Kittery Point, Maine, on April 14, 1895, eight months after her grandmother\u2019s death. She was known for her philanthropy but was also a public speaker, world traveler, businesswoman, and writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up on Cutts Island at the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century, Rosamond was her parents\u2019 and her community\u2019s only child. Other than during springtime visits with her cousins, her only playmates were animals and the books read to her by adults. Like her grandmother, Rosamond was a child of the sea, birds, grasses, and flowers, her closest companions.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their solitary upbringings by the sea infused Rosamond\u2019s connection to her grandmother as well as the biography she would pen, Sandpiper: The Life and Letters of Celia Thaxter<\/em>. <\/em>At age 86, Rosamond recounted her own life–in connection, again, to her family\u2019s cultural and literary achievements at the Isles of Shoals–in a short, self-published memoir entitled Aunt Rozzie Remembers<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosamond grew up a daughter of privilege. She was the only child of John Thaxter, Celia\u2019s second son, and Mary Gertrude Stoddard, the wealthy daughter of the mayor of Worcester, Massachusetts. Rosamond\u2019s parents met at the Appledore Hotel, built by Celia\u2019s father, Thomas Laighton, in 1848. There, at the first summer resort in Southern Maine to cater to New England\u2019s elites and artists, Mary became fascinated by the hotel\u2019s famous hostess, Celia, and fell in love with her son, John, a farmer. Through this union and especially the wealthy Stoddard social milieu, Rosamond joined the ranks of the first families of Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Kittery Point, Maine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosamond received an education befitting her social class. She was taught at home by her mother until age ten, when she began attending Kittery local schools. From there, at age fifteen, she was sent to the Berkshires to attend Miss Hall\u2019s School, whose ideal, according to Rosamond, was to graduate virtuous ladies. She moved on to Miss Edith May\u2019s Travel School, which took her to Paris, London, Brussels, and Florence, among other European locales. Rosamond writes that she never liked school and considered herself a mediocre student, but she credited those years with two priceless gains: her lifelong friendships and love of travel. Rosamond never married. As the only Stoddard grandchild, she put her inherited wealth toward the civically-minded activities and causes that mattered to her: the promotion of historic preservation, the arts and libraries, hospitals and schools, her church and, most of all, the Girl Scouts, an organization she championed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her first book,\u00a0Sandpiper: The Life and Letters of Celia Thaxter<\/em>\u00a0(1962), is lovingly dedicated to her father. In it, she chronicles her grandmother\u2019s complicated life, presenting her as a \u201cgifted and courageous\u201d woman who grew from island waif to national celebrity. Woven from memory, photographs, correspondence, diaries, and published poetry,\u00a0Sandpiper\u00a0<\/em>is no hagiography.\u00a0<\/em>Rosamond provides an unusually frank portrayal of her grandmother\u2019s hard work to support the family and personal struggles with depression; Celia\u2019s exceptional closeness to her mother, leading to near collapse after her death; as well as her lifelong care of her first son, Karl, whose crises with mental illness Celia sought to resolve through her poetry, 19th<\/sup>-century Spiritualist practices, and traditional Christianity. In Rosamond\u2019s portrait of Celia, the Isles of Shoals play a consistent role as both home and muse. Rosamond\u2019s description of Maine\u2019s first generation of resort hotels will be of particular interest to cultural historians researching post-Civil War travel from cities to the cooler reaches of northern New England. In 1982, Rosamond turned her writing toward herself, publishing\u00a0Aunt Rozzie Remembers<\/em>. This short memoir of living under Celia\u2019s proud shadow is especially valuable for its documentation of what is otherwise a sparsely documented life.\u00a0<\/sup>She died in 1989 at age 94 at the Thaxter family home on Cutts Island, known as Champernowe Farm, and is buried at First Congregational Church Cemetery in Kittery Point, Maine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","collection-category":[],"class_list":["post-1535","collection","type-collection","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection\/1535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/collection"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection\/1535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7688,"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection\/1535\/revisions\/7688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"collection-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.une.edu\/mwwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection-category?post=1535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}