From Bar Harbor’s working waterfront to decades of volunteer service, Goldthwait’s life reflected the personal connections that make local history matter.

Carrie Jones

just now

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Birch Bay Retirement Village.

---

BAR HARBOR—The afternoon at the Bar Harbor Historical Society was about stories, about sustaining the organization that helps collect and amplify the stories of Bar Harbor, but also about the people who make the stories and the history of the town.

One of those people was Sheldon Goldthwait, a past president of the Bar Harbor Historical Society.

The town lost Goldthwait this January, but his legacy—built through recorded interviews, countless good deeds, sidewalk talks that involved a lot of him listening, through building up local organization by organization (from historical societies to fire department)—can’t be lost.

That’s a legacy.

It’s also what history of a town and a place is about.

“His contributions were staggering,” said Anne Kozak who is on the society’s development committee and had been a friend.

People attending (or watching live streamed) the Bar Harbor Historical Society Annual Meeting at its La Rochelle Mansion headquarters on Tuesday also heard from Board Chair Richard “Dickie” Cough about Goldthwait’s legacy and had a chance to watch a 30-minute interview with Goldthwait at the end of the meeting.

Before that Anne Kozak paid homage to Goldthwait.

“When I moved here in 1970, there was a shoe store, drugstore, bookstore, toy store, car dealer, garages, banks, appliance stores, and grocery stores. So it’s a much different place. One of Sheldon’s favorite pastimes growing up, as he mentions in the interview, was visiting the lofts and boats down by where Harborside is now,” Kozack said.

Back then, the Harborside Hotel didn’t exist on West Street. Instead, a fish factory dominated the space when Goldthwait was growing up, and a coal wharf did, too, and the area was known as Peanut Row.

“I spent a lot of time in the houses down there visiting, you know, kids my age,” Goldthwait recalls in a videotaped interview.

He caddied for Edsel Ford.

“I was also the world’s worst caddy. So, I guess I never took up golf,” Goldthwait said.

His experiences were wide-ranging and rarely confined to one social bracket. He became friends with billionaires and people who weren’t anywhere close to that.

“My mother bought a house over in Great Cranberry Island that we went over there for six or seven summers and we went there during the fire and we took the whole neighborhood with us,” he said in the video interview.

That fire in the 1940s burned a lot of the island. Eventually, when he was older, Goldthwait and many others joined the fire department and at one point, he said there were over 50 volunteers in metal helmets and no protective gear.

As a young man, Goldthwait went to Bowdoin College and served in the Coast Guard and was a buoy tender.

“After retiring from the bank, Sheldon spent 20 years as a stern man on a lobster boat. What I find ironic is that Sheldon does not like lobster, much less he doesn’t like any fish,” Kozak relayed.

That ability to hold irony and story was part of Goldthwait’s charm. A charm that even transcends video screens and was evident in his interview.

“I enjoy history,” he said at the end of his interview.

He was also, Kozak explained, a man of lists. He had a five-page document that listed the organizations and groups he served. There were two categories and 17 nonprofits and five civic groups. One way he helped the community was by becoming the president of the Bar Harbor Historical Society in 1981. He volunteered until 2025.

Goldthwait was not alone in volunteering for the historical society.

There is “an incredible amount of volunteers altogether. About 45 volunteers that give 1,756 hours of their time, which is an incredible amount of time. We are a small staff so these volunteer hours are very, very helpful to us,” Executive Director Erin Cough said during the annual meeting.

The society has also hosted 22 events so far in 2026. An upcoming event is Community Day. Some were workshops. Some were dramatic readings. Some featured the Bar Harbor Music Festival. Some were retreats that latest multiple days. At least 500 people have attended those events so far this year.

The BHHS also partnered with the Land and Garden Preserve, having the honor of being the only organization that can host classes at its sites. It helped with research requests, partnered with 25 other local organizations, and also raised money and donations both monetary and inkind.

Many events have to do with the arts—drama, fine art, music, writing.

Erin Cough explained, “One of the questions that I often get is, ‘how can you support the arts so strongly? Why is there so much?’ Well, this island was founded on the Hudson River School artists. And so, that’s where a lot of our energy went, to start that cultural support for us.”

The society has also expanded and redesigned its website and expanded its social media presence across multiple channels.

Though expenses in 2026 were lower than in 2025, the revenue also decreased, which necessitated the organization taking money out of its reserve decreasing that from $481,900 in 2025 to $330,000 in 2026.

In its 80 years of operation, the society faces new challenges as costs rise.

“From a small room under the stairs of the Jesup Memorial Library to a 13,000 square foot three-story cottage that houses over 20,000 historical artifacts, the Bar Harbor Historical Society has certainly seen big changes in our 80 years of operation,” its website states.

The challenges facing the society are real. Rising costs and declining revenue mean that preserving Bar Harbor’s history requires more than collecting artifacts and maintaining a building. It requires people willing to give their time, share their knowledge, and donate and support the work of keeping the town’s stories alive.

Sheldon Goldthwait did that for decades. His five-page list of volunteer service may have captured the organizations he served, but it could never fully account for the conversations he had, the people he helped, or the stories he made sure were not forgotten.

As the Bar Harbor Historical Society enters its next chapter, that may be one of his most enduring lessons: history isn’t just what happened long ago. It’s the lives people lead, the communities they build, and the effort it takes to make sure those stories are still here to tell.

---

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/DyG3RJosQqw?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

To donate.

To become a member.

Its website.

Disclosure: My daughter works at the BHHS.

---

ABOUT LA ROCHELLE VIA THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

La Rochelle was built in 1903 and is the largest estate built along the shore of West Street in Bar Harbor. The architects were Andrews, Jaques & Rantoul – the estate was built for George Sullivan Bowdoin and Julia Grinnell Bowdoin. The home was one of the first to be made of brick since there was no brick factory on Mount Desert Island. The forty-one room, 13,000 square foot lavish chateaux had twenty bedrooms and ten full bathrooms on two acres of land. The home contributes to the historic character of the West Street Historic District which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mr. Bowdoin was a partner and Treasurer of J.P. Morgan and his father had been a partner in the firm years before. His great grandfather founded Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1794. He was the great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton and the 4x great-grandson of Huguenot Pierre Baudouin who arrived in the province of Maine in 1686 before moving to Boston. Other prominent ancestors include John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, and Pierre Schuyler. Mrs. Bowdoin’s father was Moses Grinnell and on her mother’s side, she was related to Washington Irving of Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Before arriving in America, the Baudouins lived in La Rochelle, a seaport in Nouvelle, Aquitaine, France (hence the name of the estate, La Rochelle and New Rochelle in New York). The translation of “La Rochelle” means “little rocks”. The Baudouins fled their country to find relief from religious persecution. (The Huguenots were French Protestants.)

In early 1943, the Coughs purchased La Rochelle and the caretaker’s cottage across the street where Bun Cough, his wife Helen, and their four children resided until shortly after the Fire of 1947.

Then in 1944, Ethel Dorrance Colket and Tristram Colket of Philadelphia acquired La Rochelle from the Cough family. Mrs. Colket was the daughter of John Thompson Dorrance, a chemist who invented condensed soup and eventually became president of the Campbell Soup Company. Tristram Jr. and Ruth Colket gave the property to the Maine Seacoast Mission in 1972 and it served as their headquarters for the next forty-seven years.

Finally, in 2019, the Bar Harbor Historical Society purchased the estate in order to preserve the building and grounds for future generations and to present the history of Bar Harbor, displaying its rich collection of historic objects and archives.

---

HELP SUPPORT THE BAR HARBOR STORY

When we started The Bar Harbor Story, we didn’t know if anyone would read it. But you showed up. You shared. You sent tips. Now—over 400,000 views every month later—it’s clear: people here care about their community and each other.

We’ve kept everything free because news should never be out of reach, but every one of our stories takes time to write, and your support keeps The Bar Harbor Story going.

If you value our work, please consider a paid subscription, a founding membership, or a sponsorship.

It truly helps us cover one more meeting, tell one more story, shine one more light.

Even $5 a month makes a difference. Click here to become a one-time supporter now.

Thank you so much for being here.

Founding member information can be found here.

Have questions about sponsorships? Just send Shaun an email at sfarrar86@gmail.com, he’d love to hear from you.