Old brochures and pamphlets promoting Maine are always a treat to see and read, especially when they turn-up unexpectedly and include vintage pictures of Wiscasset.

Les Wentworth, a worker at Wiscasset’s transfer station, recently found an interesting one in the book bin there. It’s titled, “The State O’ Maine Scrap Book — Early Stories and Legends of ‘Way Down East.’”

Wentworth saved it to pass along to the newspaper to share with our readers.

The 50-page booklet was written and published in 1940 by Ernest E. Bisbee. For many years Bisbee owned and operated the Bisbee Press based in Lancaster, New Hampshire. He authored a number of regional booklets including “The White Mountain Scrap Book” containing many fascinating stories and legends of New Hampshire.

The State O’ Maine Scrap Book contains two dozen glossy black and white photographs including ones of Wiscasset’s 1813 Powder House, the entry way to Nickels-Sortwell House and the Wood-Foote mansion on the corner of High and Lee streets. Another shows the First Congregational Church and Lincoln County Courthouse from the top of the Town Common.

The pictures show these buildings haven’t changed all that much in over 75 years!

“Incredible as many of these tales may appear, they all have a good historical background; the legends excepted,” Bisbee writes on his title page.

Opposite it on the inside cover, is a map of coastal Maine showing Wiscasset, Boothbay Harbor, Damariscotta and Newcastle. It includes the approximate location of the famous Shell Heaps on the Damariscotta River and site of the 1607 Popham Colony.

Bisbee takes the reader on a journey through Maine’s past beginning with the prehistoric “Lost Red Paint People,” a Stone Age race that left behind “vast piles of oyster shells– some forming cliffs 25-feet high on the Damariscotta and Kennebec Rivers.”

Further along he shares stories of the early Abanaki natives and the coming of the first French and English settlers. The best stories are the legends and fables he’s cobbled together.

Some are well-known, like the story of Capt. John Smith and the Indian princess Pocahontas, others not so much. There’s the Micmac legend of “White Owl and the Giants” and another of the Indian maiden who wed the spirit of Mt. Katahdin and gave birth to a son with mystical powers. There’s also the legend of a Penobscot warrior who engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a ghost.

Bisbee also covers the story of Boothbay Harbor’s “Luther Maddocks and His Whale.” In 1885 Maddocks captured a humpback whale, towed it to Portland and put it on display. The exhibit turned out to be the featured attraction during a reunion of Civil War veterans hosted by the city. It netted Maddocks over $800 in gate receipts. There’s also a colorful retelling of the legend of the Marie Antoinette House on Eddy Road in North Edgecomb. Accompanying it is a curious picture of the home as it looked in Bisbee’s day.

All the photographs are sharp and well-detailed. Unfortunately, no photo credits are included with any of the pictures so we don’t know who photographed them. Bisbee perhaps?

Bisbee died in 1950. His widow eventually sold the company to Rocky Stinehour, a onetime apprentice of the company. Stinehour carried on the printing and publishing business in New Hampshire for 50 years changing the name of the business to the Stinehour Press.

“The State O’ Maine Scrap Book” originally sold for 25 cents. Today copies of it are available online from a number of booksellers, some priced as high as $15.