At a recent Farmington Historical Society meeting, Maine guide Roger Lambert paid tribute to his most famous predecessor, Phillips’ native Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby, who gained worldwide fame in sporting circles in the late 1800s.

Crosby’s journey from humble hotel maid deep in the Maine woods to national prominence was truly remarkable. Between chores at the Rangeley House, she learned to hunt and fly fish, and she began writing a column for the Phillips Phonograph about her outdoor experiences. Her column, “Fly Rod’s Notebook,” was an instant hit, quickly picked up and syndicated in national newspapers.

Sensing that Crosby might be good for business, the Maine Central Railroad asked her to write a column on the joys of fishing and hunting vacations for its promotional magazine. Railroad promoters knew that if women became interested in these pastimes, the outdoors would become fashionable for both sexes, and the company could sell twice as many tickets to places like the Rangeley and Moosehead Lake.

Twenty-five years before women could head to the polls, the railroads, through Crosby, had females headed to the woods.

“Year by year, the number of ladies who are becoming interested in fishing and hunting is fast increasing,” Crosby wrote for the railroad publication in 1895. It was no longer thought unladylike to be a good shot or a skillful angler, she noted.

These observations were accompanied by a photo of Mrs. D.S. Thompson of Livermore Falls posing next to a deer she had shot. In July of the same year, Crosby reported that Mrs. C.W. Dunham of Brattleboro, Vt., had caught the biggest trout of the year so far in the Rangeley Lakes Region. The speckled brook trout weighed over 5.5 pounds and had given Dunham a fight for two hours and 20 minutes at Middle Dam.

Becoming Maine’s first licensed guide in 1897, Crosby never married nor had children. In later years, she became an invalid and a recluse. Lambert, whose mother remembers Crosby, said that when she could no long get outdoors she seemed to fall into a depression from which she never escaped.

Crosby died in 1946 at the 92. By then, a new era had touched the people of Western Maine. The grand hotels that had lured sportsmen to the region had shut their doors, and travel by car was replacing the more leisurely travel by rail.

Crosby is buried in the Strong Cemetery where an unassuming gravestone sits next to one for her brother. Her marker reads “Cornelia Thurza Crosby, November 10, 1854; November 11, 1946.” There is no mention of her expertise as an angler or her skill as a writer. Her marker doesn’t tell us that she was known to the world as “Fly Rod.”

Luann Yetter has researched and written a history column for the Sun Journal for the past 10 years. She teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington, luann.yetter@maine.edu.

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