AUBURN – Charlene Bartlett, 80, died Nov. 20, at the Androscoggin Hospice House after a long illness.

She was born on April 17, 1927, in Lisbon, a daughter of Leslie and Daisy Greene Bickford. She was educated in Lisbon Falls schools and attended Colby College for two years before she married Charles Bartlett in 1948. Together they raised five children. Later, she returned to college and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Maine. She taught first grade for 21 years at the Williams School in Topsham. She was an intellectually curious woman who loved history, especially local history.

Together with her cousin Jayne Bickford, she researched, wrote and published a book about Bowdoin cemeteries and was in the process of writing a book on the history of Bowdoin at the time of her death. Both she and Jayne founded the Bowdoin Historical Society. Genealogy was her passion and she followed family lines back to the 1600s.

She loved to read and she continued that enthusiastically until the last weeks of her life. She had a great sense of humor and found funny things to comment about most topics or situations that crossed her path. Often that humor could be irreverent and anyone or anything was a fair target. She was famous for her facial expressions which could say more about what she was feeling than words did.

She was deeply interested in politics and she loved to discuss current issues. She never missed an opportunity to vote. In her younger years, she embraced the views of the Republican Party, but as the party became more conservative, she became disenchanted with those views and became a strong convert to the Democratic Party.

Proud of her heritage, she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Mayflower Society and the Bowdoin Historical Society.

She was a very generous person and she took many opportunities to help family and friends when they were having problems. Her home was always open to anyone who wanted to drop in and there were few days when someone wasn’t visiting. Good bye, Charlene, you will be missed by many.

She is survived by her husband, Charles Bartlett of Lewiston; sons, Erik Bartlett of Casco and Brian Bartlett and family of Georgetown; her daughters, Heather Bartlett of Lisbon and Patrice and son-in-law, Marcel Mathieu, of Bowdoin; her grandson, Jeremiah Bartlett; great-granddaughter, Sabine of Auburn; her granddaughter, Erica Bartlett of Portland; sister-in-law, Marquese Saari of California; niece, Melanie Price of North Carolina; nephew, Calvin Woodcock with wife, Robin, and son, Joshua, of Gray; her special friends, Jayne Bickford and Christine Jellison of Lisbon Falls and Jackie Bartlett of Auburn.

She was predeceased by her parents; brothers, Kenneth and Donald Bickford; and daughter, Gail Bartlett.