FARMINGTON – An interest in history flourished as Luann Yetter spent 10 years writing a weekly history column for the Sun Journal.

Now that work comes to life again through the launching of her new book, “Remembering Franklin County, Stories from the Sandy River Valley.”

A reading and book-signing will be held at 7 p.m. May 21 at Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers to celebrate this first book published by History Press.

From early settlers who braved winter treks from Hallowell to settle in Franklin County in 1794 to the tale of a Weld baseball player who managed Babe Ruth’s Red Sox to two World Series championships, Yetter chose a series of vignettes from those columns.

“The book should be fun to read,” she said.

A freelance writer for the Sun Journal, Yetter suggested writing a history column for one year … Farmington’s Bicentennial in 1994.

“I felt like I’d just scratched the surface,” she said of that first year.

People were reading the column, editors kept asking for it and she was never at a loss for ideas so one year turned into 10, she said.

Although she considered writing a biography on settler Supply Belcher a few years ago, there was no interest from publishers so she set the idea aside and became busy creating new courses to teach at the University of Maine at Farmington where she teaches a journalism and first-year writing course.

“Last summer, out of the blue, I received an e-mail from History Press wondering if I’d be interested in writing a book,” she said. “I spent the summer thinking it might be a scam. There had to be a catch. How often does a publisher pursue a writer?”

A late-summer contract, read by her husband, attorney Frank Underkuffler, set her at ease but left her short on time to produce the book by the Tuesday after Columbus Day in October.

School was starting, she had travel plans for September and her father passed away but she still managed to make deadline even though most of her columns had been written on an electric typewriter, she said. Scanning clippings into a computer created some new editing challenges but her fact-finding and research had already been done.

A request for 40-illustrations for the book became a challenge, she said. Free time was spent at the Farmington Historical Society searching through its collection.

“They were so much help especially Nancy Porter and Cindy Stevens,” she said.

Two of her best sources for her columns, the late Richard Mallett and Peter Mills, kept her supplied with ideas while volumes written by Mallett and Frances Gould Butler revealed wonderful genealogies that wove stories of how people fit in to the history of the county, she said.

She gave Mallett the last words in the book quoting him from a column on the Weld baseball player.

Her own interest in history grew as she read more American history in order to understand the significance of the events she wrote about in Franklin County.

“But it was the interest of all those Sun Journal readers who kept me going all those years. I wouldn’t have kept going without them and all their support and information. They kept me motivated,” she said.

Although she loves teaching, she also loves the research, writing and the whole process of putting a book together. If this one is successful, she’s open to writing another and plans for a Web site where people can share family stories and cultural history.