NORWAY — Sid Gordon of North Norway has a treasure in his freezer: negatives that may unveil unknown agricultural history of the Roberts Farm on Pikes Hill.

Gordon recently donated black and white prints of the negatives taken on Pikes Hill almost a century ago by local painter and photographer Vivian Akers (1886-1966.)

The 150 acres that is now known as the Roberts Farm Preserve was historically part of the extensive holdings of Dudley Pike, one of Norway’s founders, and later, John Roberts, according to information from the Western Foothills Land Trust. The trust bought the property in 2007 and has been trying to piece together its agricultural history.

Gordon’s role in the research being done by the land trust came about through his interest in preserving photographs of local sites and the purchase of hundreds of negatives that pictured the Norway area, including the Roberts Farm.

“I’ve just got an interest in how things used to look,” he said. “I’ve been trying to collect as many (photographs) as I can to preserve them before they are destroyed.” Gordon’s search for local photographs began in 1955 when he tried to find a picture of the house in which he was born.

Gordon said he traveled to Waterville to pick up a set of negatives that were mostly plastic with a few glass-plate negatives and were encased in three wooden boxes. Each box held about 1,000 3- by 5-inch negatives. Some 400 to 500 were missing and another 200 of the nitrate film negatives had to be thrown out because of deterioration.

What was left in the wooden boxes were photographs of local scenes in the Norway-Paris area, including the Roberts Farm. The nitrate-based film is highly flammable and must be kept in cold storage to prevent rapid deterioration and the flammability of the material, he said.

Gordon said the negatives sat in his freezer until Ellen Gibson of West Paris stopped by to look at his collection. She spotted the negatives that appeared to be taken from Pikes Hill. Gordon said she was able to identify the pictures as being taken in the area of the Roberts Farm. They would be important to the Western Foothills Land Trust, which now owns the property and is gathering history about the farmland.

“Ellen picked out the ones that she liked,” Gordon said. He developed prints that were delivered to the Land Trust.

Land Trust Coordinator Lee Dassler said the images will assist them as they continue to piece together the agricultural history of the Roberts Farm Preserve.

In a statement recently released, Dassler said of the donation, “The black and white images depict a far more open, cultivated, rural landscape around Lake Pennesseewassee than currently exists. In the distance, one can see the expansive farms of North Norway as well as significant open farmland along Crockett Ridge in Norway. The Pikes Hill farmlands captured in the foreground of the images show well-maintained stone walls, fences, hayfields and established pastures.

“The photo that may play the most poignant role vis-a-vis the Roberts family land use is an image taken from very near the current viewpoint on the Roberts Farm Preserve. In that spring of 1925 photo, the land appears to have been recently harvested,” Dassler said.

He noted that in 1925, Thaddeus Roberts, the only child of John Roberts, owned the farm.

The wooden boxes that held the negatives hid another treasure, Gordon said. On the bottom of one of the boxes was an inscription that indicated it was a gift to Akers from famed Norway portrait photographer Minnie Libby.

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