NORWAY — Linda Bergmann and Erica Givens, John Roberts’ daughter and granddaughter, visited Western Maine in March. They chose to stay at Trudy Stanley’s Maine Paradise Rental in Poland and Stanley emailed Lee Dassler of the Western Foothills Land Trust once she learned the visitors were Roberts family descendants.

Via a Web search in 2008, Dassler had found and connected with Linda Bergmann about the trust’s Roberts Farm project. Bergmann sent 1942 photos of Roberts Farm, Norway, Camden and Augusta taken by her father, John Roberts (1918-2005), who had a successful career as an engineer with GE in Lynn, Mass. The two had not met in person until March.

Bergmann traveled to Maine with her niece, Erica Givens. Erica’s mother Lucie is Linda’s twin sister and lives in Washington State. Like her grandfather, Erica also works for GE.

March 17, the day of their visit to Roberts Farm Preserve, was clear and brisk. The trio snowshoed the Noyes trail up to the old sugar bush and back to the 1823 Pike Roberts farmhouse. Bergmann had not been on site since after World War II, when she was 5, and yet she remembered the rooms and central stairway of the old house, currently awaiting restoration.

Bergmann and Givens concurred that their father and grandfather would be pleased with the school program on site and with the recreational trails on the preserve.

John Roberts served on his Lynnfield, Mass., Conservation Commission, had protected a portion of his land in Lynnfield with a conservation easement, and had an extensive production garden at his home.


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