BETHEL — In Bethel, tonight’s presentation by Historian Will Chapman at the Gem Theater will be a journey into the 19th-century and early twentieth century through a series of stereoview images of Bethel.

Attendees will be given 3D glasses for the full effect.

Using 20th century software, Chapman has digitally transformed each image to eliminate the need for a stereoscope which is how viewers of the late 19th and early twentieth century would have seen the three dimensional effect of the paired images.

Unlike the solitary experience offered by the 19th century stereoscope, tonight’s event will be a communal exploration of Bethel’s past.

Bethel women

It is 1874 and several women and girls, dressed in suffragette-white, are on the Bethel Common atop a float named, “The Coming Woman.” One girl is holding a sign that says Womans Suffrage, while a man drives the horse-drawn carriage.

Described as “16 young missus in a carriage dressed in white bearing the motto of, The Coming Woman,'”  this poignant scene was part of the 1874 centennial parade now featured on the cover of “Goose Eye,” the fourth annual history journal by the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society (MBHS), and part of Chapman’s Gem Theater presentation.

A copy of the image, owned by Maine Historic Preservation Commission, was loaned to Bethel.  It had been used in a 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage exhibit at Maine State Library.

MBHS owns similar stereoview images, about three dozen in all, but that specific one is very rare, said Chapman. “A couple of years ago a copy of this one went up for sale on eBay, unfortunately we were outbid. It went for around $700,” he said.

The float advocating for suffrage was likely a rarity in rural Bethel and surroundings and despite their bold challenge to the status quo, not much more is known about the women in the image.

Remarkably, it would be 46 years before the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, granting women the right to vote.

Goose Eye

In 2021, Chapman was working as an archivist at MBHS when he started editing his first Goose Eye publication. He said he likes the culmination of stories to reflect a common theme.

At the time of the 1874 centennial parade, many social changes were underway, particularly with respect to women’s rights and education, he said.

Writers’ stories are: “Women in the Grange: The ‘Greatest Equality Club Ever Known,” by Jean F. Hankin, of Otisfield; ‘The Ladies Came to the Rescue:'” Women in the Literary Life of New England Villages,” by Joan Newlon Radner of Lovell; Divorce in Nineteenth Century Oxford County,” by Christopher Dunham of Greenwood; and Chapman’s, “Abolitionizing Bethel: Anti-Slavery Activities and Political Transformation.”

Dunham helped Chapman track down the stereoviews’ photographers Joseph Adams Green and his son William Herbert Green who are listed as Turner daguerreotype artists on the 1860 census. The series for some of the images Chapman is featuring was called Views of Bethel and Vicinity. The photographers would likely have sold them around Bethel possibly at Wiley’s drugstore or another pharmacy, often to collectors. On the backside of some stereo views (not these) are a list of the related series of cards.

Stereoviews

At his laptop inside MBHS’s Robinson House, Chapman opens a stereoview image in his digital imaging software. He converts the photograph on the left leaving the red components, the other side he converts to cyan. He then layers the two images, called anaglyphs, so they line up, but not perfectly.

He tinkers with the two images. Without the 3D glasses the registration looks off, with them the 3D effect is nearly perfect.

In 2016 Chapman worked on a similar project when he enlarged stereoviews for Greenwood’s bicentennial celebration. They were hung around Locke’s Mills Village where people viewed them wearing 3D glasses.

In another nod to the women of Bethel,  the historical society will rename the 1813 Moses Mason House to the Dr. Moses and Agnes Straw Mason House. Next door is the 1821 Robinson House. It will be renamed the O’Neil and Betsey Straw Robinson House.

The women, living side-by-side, were sisters and like their husbands will now be immortalized as part of Bethel’s history.

A Goose Eye launch party in collaboration with Bethel Arts and Music will be held at the Gem Theater, Cross Street, Bethel beginning at 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 18. At 6 p.m., MBHS Executive Director and “Goose Eye” editor William F. Chapman will show the  3D stereoview images from the 1874 centennial parade and talk about Bethel’s in this time period.

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