Book features Lovley family
Mapleton native Maxine (Lovley) Smith turns 91 years young this June. She and her husband Vaughn also celebrate 70 years of marriage during the month. Smith plans to observe both occasions by helping her nephew Forrest Lovley donate a recently published family history book to local libraries.
Contributed photo
Mapleton native Maxine (Lovley) Smith, left, presented a copy of a recently released book to Lisa Shaw, a reference librarian at the Mark and Emily Turner Library in Presque Isle this week.
“The Whole Fam Damily (1602-2013): Aroostook County, Maine, Ancestors of Forrest Tru Lovley,” is written by local author Dottie Hutchins, and is partially based on genealogical work compiled by Smith over the last four decades.
Forrest Lovley, who now lives in the Minneapolis area, was born in 1946, at the old Presque Isle Hospital (now City Hall), the son of Vaughn and Betty (Sylvester) Lovley. He spent his first 12 years living on his parents’ potato farm in Ashland. When his family moved away from Aroostook County in 1958, Lovely said, “I don’t think my head really ever left there.”
As a boy, Lovley made frequent trips to The County to visit with his Maine relatives. He returns most every year to spend time with family and friends.
Smith’s stories were born from her love of local and family history, all resulting in an impressive body of genealogical work. Work first conducted long before online library resources and e-mail, when most of the research required letters, phone calls, and lengthy road trips to look up vital records and uncover family documents.
“It all started back in the early seventies while I was still teaching third grade in Mapleton, and I was looking for a local history book just about our town,” Smith said. “I couldn’t find one, so I decided it was a project I’d do when I retired.”
Smith not only told her stories to her family, many were featured in ECHOES magazine. Lovley contacted the publication’s genealogical columnist, Hutchins, in early 2012, to help record and expand on Smith’s work. Together, they have been collecting and scanning old photos, scrutinizing family documents, and visiting gravesites, libraries, and archives, while researching and writing an account of Lovley’s ancestors.
“The Whole Fam Damily,” traces the family lineages of surnames from Lovley’s great-grandparents’ generation — Libby, Lovley, McGowan, McPherson, Rafford, Smith, and Sylvester — back to the first ancestors arriving in North America.
The childhood memories of Smith, Lovley, and other family members are also placed throughout the book.
The book is being donated to several Aroostook County libraries. A digital copy of the book is available by contacting Hutchins at hutchins.dottie@gmail.com.
