Randall
H. Bennett,
Executive
Director / Curator of Collections; director@bethelhistorical.org
Randall Bennett
received his B.S.
degree from the University of Maine at Farmington, and has done
graduate work at the University of Southern Maine and University of New
Hampshire. He has authored many historical articles for various
magazines and journals, and has written or edited twelve books on local
and
regional history topics, as well as genealogical subjects (he is the
sixth
generation of his family to reside in Bethel). In 1987, he was
honored by the American Association for State and Local History for his
contributions to the field. He has represented the Bethel
Historical Society at meetings of the Pequawket League of Historical
Societies and has served as President of that organization. A
frequent reviewer of books for Maine
History, the quarterly of the Maine Historical Society, he has
taught several of the Society's regional history courses, including two
series on White Mountain history. Frequently consulted by
genealogists, journalists, architectural historians, and scholars for
his detailed knowledge of the region, he was appointed the Society's
Executive Director on January 1, 2010. He has served as the
Society's Curator of Collections and Assistant Director since the
mid-1980s.
Stanley
Russell Howe,
Associate
Director / Director of Education and Research; library@bethelhistorical.org
A
Bethel
native whose family roots in the area go back to the 1770s, Stanley
Howe was the Society's Executive Director from 1974 to 2010. A
history major at the University
of Southern Maine, he holds
a M.A.
in American history from the University
of Connecticut, Storrs,
and a Ph.D. in Canadian history from the University
of Maine.
He has been a trustee of the Maine League of Historical
Societies and Museums and on the Board of Directors of its successor
organization, Maine Archives & Museums. He is a former
trustee of
the Maine
Historical Society, currently serving as Book Review Editor of its
quarterly. For
ten years, he was the historian member of
the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, and is a former trustee and
advisory trustee of Maine Preservation. He
has chaired the Maine Arts Commission's
Museum Panel, and has served as a humanities scholar and consultant to
the Maine,
New Hampshire and New
England humanities commissions. He
has written and lectured widely on historical topics relating
to Maine,
New England and Canada,
and has edited several of the Bethel
Historical Society's publications, including The Courier. He has taught
history at several campuses
of the University of Maine,
at Westbrook College,
and at the University of New
Hampshire's College for
Lifelong Learning. The author of a
history of the Maine State Grange, published in
1994, he contributed to an authoritative history of Maine
published in 1995 by the University
of Maine Press and, in
2009, authored an illustrated history of Bethel.