FLY ROD CROSBY
The Woman Who Marketed Maine

by Julia A Hunter

Reviewed by Kenny Brechner

    While Franklin County may be thought to have been subject to no shortages in the production of colorful, larger than life figures, we must admit that few, if any, are so well known and widely established as Fly Rod Crosby. Born in Phillips in 1854 as Cornelia T. Crosby, Fly Rod spent a long, and very public life promoting the sportsman's life to be found in Western Maine.

    Julia A. Hunter's, Fly Rod Crosby, The Woman Who Marketed Maine, is a charming new book which succeeds at being both a perceptive biography, and a stirring memorial to an unusual and likeable woman.

    As for a description of Fly Rod, none can be found or made which will be more apt than her own self description. "I am a plain woman of uncertain age, standing six feet in my stockings. I have earned my bread for a good many years doing the work of a bank clerk. I scribble a bit for various sporting journals, and I would rather fish any day than go to heaven."

    Fly Rod's size, unfeigned enthusiasm, personal and literary charm, and genuine talent with a fly rod, made her slip easily into a larger than life image that gained the Rangeley area national publicity.

    The legendary aspect of Fly Rod's life leaves any biographer with her work cut out, and Hunter does an excellent job of sifting through Fly Rod's legacy, depositing the mythic and the true each into their respective bins.

    It is very revealing that the surviving primary sources relating to Fly Rod Crosby are both plentiful and entirely public. Fly Rod scribbled more than "a bit" for sporting journals, providing hundreds of columns over the years. She was also widely photographed for publicity reasons, as well as keeping a collection of photographs for her own scrapbook.

    Hunter=s treatment of Fly Rod is essentially that of someone who made little distinction between a public and a private persona. That Fly Rod's articles were often times termed "Letters From Fly Rod" indicates the very great ease she had with a public of outdoor sports enthusiasts who shared her passions and experiences.

    Her greatest exposure came with her annual appearances as a leading member of Maine's exhibit at the Sportsmen's Exhibition Association's Exhibition in New York, at which time thousands of people visited her Rangeley exhibit.

    Fly Rod's appeals as a promoter of Maine camp life were very great. Her boundless enthusiasm, uniformly upbeat journalism, her striking appearance, and her traditional, anti-suffrage views, made her both appealing and non-threatening to Railroad officials and politicians alike.