About Lydia Stories

Lydia Stories is a versatile book in poetic prose that brings alive the heritage of one family’s 19th-century life in Maine. John Carroll’s destiny is followed from his ancestral home in Borrisoleigh, County Tipperary, Ireland to ‘Going to the Ice’ in Newfoundland, and then south to Mount Desert Island in the newly formed State of Maine. By 1825 Carroll had built a home on a mountain hillside in Southwest Harbor where 3 generations of Carrolls will be born.

The narrator for these stories is Lydia Carroll who happens to be a cloth doll stitched together in 1911 from remnants of family clothes long-loved, worn to pieces, but never discarded. Through her remnant constitution, Lydia brings alive the voice of each Carroll ancestor who wore them in order to teach the newest Carroll descendants their heritage.

The author, Joan Jordan Grant, is a native of Bar Harbor, Maine and a 4th generation descendant of John Carroll. Joan’s mother, grandmother, and great-aunt inherited the Carroll family oral legends and written histories and in turn handed them on to the next generations. Over the past 10 years Joan has written this book as her contribution to her family’s heritage in honor of her son and granddaughters.

John Carroll’s self-built 1825 (unrestored) homestead in Southwest Harbor still stands and is now part of Acadia National Park. It is open to visitors in the summer and fall. As volunteer docents at the John Carroll Homestead since 2002 Joan and Lydia have shared these stories with Park visitors from all over the world.