EARLY HISTORY OF MOUNT DESERT ISLAND MAINE: BIRTH OF JACKSON MEMORIAL LABORATORY

Bar Harbor Times
May 8, 1929

WILL BE MEMORIAL FOR R.B. JACKSON

To Establish Cancer Research Laboratory

DR. LITTLE DIRECTOR

Relatives And Friends Will Erect Building Near Sieur de Monts Spring For Memorial To Seal Harbor Summer Resident

A cancer research laboratory is to be established this summer at Bar Harbor, in memory of Roscoe B. Jackson of Detroit, president of the Hudson Motor Company, a summer resident of Seal Harbor who died last winter on the Riviera. This is made possible through the warm interest of Mrs. Jackson in work which her husband had in process of establishment, together with Edsel Ford and Richard H. Webber of Detroit and George B. Dorr of Bar Harbor, who had offered to contribute land for the purpose.
Dr. Clarence C. Little, who has just resigned from the presidency of the University of Michigan. will be president of this Association and direct its scientific work. This work will be devoted as its main object to cancer research, in which Dr. Little will have associated with him Dr. L.C. Strong, who has already done much work on experimental studies of cancer, and Dr. W.S. Murray, who has been associated with him for several years, both at the University of Maine and at the University of Michigan. Miss Elizabeth Fekete will act as technical assistant and will also do research work.
It is also expected that J.M. Murray. instructor in anatomy at the university of Michigan, A.M. Cloudman, formerly professor of zoology at the University of Vermont, and J.J. Bitner, assistant in cancer research at the University of Michigan, will join the staff within a year.
With cancer as its major cause will be included, as opportunity may come, studies in the natural history of Mount Desert Island and its region carried out in connection with the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory at Salisbury Cove.

GEORGE B. DORR

The founders of the new organization are Mrs. Roscoe B. Jackson, Mr. and Mrs. Edsel Ford, Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Webber and George B. Dorr. When Richard W, Jackson, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, now entering Yale University, reaches legal age it is intended that he shall take his father's place in what will now become a distinguished and publicly useful memorial to him.
The tract of land selected for this purpose is given by Mr. Dorr, whose father and mother, Charles Hazen Dorr and Mary Gray Ward Dorr of Boston, were among the earliest summer visitors and residents at Bar Harbor and owned the land. With their memory Mr. Dorr associates this gift as well as making it in commemoration of Mr. Jackson's great interest in the matter, as from his own. The land is on the left side of the road leading to the Tarn between the corner of Main Street and Morrell Park.
The site on which the memorial building will be placed is one of great natural beauty which has been in possession of the Dorr family for over half a century. Northward it looks across Frechman's Bay and its islands to the Gouldsboro Hills, South and West of the mountains of Acadia National Park, whose land it borders on two sides. There are no disfiguring surroundings nor possibility of impairment of the natural beauty of the site, which also is supplied with water from the town gravity supply from Eagle lake, and finds its entrance on the county road to Seal and Northeast Harbors. Sieur de Monts Spring lies close at hand and the whole surrounding is one of exceptional landscape interest and beauty.
Application for incorporation has been made to the state with the following incorporates; George B. Dorr, Judge Luere B. Deasy, David O. Rodick, all of Bar Harbor; William MacCrillis Sawyer of Bangor, Maine; W.S. Murray of Hampton, Maine; J. Lovell Little of Boston, Massachusetts, and Dr. Clarence C. Little of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The work will be continuous throughout the year and represents an organized effort to approach the cancer problem from the point of view of experimental biology. It is hoped that the concentration incident to a small and cooperative group of workers may lead to progress in what may be considered the greatest unsolved cause of human suffering and death among mankind.