2025 Silent Book Auction
The 2025 NASOH Conference book auction will be held to raise money for the established student awards. This year, the books were donated by the family of NASOH founding member, Jack Battick.
John “Jack” Battick was born into a multi-generation US Navy family. He grew up near many bases around the world, attending ten different schools before college. He received his BA from Yale University, spent two years in the Navy with a year on U.S.S. Hardhead (SS-365), and earned his PhD from Boston University with a dissertation focusing on Tudor/Stuart England. A member of the University of Maine’s History Department for almost thirty years, Jack was the go-to professor for undergraduates and graduate students alike. They lauded him for his broad knowledge, understanding, help, and kindness. Outside of the university he was an active volunteer curator, board member, and officer in many museum and historical societies in Maine, including the Maine Maritime Museum and Penobscot Maritime Museum. He, with his wife Nancy, published four volumes for the Maine Genealogical Society and self-published other local histories.
Jack was a founder of NASOH and an active member, attending most of the annual meetings until his retirement from the University of Maine in 1997. He died at age 92 on October 22, 2024. In 2025, knowing Jack would approve, his wife Nancy donated his maritime books to NASOH for the silent auction to raise funds for student grants while making the volumes much more affordable to NASOH members.
Details:
• There will be a silent auction on Thursday and Friday of the conference, meaning we will have a number of books out for a day on a table with a signup sheet for each book. Conference attendees can bid on the sheet in $1 increments.
For example, you come upon a book by Robert Albion, and someone has bid $6. You can put your bid of $7 or more dollars on the line below that, with your name in the next column.
Someone else can come along and bid higher. You can come back later and bid even higher if you want. At the end of the day we will announce the winners, who will pay and receive their book(s).
• There will be no minimum bid.
• All proceeds will go to the student awards funds.
