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Gc 974.102 N8298v 1417496
M. L
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01091 8065
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019
https://archive.org/details/northeastharborr00vaug
NORTHEAST HARBOR
REMINISCENCES
1
BY
AN OLD SUMMER RESIDENT
Wm. W. Vaughan
WHITE & HORNE COMPANY 1930
COPYRIGHT, MAY 1930 BY WHITE & HORNE COMPANY
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Thanks are due to the many friends who have furnished me with material for this book without which the early history of the village could not have been written; and to Mrs. Burr, for her courtesy in allowing me to quote from her book.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I APOLOGIA . 7
II MOUNT DESERT ISLAND . . 10
III EARLY SETTLERS . 12
IV NORTHEAST IN THE EIGHTIES . 29
V ROADS AND TRAVEL . 39
VI THE WELL AND THE WATER . 51
VII RELIGION . 56
VIII BOOKS AND SPORTS . 62
IX THE COLONY ITSELF . 72
APOLOGIA
The consequences of not dying in due season are sometimes very surprising. Be- cause I am the oldest living summer inhab- itant of Northeast Harbor, I find myself ordered to write its history!
It happened in this way. Because I mis- understood what the clock said, I found myself, one Sunday forenoon, in an almost empty church. And, because the congre- gation at large would not arrive for some time, two ladies took advantage of my help- less condition and insisted that, because I had known the colony for nearly half a cen-
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tury, therefore I must write its story. And because, before they had finished their ex- hortation, the impending entry of the clergy and choir hindered my expounding the en- tire inappropriateness of the idea, I was lost, and could only surrender, and promise some- thing. Was a man ever before driven into writing a book by taking such an advantage of the sanctuary? Never, I am very sure.
But history it cannot be; for history means proved and verified facts. And to look up and verify facts is a task for which I have neither time nor opportunity nor in- clination. Reminiscences, perhaps, they may be. For they are not tied to sordid proof. They concern only your recollections about facts-and that is quite another matter.
Thus if I recall Mr. A. as building his house before Mr. B. built his, and Mr. B. rises in wrath to say that he did not follow Mr. A., I simply reply-"My dear sir, I
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never said you did; I merely said that was the way I recollected its happening. You are right, of course." And that ends it.
So anybody who objects to my memories, or to those of others sent me to disclose, must bear this distinction clearly in mind.
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MOUNT DESERT ISLAND
Few persons realize what an extraordi- nary creation Mount Desert is. I mean lit- erally extra-ordinary. For almost all of the Atlantic Coast of the United States is pain- fully "ordinary"-one of the most uninter- esting coasts in the world. From Cape Ann to Mexico the shores are deadly dull and flat, with miles on miles of sand and marsh, worthless to mankind save as it meets the sea and becomes a beach for the people to play on. But this one island is the exception.
Some æons ago, before memory existed, when our earth had so far cooled and shrunk
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that it found its hardened skin too large for it, and made this skin shrink till it fitted again by the simple process of wrinkling it up in spots-at some such time, it wrinkled up Green Mountain and its attendant hills, and left them as they stand today. But not where they stand today with reference to the sea. They were probably well inland.
Geologists tell us that this whole north- ern coast has sunk greatly in comparatively recent geological times; and it has been the good fortune of this little group of hills to settle just far enough to make it an island, and to let the sea leak into one of its lakes and form Somes Sound, while leaving the outer hills enough above water to form Sut- ton and the Cranberry Isles, and thus give us sheltered inland waters to sail on.
So here this happy cluster of granite hills stands, the only mountainous bit of shore on our whole Atlantic Coast.
That is an agreeable fact to begin with.
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EARLY SETTLERS
Before the time of any personal recollec- tions can be reached, three classes of inhabit- ants came on the scene, and must not be for- gotten :- the Indians, the Jesuits, and the early settlers.
The Indians, who called Mt. Desert "Great Crab Island" in allusion to its shape, seem to have made it more a place to visit for feasts of shellfish than a permanent resi- dence; though there are legends of an old chief who lived on what is now "Manches- ter Point" and made himself a lively factor to be reckoned with by the whites. But
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these legends are all set out at length in the books which have been written about the island, and it would be superfluous to repeat them here.
It would be equally superfluous to repeat the history of the Jesuits' short and tragic experience on the meadow across the sound that still bears their name. The story has been told many times and can be read in these histories.
But of the early settlers who came, not to pray and convert, but to fish and farm, no record is known to exist in any printed form.
So it is worth while to recite some origi- nal testimony, set out by Mrs. Phillips, a member of one of our old families, in a paper written by her for a Club meeting.
She writes :-
"The first permanent settler at Northeast Har- bor, as far as I can learn, was John Manchester,
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who settled at Manchester Point as early as 1775. His son, John Manchester, 2nd, was my mother's grandfather. He often told his grandchildren stories of the hardship and privation the family suffered in those early years here. Those were Revolutionary times. One story I remember hear- ing from my mother :- An English ship was an- chored near the mouth of the sound for some time, and one day a boatload of men came ashore and made a raid on the Manchester home. Mr. Man- chester had gone hunting, so was not at home to remonstrate. They took the oxen and cows, drove them down on the beach, and there killed and quartered them and took them away to their ship, hides and all. Then, not being satisfied with that, they took all of their potatoes and other stores which they had provided for their winter use. And to complete their cruelty they wantonly destroyed all their cooking utensils and told them 'they could starve.' However, there was one young cow which had strayed away that the men did not get, and Mr. Manchester was fortunate in having his gun with him, which served him to good purpose later,
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when a moose came out of the woods one day and started to swim across the sound. He, with his good wife, ran for their canoe and started in pur- suit, she with the paddle and he with his trusty flint-lock ready. They came back victorious and their larder was replenished. So, with the help of the milk from the cow, with fish and clams and with game from the forest, they lived through the long winter. I cannot give the exact year of this occurrence, but we have the record that Mr. Man- chester served in Machias four months in Capt. Stephen Smith's company in 1775.
Their first homes were, of course, crude and rough, but as years went by and the settlers had cleared the land and made some progress in farm- ing and fishing and taking their supplies of wood and lumber, fish and farming products, to the westward markets, bringing back supplies in re- turn for their labor, they were able to build better houses and to have more comforts."
It is hard to realize that our lands were once covered with solid forest, many of the trees large enough for heavy timber. Yet
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here is the way Mr. A. C. Savage describes it :-
"My grandfather was born in Glasgow, Scot- land, in the year 1756. He came to this country in a ship as a sailor in 1775, married Sarah Dol- liver in Marblehead ; moved to Mt. Desert in 1798. He built some kind of a log cabin on the east side of Harbor Brook, where my father was born in 1801. At that time the land was covered with a heavy growth of timber, the path from Northeast to Seal being marked by blazed trees.
In the winter of 1812-1813, my uncles, Peter and Timothy Smallidge, got out a lot of logs and yarded them in the brook, just above where the bridge now is. In June, 1813, the English ship, 'Tenedos,' was lying at anchor near Bear Island. Uncle Peter and Uncle Timothy, with my father, started to tow the logs to Somesville, but they were intercepted by the enemy. The logs were cut adrift and they were taken on board the enemy's ship as prisoners of war, and were kept until after the battle of Norwood Cove."
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Let us call another later witness :-
Mr. Abram Gilpatrick, a member of an- other of our old families, who states that he is nearing seventy, but who steps as if nearer seventeen, gives the following picture of the situation sixty years ago :-
"In 1870 and for some time after, as I can very well remember, there were only seventeen houses from Asticou Inn clear around to the Nalle Cot- tage near the Golf Ground. The families occupy- ing these houses were :-
A. C. Savage, who lived opposite Asticou Inn in what is known as the Harbor Cottage and is owned by Luther Phillips, a grandson of A. C. Savage.
Mrs. Climena Savage, mother of A. C. Sav- age. Her house was on the site of the Asticou Inn.
William Roberts, whose house was in the field just west of Asticou Inn.
Franklin Roberts, who was Josephine Ober's father, owned the house which is on the cor-
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ner near the electric light station and which Mr. Kimball has recently remodelled.
Charles Frazier, who lived directly across the road from the Bucklin home.
Daniel Kimball, whose home was on the site of the Kimball House.
Thomas Smallidge, an uncle to Stephen Smallidge. His house now belongs to Mrs. Lincoln Godfrey.
James Gilpatrick, whose house was on the site of the Rock End Hotel. This house was moved to the north and is known as the Falt Cottage No. 2.
S. N. Gilpatrick, who lived at the Tea Garden.
Nathan Smallidge, whose house is known as the Sam Smallidge house.
Captain Sans Whitmore, whose house has re- cently been remodelled by Mrs. Odman.
Captain Thomas Manchester. His house was next to Mrs. Odman's. This house was moved across the road and made into two houses,
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Manson Manchester's and Lora Whitmore's. Thomas Fennelly, whose house still stands on the corner of Manchester and Summit Roads. Major Manchester. His house was located on Manchester's Point just west of the Scull Cottage near the shore. Part of it was moved across the road and forms a part of the R. S. Pierrepont house.
Joseph Stanley, who lived opposite the Knowles Cottage.
Jonah Corson, who lived about where the Nalle Cottage is. This house was bought by Mrs. Knowles and moved to the junction of Millbrook and Manchester Roads.
Josiah Smallidge, whose house was on the site of the brick schoolhouse and has been moved across the road and made into two houses.
The early houses of the village were low posted, one and one-half story houses, a good deal the style of the Tea Garden and the Sam Smallidge house. I have been unable to find out which house was built first, but there is no question but that the old
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part of the R. S. Pierrepont house is the oldest building now standing and the Tea Garden, the Smallidge house and the Fennelly house are the only ones which have not been built over. The Tea Garden is the oldest of these three."
Nowadays the people of the town earn their living on the spot by caring in multi- tudinous ways for the summer residents-a most satisfactory reciprocal exchange of values. But in the old days it was quite otherwise. They raised all they could from land and beast for their own use, but all ready money came from more or less distant ventures on the sea, accompanied by all the risks that must attend those who sail the ocean in small vessels. Mr. Gilpatrick thus describes it :-
"When I was a boy, people made their living chiefly by fishing and farming. There were not more than three or four horses in the whole village. Everyone had from one to six cows and almost everyone raised hens, sheep and pigs. My father
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used to kill two large hogs every fall . He usually killed a beef creature and some sheep, thus laying in a supply for winter.
Almost everyone kept sheep. We always raised them. In the spring we sheared the sheep, washed the wool and put it out in the field to dry ; then we cut the soiled wool off and sent the rest to the mills in Somesville to be carded. It came back in rolls which my mother spun for knitting and weaving. We have the old loom on which my grandmother and mother wove cloth. Practically all the clothes which we children had were made from cloth woven from the wool of our own sheep. Other families living here in the village brought my mother their own wool for her to spin and weave for them. We sometimes had the wool colored in Somesville. There used to be four kinds, the white, black, sheep's-gray and a brown, something the color of copper.
Some of the young girls went away to Salmon Falls and Lawrence, Massachusetts, to work in the mills. Some of them taught school. The young men used to go to sea."
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The young people who play tennis on the court at the head of the little bay that nestles, round the corner, on the west side of Gilpatrick's cove, have little idea that this spot once resounded with the noise of the ship-builders' adze and hammer and calk- ing-mallet. Yet here, as old residents tell us, was built one, at least, of the forty or fifty vessels constructed on the shores of this island. Mr. Gilpatrick tells us of their voyages :-
"About the middle of April a small fleet of ves- sels would start from here for the Madeline Islands, down towards Nova Scotia, and load up with salt herring which they brought here. The fish were taken out of the vessel and put in what is known as 'soakers,' large square boxes about ten feet wide and fifteen feet long with holes bored all over them. The boxes were towed to shore and well shaken in order to get the scales off the fish. Then the fish were strung on sticks and hung in the smoke-houses over fires built on the ground. It would take weeks to smoke the fish. Some time
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in September the herring were boxed and shipped away. I recently found an old stencil which my father had to mark these herring boxes-'Mount Desert Scaled Herring-S. N. G.'
.
Vessels also went to Labrador and loaded with salt fish. These were brought here and salted again and then dried in the fish houses, and shipped away to Boston. I remember seeing five little vessels at Gilpatrick Wharf at one time. My father used to 'make' most of the fish here (that is what we called the drying of fish). These ves- sels were owned by men of this locality. My father owned an interest in two of them, the 'Vixen' and the 'Harriet Newell.' "
There is one business which he describes that we are well rid of. The porgy (g hard, sometimes spelled pogy) is a fish that has almost, if not quite, vanished; and its demise is one of the few sea tragedies that we can regard with resignation.
"The porgy business was carried on to quite an extent at one time. Porgies are fish something like
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a shad, and there used to be an abundance of them in these waters." A number of people made a busi- ness of catching them, here in Northeast, at Baker's Island, at Egg Rock, and at Schooner Head. Captain Nathan Smallidge had a Porgy press on the shore right in front of the spot where Mrs. Parkman's cottage now stands. The porgies were netted, brought ashore and put in a large iron kettle and cooked. After being cooked, they were 'pitched' into a huge vat which hung in a large wooden frame. A cover fitted inside the vat and this cover could be pressed down by means of a jackscrew in the frame holding the vat. The cover was screwed down to jam the oil from the fish. The oil ran into a hogshead. Through a spicket in the bottom of the hogshead, the water was drawn off and the oil was barreled and shipped away. This oil was used as paint oil and for various things. The bones, scales, etc., left from the fish after the oil was taken out was called 'porgy chum' and made an excellent fertilizer."
When one coasts along the carefully tended shores of our settlement, it is hard to
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visualize the picture Mr. Gilpatrick paints of these same shores in 1870 :-
"I can well remember how the shore used to look from Manchester's Point around to Dr. Eliot's. At Manchester's Point near the Indian Head Cottage there was a wharf, fish house, and smoke house owned by Major Manchester. Cap- tain Thomas Manchester had two fish houses and a smoke house where the coal wharf now is. Cap- tain Sans Whitmore had a small wharf and build- ing just south of the coal dock. My father had four fish houses and a smoke house where the Rock End Dock now is. Daniel Kimball had a store and smoke house just below the Clifton Dock. Horace Roberts had a little wharf and building at the head of the harbor and Captain Savage had a smoke house at his shore where the Asticou Boat Slip is. Thomas Wasgatt had a smoke house on the Curtis shore. Captain Thomas Savage had a smoke house at Dr. Eliot's shore. In Seal Harbor, Cranberry Island, Southwest Harbor and Somesville, there were smoke houses all along the shores as there were here."
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The life of a small village of that day, before the advent of movies and radios, was necessarily rather quiet; but there were, nevertheless, certain gala occasions, and chief among them were the launchings of the ves- sels, when the "birth of the ship" was duly . celebrated.
On one occasion birth and death came very close to conflict, as Mrs. Ansel Man- chester pictures the situation.
"The day set for the launching of vessels was one of eager anticipation among the inhabitants. The family of the builder sent invitations to friends far and near and a sumptuous dinner was prepared.
Here is a story which my mother told of a launching at Pretty Marsh of one of Reuben Free- man's vessels. My mother, who was a niece of Mrs. Freeman, went a few days previous to assist in preparations for the dinner, which we will assume consisted of beans and brown bread baked in the
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brick oven, boiled ham, vegetables, and condiments galore, Indian Pudding, pumpkin pie and dough- nuts.
At about that time Mrs. Freeman's father, who had lived at Beech Hill, passed away, and it so happened that the family arranged for the funeral for the same day on which the launching was to take place. What were they to do? Invitations were already sent for the launching; it was out of the question for Mr. Freeman to attend the last sad rites of his father-in-law. Mrs. Freeman must go, but how could the dinner be served without her ? After due reflection he assured her, 'Rachel and I can serve the dinner.' The day came, Mr. Freeman harnessed the old horse into the 'One Hoss Shay' and Mrs. Freeman and her sister, Judith, started for Beech Hill. Hardly had they left the yard when the whippletree broke, causing an outburst from Mr. Freeman-he may have used language not to be found in Holy Writ. However, he controlled his passion, repaired damages and once more the sisters wended their way.
The launching and dinner progressed, each of
2'
which proved a great success. The friends, on tak- ing their departure, felt that they had spent one of the most pleasant days possible. The sisters re- turned, the excitement of the day still prevailed- a day long to be remembered in the Freeman household."
So much for the early settlers. They were a hard-working race, and deserved all the pleasures they could get, whether from launchings or from other joys.
Let us turn to later times.
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NORTHEAST IN THE EIGHTIES
My first-hand knowledge of Northeast Harbor came in 1882.
It was a very primitive spot. A cottage now standing near the Kimball House, joined to another cottage of the same size, and the whole painted white, formed the Kimball House of that day, run by the father of the present proprietor. The "bath" consisted of a new wooden wash tub, found at the village store and filled by water car- ried up by hand from a well-a well which played an important part in the later his- tory of the town.
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The "village store" stood on the beach, near the cottage now owned by Mrs. Pier, and was owned and run by one of the sons of Mr. Kimball. It afterwards migrated inland, like many other things, to the spot which afterward became the "village street" of today. The only summer cottage then built (now occupied by Mrs. Dickey) was that of Bishop Doane, who had come the year before, and was the first "Westerner" in the village proper, though President Eliot had terminated his annual cruisings and campings a year or so earlier, and built a house on the cliffs (where he lived for many years afterward), even before Mr. Curtis settled by the harbor shore. But because this was out of the village, it was always a moot point between them who was the "first settler." The rest of the village was as described by Mr. Gilpatrick-perhaps a dozen or more scattered houses.
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The only "wharf" was a small structure where Spurling's Dock now stands, and only small steamers could come to it. Visitors by water took the "Frank Jones" at Port- land, landed at Southwest Harbor, and were rowed over in a skiff.
The next summer a cottage was built by Mr. and Mrs. James Gardiner on the hill now owned by Mr. Milliken, whose present house is the sum of many additions to the original cottage. A photograph of the time shows most of this hill as a mere stump- field, recently cut over and burned. The place today is a wonderful example of what time and planting can do.
A short cut across what later became Mr. Moorfield Storey's lot, enabled Mrs. Gar- diner to reach the Bishop's house, "Magnum Donum," easily, and see her father con- stantly; and over this same path the children flocked to the "pier," which consisted of a
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high projecting ledge in the little cove south of the church. This was not a landing for the sloops, which were kept in the harbor, or in Gilpatrick's Cove, but only for the fleet of row boats of various sizes. These were in constant use, for, strange as it may seem now, in those days we really did row daily, and often for long distances. The Flagship of this fleet was the "Only," the Bishop's favorite craft. He was not an en- thusiastic sailor and preferred to be rowed by his "crew," consisting always, when they grew old enough, of his grandchildren. There were suspicions that sometimes the crew had youthful plans of their own and were not very enthusiastic when they heard the "call to oars." But they never failed to respond.
The summer life was very simple, but very agreeable. Picnics were the order of the day; sometimes by buckboard to hill or
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to lake, more often by water to Sutton, for lunch on the beach, or to Great Cranberry to watch the surf. The lunch itself was as simple as the rest of it. President Eliot's ideal of a proper repast on a walk was a sandwich carried in each walker's pocket; and this remained his habit all his life. The rest of us were not always so Spartan. But if anyone wanted a hot dish, he cooked it himself over a fire in the open. The day of the hot masterpieces of the home cook, pro- duced from great thermos jars, was far in the future. But we enjoyed our fires and our cooking as part of the game.
One picnic on Sutton's rocky beach stands out in my memory as of yesterday. I was recently engaged and always took the lady on these nearby water trips in a canoe, a craft with which we were both very familiar. We landed easily enough from a calm sea; but by the afternoon a swell had arisen and there
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was one very anxious man in the party. For, while launching a canoe in still water is perfectly simple, the procedure in a ground swell is much more complicated. The canoe must be launched on an incoming rush of water, and held there, stern on. On the next lifting you hold up the canoe end with all your strength, to prevent its being crushed by the rocks of the beach, while the pas- senger climbs in, crawls to the bow and sits down quickly in the bottom of the canoe. The next time the canoe is lifted by the swell, you must boldly push it out, and using your paddle as a vaulting pole, jump and land and kneel in the stern, all in one motion, before the canoe gets beyond your reach, and yet is far enough out to float with your added weight.
There was nothing to do but to keep a casual countenance and put it through. I shudder to this day to think what might have happened. Had anything gone wrong,
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would the assembled relatives and friends have decided that a man who couldn't take better care of a lady than to dump her into the sea at 45 degrees Fahrenheit was not fit to take care of a wife, and have appeared in Church to forbid the bans? Mercifully, I never knew the answer; for all went success- fully and in due sequence.
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But it was not all outdoor life. There were many gay supper parties at our houses, or trips to the head of the Sound for Mrs. Somes' "popovers," all with much good talk and good comradeship.
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