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Gc 974.102 B23h 1115237
To Airport
Thomas Island
Shipbuilding Biological Laboratory at old Leland Shipyard
C
Goose Cove
Jac
Eden Baptist Church
Thomas Bay
Thompson Island and the Bridge
Shipbuilding
Heath
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The fire of 1947 started here
Alleys Island
Shipbuilding
WESTERN BAY
Stage Coaches from Bar Harbor to the Bridge
Indian Point
Plack Id.
Shipbuilding
Bernard
de Gregoire
Town line as drawn in 1795.
Doctor's Creek
High Head
This way It the early settlers drove their cattle to the pasture land of the Heath
Little Round Pond
SOMESVILLE 1762
Somes Pond
Ripple Pond Mu
Round Pond
Captain Argall in the Man 'of War "Treasurer destroyed the French Jesuit Mission on Somes Sound in 1613.
SOMES SOUND
Pretty Marsh
Long Pond
Beech Hill
Hodgdon Pond
Joseph P.Sims Fecit. 1949.
Brown
Mt
F
Green Id.
This line and Somes Sound formed the division between the Bernard (English) and de Gregoire( French) grants.
Salis
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 01085 8048
Lac's Harbor. by Cadillac to D'Iberville
Pot and Kettle Club.
pratory ion
FRENCHMAN'S
BAY
Lookout Point
Hulls Cove
Shipyard
Two French traitors tomahawked by Pierre LeMoyne D'Iberville in 1692.
D'Iberville's Frigate "Poly" came here so often as to give the bay the name of Frenchman's Bay.
Cake Wood
Bar Island Sheep Porcupine Burnt
Porcupine
Witch Hole Pond
youngs Mt.
Bald Porcupine
BAR HARBOR VILLAGE
Great Hill
Interlaken Hill
Kebo Golf Course
Mª Farland Nt.
y's
Kebo Mt.
Eagle Cáke
The Whitecap
Green Mt. Railway
..........
"now called Cadillac Mt.
The Bubbles
Bubble Pond
Schooner Head Artist Colony 1844-1869.
Sargent Mt.
The Beehive
Pemetic Mt.
Jordan Pond
Great Head
The Triad
Jordan Mt. ad lock Pond
Gorham Mt
Otter Creek Champlain .. 1604.
Cadillac's Passage
rds.
t.
BAR HARBOR AND VICINITY 1796-1946
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
THE STORY OF Bar Harbor
To the men and women who founded Eden, Maine April 4, 1796
THE STORY OF Bar Harbor Meine
An Informal History Recording One Hundred and Fifty Years In the Life of a Community
RICHARD WALDEN HALE, JR.
Ives Washburn, Inc. New York
.
Copyright 1949 by Ives Washburn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.
1
Printed in the United States of America By the Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, New York
Contents
Introduction
1115237 II
I Explorers and Claimants 15
2 Feudal Acadia 40
3 Proprietors and Settlers 70
4 The Town of Eden, Maine 98
5 Artists and Boarders-with a Military Inter- lude I26
6 Cottagers versus Boarders 148
7 The Summer Colony 167
8 Recent Events 190
9 The Great Fire, and After 216
Sources, Notes, and Bibliography 243
Index 253
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5
-
Illustrations
BETWEEN PAGES 100-IOI
I Bar Harbor of the hotel era
2 Hull's Cove today
3 Sand Beach and the Beehive as Thomas Cole saw them
4 Hull's Cove as Thomas Cole saw it
5 George B. Dorr and Mrs. J. P. Morgan
6 Stanwood
7 Scene at the Bar Harbor Horse Show
8 Robin Hood Park from Newport-Champlain Mountain
9 The second Rodick House
IO The Green Mountain Railway
II Sand Beach and the Beehive
I2 The countryside chosen by the early settlers
I3 The Beehive and Frenchman's Bay
14 A "Rockefeller Road"
A view of Bar Harbor in the late 1870's
16 A shipbuilder's residence
17 The harbor in the 1900's
I8 The harbor today
6
Introduction
THIS book was written because the late David O. Rodick had a vision of what a town history might be and might mean, and especially what the history of Bar Harbor might be. He did not see the Maine statute that authorizes a town to have its history printed, as part of its sesquicentennial observances, as just an authorization to glorify the early settlers and pander to genealogical pride. He saw it, rather, as affording a chance to Bar Harbor to find out what had made it what it was, and then let the world know what had so been discovered. That, he thought, was the fitting way to celebrate the town's one hundred and fiftieth year.
This vision he imparted to others, for Bar Harbor is a Maine town, and therefore a pure democracy, where the whole community, in town meeting assembled, makes de- cisions. First, he convinced the statutory committee on the sesquicentennial observance that the writing of such a his- tory was worth recommending. The committee promptly rewarded him by co-opting him-that seems the best word in the dictionary to describe what actually happened-as its chairman. Then he and his committee persuaded the town that a proper use of the town's money-raising power would be to lay before the world its story, and that such a laying before the world might be paid for by a bond issue. Let no one think such persuasion was a light or idle feat. New England town meetings take some convincing, espe- cially when it is a matter of a bond issue, where the property
11
I2
Introduction
of everyone in town is the ultimate security for the loan. Finally, just before the death of Mr. Rodick in the autumn of 1946, he led his committee in the selection of an historian, and the author of these lines was fortunate enough to be so selected.
As far as he is concerned, "fortunate" is the correct word, for the compiling of this book has been to him an enjoyable education. It was not unexpected that the collection of material should lead to knowledge of libraries and archives, and of the interesting and kindly people who run them; but it was unexpected that research should roam so far afield, and that Washington, Chicago, Paris, London, and Ottawa should have so much to tell about a Maine town. Nor was it unexpected to have the cordial help of local officials; to have the whole town take one in as a member and fellow citizen was an especial pleasure. Elsewhere, I have tried to name, in print, those who seemed to have earned most thanks. Here is an opportunity to generalize such gratitude.
One privilege came in a most unwanted form. For it is a privilege to see a community meet disaster squarely and overcome it. It was as this book was being written that the Bar Harbor Great Fire occurred. The author was an eye witness of the closing scenes. The steadfastness and courage there exhibited he will long remember. The cause of know- ing these things was regrettable; the knowing it something to be grateful for.
Such opportunities make an author realize how much more might have been done, and how endless is the task of trying to know a community. But such a task must come to an end-and the story of Bar Harbor must be put in print, as it here has been done, in the hope that somehow David Rodick's intent can shine through the words here written,
13
Introduction
and that the reader may catch a glimpse of the vision of a his- tory that tells a community-and the world, too-what made it. Whatever the value of this book, that vision is worth trying to pass on.
Chesnut Hill, Massachusetts Richard Walden Hale, Jr.
1 Explorers and Claimants
N VARIOUS minds the name "Bar Harbor" will call forth various mental pictures. Probably most who hear
L .it will think first of a summer resort, where against a background of mountains meeting the blue sea water there are gaiety and even luxury. There are others who will see in their mind's eye a national park, the only one in New England and the only one given by private individuals to the people of the United States, where the view from Cadillac Mountain forms a natural turning point in many a motor trip to Maine. Still others, again, will think of Bar Harbor as a center of genetic research, especially in the field of cancer. For Bar Harbor is the sort of place that does cause a picture to come to mind, as was proved when fire struck the town in 1947, to become front-page news in Paris and to elicit contributions for rebuilding from the natives of New Guinea. True, however, as these concep- tions of Bar Harbor may be, they are incomplete, and fail to be the whole truth, unless they recognize that Bar Harbor is all the things named, and more too, because men and women took its natural advantages and made something out of them. They were able to do that because they were part of a self-governing Maine town, whose citizens were masters of their own fate.
The community began its existence in 1796, when Maine was still part of Massachusetts, but its name then was Eden, not Bar Harbor. Ever since then, when Eden was set off
15
16
The Story of Bar Harbor
from the Town of Mount Desert by a dividing line from Otter Creek to High Head, the northeastern side of Mount Desert Island has governed itself and has made itself what it is. In the course of those years, nominal changes have taken place. In 1820 the State of Maine was split off from Massachusetts; in 1848, for a petty reason, a tiny corner was taken from the Town of Eden and added to Trenton, so that now motorists crossing Mount Desert Narrows drive a hundred yards before entering the town limits 1 of Bar Harbor. In 1918 Eden's name was changed to Bar Harbor, but in essentials the Bar Harbor of today is the same as the Eden of 1796.
Should its first two settlers, John Thomas and Israel Hig- gins, come back to earth today, they would find-after getting over the shock of the radio, the motor car, and such modern improvements-that they could fit into the town's life with perfect naturalness. They would find some changes in the way in which the town is managed: the last fence viewer was appointed twenty years ago; the of- fice of hog reeve has become a time-honored practical joke; a full-time town manager, appointed a few months ago, now performs the work of the former tythingmen and in part that of the selectmen. Clerk Thomas would find that religious life is different, and that his Eden Baptist Church no longer draws its support from the town treasury. Cap- tain Higgins would find that the harbor off his homestead is filled with yachts instead of lumber schooners like his Sally, and that catering to tourists and cancer research have replaced lumbering as the chief local industries. They would both find a new name for their old town, that the name "Bar Harbor," which at first meant only Captain Higgins's cove, now applies to the whole area within the town limits, and that the name "Eden" has become restricted to
17
Explorers and Claimants
Clerk Thomas's home and its neighborhood, the so-called "Thomas District." But once such superficialities had been set aside, they would discover that the present-day Bar Harbor is very much what their Eden was. It is in that con- tinuity of community life that there lies much of the sig- nificance in Bar Harbor's history, in the way that what may be called the "Maine way of life" has flourished there and has remained vigorous, despite all the outside influences brought in by the Mount Desert Hills.
At the same time, those outside influences have helped also to make Bar Harbor what it is. The Mount Desert Hills have brought explorers, soldiers, sailors, scientists, art- ists, and tourists, who have profoundly modified the town's life. As a landfall in the 1500's they may have brought Cor- tereal or Verrazano; in the 1600's they certainly brought Samuel de Champlain and John Winthrop. As a conceal- ment, in King William's War they made the waters north- east of the town a staging area for the French navy. As an Indian rendezvous they attracted Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac, to formulate his design of being a feudal lord among the savages, which plan he later carried out to such a profitable conclusion at Detroit. In the 1760's the way the mountains stood out on the map may have induced His Excellency Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts to dream of making the whole island, including its north- eastern portion, Bar Harbor, into a patrimony he might develop-a design cut short by his recall to England. A century later, Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River school of painting, discovered among the hills sub- jects for brush and pencil that induced him to bring his friends there, and thus indirectly to start a summer colony. In World War I those same mountains, as the late Alles- sandro Fabbri discovered, made trans-Atlantic radio recep-
1 8
The Story of Bar Harbor
tion certain, so that twenty-four-hour contact might be kept with Europe through his Otter Creek station. To the late George Bucknam Dorr those mountains were a national heritage which he obtained and turned over to the federal government, for all America to enjoy. From Mount Cadil- lac, in World War II, radar beams searched the coast, as a defense against submarines, and to that landfall came Ger- man secret agents. Thus, in diverse ways, the Mount Desert range brought to Bar Harbor these and many other outside influences, upon which the town seized for incorporation into its life.
Naturally, the Mount Desert Hills came before the Bar Harbor community existed, and influenced the site before the town was founded. Those hills-called mountains individually because they stand up so sheer from the sea, like a little bit of Norway on the Maine coast-were cut by glacial action from an upthrust of granite through the pre-Cambrian rocks of eastern Maine. They look higher than they are, but indeed they form the highest seacoast eminence between Labrador and Blue Hill, near Boston.2 Because of their visibility from the ocean, they have formed a landfall from the beginning of recorded history. Perhaps they were seen before the time of Columbus; probably they were surveyed before Jamestown; certainly they saw set- tlers before Plymouth. Only accidents of war and boundary disputes kept the potential settlers they brought, from making Bar Harbor one of the oldest places on the Atlantic coast. In consequence, those hills have peopled the early history of Bar Harbor with shadowy sails of French and English ships, of at least one Dutch frigate, and even of Portuguese caravels and perhaps of viking long boats, standing in to make a landfall, sheering off for fear of wreck on the bold rocks and submerged reefs. Thus, for
19
Explorers and Claimants
perhaps two hundred and fifty years before the present town of Bar Harbor, then known as "Eden," was set off and separated from its neighbor of Mount Desert, it had a prehistory of explorations, attempts at settlement, border warfare, and boundary disputes.
This prehistory did two things to the town. First of all, it had the negative effect of postponing the settlement of Bar Harbor until it could take place under conditions more like those of the crossing of the Appalachians than the set- tlement of colonial New England. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, it threw over the town an aura of romance that has been an important local asset. For ex- ample, the Reverend Benjamin Franklin De Costa, whose series of guidebooks did so much to build up the town, came to Bar Harbor and built his house near Kennarden Lodge, the present Dorrance estate, because the name "Mount Desert" caught his fancy, one hot summer day, and because that catching of his fancy led him to read what his antiquarian friend, General Watts De Peyster, had writ- ten about the island's early Jesuit colony. Similarly, Presi- dent Charles William Eliot of Harvard increased his love of the coast as he sailed down it, by trying to identify for his historian friend, Francis Parkman, the routes taken by Samuel de Champlain. From that interest, in part, flowed the stimulus which led President Eliot to found the Han- cock County trustees of public reservations, the body which first of all erected a Champlain monument and then evolved the district into the Acadia National Park.3
This atmosphere of romance has had other influences on the town. It has caused not only summer visitors but even some of the islanders to dig for treasure hoards, as well as to dream of the thrilling past. It has inspired a local best seller, The Jesuit's Ring. To the imagination-catching
20
The Story of Bar Harbor
names of Mount Desert, reminiscent of Champlain, of Frenchman's Bay, reminiscent of Pierre Le Moyne d'Iber- ville, have been added others, such as Acadia National Park, Sieur de Monts Spring, Cadillac Mountain, which impart more deeply the flavor of the historic past. Consequently, it is a very real part of the writing of the history of Bar Harbor to set forth the basis for the old guidebook claims that "this island was probably seen by the Norsemen around 1000 A.D., and also by John and Sebastian Cabot." 4
The problem of the Norse voyages is typical of the at- tractive historical possibilities that lend charm to the dis- trict. Just because no one can definitely plot the courses sailed by the sons and daughters of Eric the Red, or locate the places they described, an amateur historian has a chance to do his own speculating. He can decide for himself how much and how little he will follow each of the two some- times conflicting sagas-that of Vinland, or the "Flatey Book," and that of the Greenlanders or the "Hauksbok." He will choose for himself whether he will look for one settlement at Lief's Booths or two, at Hop and at Straumey. He will try his own hand at interpreting viking naviga- tional terms, for a day's sail or a time of year. He will please himself in fixing what beaches of today are the "Wonder- strands" and what relationship they bear to Hop, Straumey, or Lief's Booths. And if he honestly decides to trust the "Hauksbok" rather than the "Flatey Book," and to seek for Straumey as apart from Lief's first landing place, and as somewhere north of the "Wonderstrands" and therefore north of Cape Cod he can seek for the second home of the vikings at or near Bar Harbor. With much the same reason- ing as Professor Babcock used in bringing Straumey and Straumfiord to Passamaquoddy Bay, he can bring them to Frenchman's Bay. A mountainous island, a fiord, hills to the
21
Explorers and Claimants
northeast, a tide rip-the definition the "Hauksbok" gives of Straumey will fit Mount Desert Island, Somes Sound, the Gouldsboro Hills and Sullivan's Reversing Falls, as well as they will Dochet Island, or, again, Fisher's Island. And on the mainland, at Sullivan, where are found the many Sor- rento shell heaps, could well be the meeting place with the "Skraelings," as the Norse called Indians and Eskimos alike, where Thorfinn Karsevni's bull and its roarings saved the tiny colony. And so, with an active imagination, one can put at or near Bar Harbor the homestead where Gudrid gave birth to Snorri Karsevnisen, the first white child in America, and the huts where Freydis murdered the five women.5
But before indulging further in such flights of historical imagination, one should remember to come to earth and stick to historical honesty. It is one thing to suggest that because Straumey might be anywhere on the Atlantic coast from Virginia to Labrador-so obscurely is it described- it could be one's favorite summer resort. It is another thing to juggle evidence. And there is one vital piece of evidence about all voyages to Bar Harbor. To get to Bar Harbor one must enter the Bay of Fundy. The Town of Bar Harbor, the southern point of which, Otter Creek Point, is in latitude 44° 18' 30" north, is north of Cape Sable, the southern point of Nova Scotia, which is in latitude 43° 10' north, or about 68 sea miles and 78 land miles further south. There- fore, to get to Bar Harbor from the north one must make a more than right-angle turn at Cape Sable, and to get to Bar Harbor from the south, if one knows the location of Cape Sable, one must be willing to enter the Bay of Fundy. This fact about the position of Bar Harbor has controlled all long-distance voyages thither. It proves, first of all, that Bar Harbor cannot be Lief Ericson's Vinland, which is not
22
The Story of Bar Harbor
only southwest of but in a straight line from the "Wonder- strands." It also throws doubt on any voyage by a Cabot, from Newfoundland, obscure as are the records of those voyages.
Little is known of the voyages of the Cabots, except that they discovered Newfoundland. Only if John Cabot had sailed south, not north, from Newfoundland, would he have seen Mount Desert Island, and then only if he had turned slightly northwards in crossing the Bay of Fundy. Strictly speaking, he would have seen Bar Harbor-except for the peak of Cadillac Mountain-only if he had thereafter entered Frenchman's Bay. Since most accounts have Cabot sailing north, not south, and since most explorers of those days feared to come unnecessarily close inshore, it is highly unlikely that he saw Mount Desert Island, and even more unlikely that he coasted along the shores of Bar Harbor- Eden.
It is far more possible that Bar Harbor's first visitor was some Portuguese. As early as 1504 Gaspar Cortereal was given what rights to the Newfoundland coast the king of Portugal had to give. This grant was frequently re- newed until 1604, and as early as 1521 is known to have brought in some taxable revenue. But just what happened in this Portuguese period seems destined to re- main unknown. Understandably, the Cortereals kept close- mouthed about their voyages, in order to preserve their monopoly. Furthermore, they had bad luck. At least two of their voyages ended in disaster and the deaths of men who had locked in their brains knowledge that they might have revealed later. But some Portuguese must have come near Bar Harbor, for at some time during these years some Portuguese sailor gave the name "Rio Fondo," or "Deep River," to Fundy. There was opportunity for a Portuguese
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Explorers and Claimants
to see Mount Desert Island, and perhaps land at Bar Harbor, and then hold his tongue about it.
Another Portuguese, again, may have his place in the town's history, though he sailed in Spanish employ. That was Estevan Gómez, who in 1521 sailed the New England waters, and lightly gave the name, "The Land of Estavan Gómez" to Maine on the map he drew. It is just possible that his "Rio Dos Montanos" or "River of the Mountains" is Somes Sound. But as it is equally possible, or even more likely, that he referred to the Palisades of the Hudson River, he deserves no more attention in the town's history than this cursory mention.6
Far greater is the importance of Giovanni Verrazano, the Italian who sailed for Francis I of France. That he came within miles of Mount Desert Island is doubtful, but he unwittingly named part of it. It was he who seems to have invented the name "Acadia." For some reason or other, perhaps to glamorize his discoveries, perhaps from mis- understanding the speech of the Abenaki Indians, he gave to the lands of Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia the name "Arcadia." Subsequent explorers and mapmakers shortened it to "Acadia," or sometimes to "Lacadia" or "L'Acadie" or, again, "La Cadie." This name apparently stuck, because it corresponded with an Abenaki word- ending, the "Quoddy" or "Cady" meaning "place" which terminates such names as "Passamaquoddy" or "Shubena- cadie." So it was that a venturesome explorer who died as a pirate in Santo Domingo gave its name to the Acadia National Park.7
These voyagers-whose courses are so indeterminate that it is not provable that they did not see Mount Desert Island-were followed by another set of voyagers, who almost certainly did not see Mount Desert Island. These
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The Story of Bar Harbor
were the men of many nationalities who came to the coast of the Acadia mainland when attracted by furs and fish, or by the rumor that somewhere near the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, up some river or other, was a fabled city of Norumbega, whose riches might be compared to those of Mexico and Peru. In consequence, voyage after voyage was made to the Penobscot River and to Pentagoet, the harbor at its mouth which is today called Castine, in search for beaver skins or the fabled city. Information about these voyages is fragmentary, and identifications are hard to make. Phrases the explorers used might apply equally well to Aga- menticus at York as to Mount Cadillac at Bar Harbor. However, most reports give a clew to prove that wherever they went they did not go near Bar Harbor. Mount Desert Island has only two sand beaches, one of shell sand at Great Head, one facing north at Hadley's Sand Point. To a mar- iner sailing by Mount Desert it appears as a purely rocky island. Nor are there important beaches readily observable between Roque Island to the north and east and Old Or- chard Beach to the south and west. Therefore, if an explorer reported a beach near a mountain, the mountain he saw was Agamenticus and not Cadillac, and he thus eliminated him- self from the town's history.
It is idle, and not truly part of the town's history, here to list such explorers who did not see the island. It is almost equally idle to list the paper claims to Maine or Acadia. As Parkman wrote, the kings of England were willing to make grants of the future United States that included Quebec, the kings of France were willing to make grants of the fu- ture Canada that included the site of the present city of Washington. It is meaningless to talk of Sir Humphrey Gil- bert and De Roberval, as it is meaningless to talk of Alfonsec or Thevet, Walker or Ferdinandino, Pring or Hanham, as
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