USA > Maine > Hancock County > Mount Desert > Mount Desert : a history > Part 14
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Their uses for money were few; but some es- sentials to comfort they must procure at the store, seven miles away, at Southwest Harbor, in re- turn for money or its equivalent. To get money they could sell or exchange butter and eggs at the store, and they could sell in Boston dried fish and feathers. The boys shot birds enough in a single year to yield over a hundredweight of feathers, worth fifty cents a pound in Boston.
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The family shipped their feathers to Boston every year by a coasting vessel ; and this product repre- sented men's labor, whereas the butter and eggs represented chiefly the women's labor. The but- ter was far the best of the cash resources ; it sold in the vicinity at twelve and a half cents a pound. There was one other source of money, namely, smoked herring. The herring which abound in these waters had at that time no value for bait ; but smoked herring could be sold in New York, which was the best market for them, at from seventy-five cents to one dollar and ten cents a box, each box holding half a bushel. The her- ring were caught, for the most part, in gill-nets; for there were then no weirs and no seines. The family had their own smoke-house, and made the boxes themselves from lumber which was sawed for them at the Somesville or the Duck Brook sawmill. Each of these sawmills was at least nine miles distant from Baker's Island ; so that it was a serious undertaking, requiring favorable weather, to boat the lumber from the mill and land it safely at the rough home beach. The family nailed the boxes together, out of the sawed lumber in the early fall, and packed them with the fragrant fish; and then some coasting vessel carried the finished product to distant New York, and brought back, after a month or two, clear cash to pay for the winter's stores.
In this large and united family the boys
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stayed at home and worked for their parents until they were twenty-one years of age, and the girls stayed at home until they were married and had homes of their own or had come of age. It was not all work for the children on the island, or, indeed, for the father and mother. In the long winter evenings they played checkers and fox and geese ; and the mother read to the family until the children grew old enough to take their share in reading aloud. The boys, as soon as they were ten or twelve years of age, were in and out of boats much of the time, and so attained that quick, instinctive use of oar, sail, and tiller in which lies safety. When they grew older they had the sport of gunning, with the added interest of profit from the feathers. Their domestic ani- mals were a great interest as well as a great care. Then, they always had before them some of the most splendid aspects of nature. From their sea- girt dwelling they could see the entire hemisphere of the sky ; and to the north lay the grand hills of Mount Desert, with outline clear and sharp when the northwest wind blew, but dim and soft when southerly winds prevailed. In every storm a magnificent surf dashed up on the rockbound isle. In winter the low sun made the sea toward the south a sheet of shimmering silver ; and all the year an endless variety of colors, shades, and textures played over the surfaces of hills and sea. The delight in such visions is often but half
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conscious in persons who have not the habit of reflection ; but it is nevertheless a real source of happiness, which is soon missed when one brought up amid such pure and noble scenes is set down among the straitened, squalid, ugly sights of a city. On the whole, the survivors of that isolated family look back on their childhood as a happy one; and they feel a strong sense of obligation to the father and mother - particularly to the mother, because she was a person of excellent faculties and an intellectual outlook. Like most of her people for two generations, she was a member of the Congregational Church ; and in the summer time she took the eldest children nearly every Sunday to the church at Southwest Harbor, going seven miles each way in an open boat. To be sure, the minister taught that hell was paved with infants' skulls, and descriptions of hell-fire and the undying worm formed an important part of every discourse. Some of the children supposed themselves to accept what they heard at church; but the mother did not. She bought books and read for herself; and by the time she had borne half a dozen children she could no longer accept the old beliefs, and be- came a Universalist, to which more cheerful faith she adhered till her death.
In 1828 the government built a lighthouse on Baker's Island, and William Gilley was appointed light-keeper, with a compensation of $350 a year
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in money, the free occupation of a house, and all the sperm oil he could use in his household. He held this place until the year 1849, when, on the coming into power of the Whig party, he was turned out and a Whig was appointed in his place. Perhaps in recognition of his long service it was considerately suggested to him that he might retain his position if he should see fit to join the dominant party ; but to this overture he replied, with some expletives, that he would not change his political connection for all the lighthouses in the United States. In these twenty years William Gilley undoubtedly was able to lay up some por- tion of his pay, besides improving his buildings, livestock, boats, tools, and household furniture, and from these savings he was able to furnish a little money to start his sons each in his own career. The father was himself an irrepressible pioneer, always ready for a new enterprise. In 1837, long before he was turned out of the lighthouse, he bought for three hundred dollars Great Duck Island, an uninhabited island about five miles southwest of Baker's Island and even more diffi- cult of access, his project being to raise livestock there. Shortly after he ceased to be light-keeper, when he was about sixty-three years old, and his youngest children were grown up, he went to live on Great Duck, and there remained almost alone until he was nearly eighty years of age. His wife Hannah had become somewhat infirm,
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and was unable to do more than make him occa- sional visits on Duck Island. She died at sixty- nine, but he lived to be ninety-two. Each lived in their declining years with one of their married sons, Hannah on Little Cranberry and William on Baker's.1
A somewhat different but equally representa- tive career was that of Deacon Henry H. Clark, who was for many years the most noteworthy resident of Southwest Harbor. He was born on Clark's Point, on February 2, 1811. His father had come from Massachusetts a few years before and built on the beach a humble dwelling of one story with an L projecting somewhat over the water. The region behind the house was a dense thicket of spruce timber running to the water's edge. A few other little dwellings like it stood on the point amid the stumps. A rough trail, called a road, meandered with no apparent end in view from the extremity of the point up over the ridge of land, and soon towards Beech Hill.
The year after Mr. Clark was born the United States declared war with England, and when he was three and a half years old the skirmish called the battle of Norwood's Cove occurred, which he
1 This account of the Gilley family is taken almost without change from the little book entitled John Gilley, Maine Farmer and Fisherman, by Charles W. Eliot, Boston, 1904.
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remembered to the end of his life. It was just before this skirmish that Joseph Moore, an im- mediate ancestor of the Moores now living in Manset, came to the house of Mrs. Clark saying that the British were likely to come on shore, and that they would kill and burn everything and everybody who opposed them, and urging her to flee for life. She placed her children in a boat and rowed across the harbor and found refuge with Peter Dallian, in a house which was well hidden by woods. This affair, though of short duration, made an indelible impression, and Deacon Clark was always delighted to tell of it as his first and only battle.
As young Clark grew up he attended the vil- lage school and later the Blue Hill Academy. At the same time his cousin, Davis Wasgatt Clark, afterwards Bishop Clark, left his home on Beech Hill to attend school, and urged him to go with him, perhaps to become, like his cousin, a preacher of the gospel. To put it into his own words : "I liked the idea of getting out into the world, but I liked better to see money coming in than to seeing it going out, and I did not realize the value of an education." At seventeen Mr. Clark was teaching school at Bar Harbor. He did his own fire-lighting and sweep- ing, and provided, as was the custom, the brooms to sweep with. These were made of spruce brush. About this time he joined the Baptist
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Church, on the south side of the Harbor, and for a half century it was the object of his assiduous care.
He early developed great fondness for the sea. The coasting trade was lively then, and every hamlet had its knot of " skippers." The ambition of the village boys was to become sea-captains and sail a vessel to the West Indies. In 1835, at twenty-four years of age, Clark make his first venture. With Captain Jacob Mayo for his mate he sailed to Boston and started to return on De- cember 15, 1835. They ran into a wintry gale with blinding snow, and at eleven at night saw breakers ahead and were cast ashore. Clark and Mayo got on to a narrow bar of sand which the receding tide made wider, and there they spent the night. Next day they were found by duck hunters and shown a village in the distance, where they got dry clothing and supplies. Then they got their little schooner off, patched her up, and finally reached home safely. Not discouraged, he continued to put his savings into vessels, and whether as skipper or owner steadily prospered. Almost every year saw some craft of his on the stocks, and he became the largest builder and owner of coasting craft on the island. In his last sickness he spoke often of his vessels, whose old and sea-worn hulks were rotting in the cove at home.
In 1836 he married Caroline Richardson of
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Bass Harbor, a happy union that passed the golden-wedding limit. His house was small and intended only for a private residence, but it early became a centre for artists, sportsmen, and other summer wanderers. He was first on the island to hang out a hotel sign, which is now in possession of his son, Henry Clark. He had always insisted that Clark's Point was the place for a steamboat landing, and he built the wharf which offered the earliest steamboat connection on the island.
In 1869 Deacon Clark with foresight and en- ergy began to organize a telegraph company to construct and operate a telegraph line from South- west Harbor through Somesville to Ellsworth. He secured a charter under the name of Tremont and Ellsworth Telegraph Company in May, 1869; the work was completed in 1870, and the company began operations with Mr. Clark as president. One year later, in May, 1871, a branch line was built at Bar Harbor. This company was not finan- cially successful, but it incidentally accomplished much for the development of Mount Desert as a summer resort.
Deacon Clark was always active at town meet- ings, and the boys were interested to hear him speak. He measured his words either in approval or in criticism. He had argumentative qualities, a distinct gift of oratory, - masterful, quaint, homely, self-possessed, and convincing. In his later days he was accorded a seat beside the
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moderator and clerk, where he listened intently to the proceedings, no word of which escaped him.
Deacon Clark was a Baptist, but in 1884, when a movement was made for building a union meeting-house on the north side of the harbor, Deacon Clark was a leader in the movement, con- tributed the land, and agreed to take on himself the cost of building one third of the structure. The house was completed in 1885, and dedicated in September of that year. A Baptist convention of the churches of Hancock County was then holding its session at Southwest Harbor, and many clergymen from abroad were in attendance. The hotels of the village were closed. He kept open house and took the convention almost bodily to his house as his guests. One hundred and fifty persons were entertained by him.
Deacon Clark was a shrewd man in business transactions, unwilling to be outwitted, eager for the best end of a bargain, but magnanimous and always ready to extend a helping hand to the needy and destitute. No man went hungry from his door. In his old age it was interesting to en- gage him in conversation. He seemed easily to master any subject to which he gave his attention, whether the simple details of local concerns or the more complex problems of national policy. One wondered whether if he had received a higher education he would not have commanded a very
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wide influence. He was unwilling to relinquish his hold on business concerns, and long after the time had come for him to seek the rest which he had earned, activity continued to be his nature and habit.
The reminiscences of Mr. Eben M. Hamor of Town Hill afford an interesting glimpse of the social conditions on the island in the first half of the nineteenth century. Mr. Hamor writes : " During Andrew Jackson's second administra- tion, from March 3rd, 1833, to March 3rd, 1837, Capt. William Thompson, who lived on Thomp- son's island, was mail contractor on the route from Ellsworth to Mount Desert; and in the spring of 1836 he employed my father to carry the mail from the Narrows to Southwest Harbor and back, one trip a week, for fifty dollars a year. My father told me I must carry the mail and earn this fifty dollars. On Friday, the 25th day of March, 1836, the day before I was four- teen years of age, I took the mail bag at the Narrows at about four o'clock P. M. and carried it on horseback to the Eden office ; thence home to my father's on Town Hill. The next morning, it being my fourteenth birthday, I carried the mail to the Mount Desert office (Somesville), thence to Southwest Harbor, arriving there about eleven o'clock. At about one o'clock I started on my return trip arriving at the Narrows about
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four." The mode of carrying the mail when the ground was bare was, from the Narrows to Mount Desert, sometimes on horseback, and sometimes with one horse and wagon, and the remainder of the way on horseback. When there was snow enough, a horse and sleigh could go over the whole route, though the road over Beech Hill to Southwest Harbor was nothing more than a bridle-path.
" The bridge over the Narrows was built in the winter of 1836-7. Captain William Thompson and John M. Noyes built it on contract and it cost about $5000. Thompson's island was then part of the town of Eden. It was set off from Eden and annexed to Trenton in June, 1847. Captain Thompson kept a variety store, and built vessels, and was one of the prominent business men of the town. About a mile from the Nar- rows on the road to Eden post office, Elisha Cousins and his son Nahum had a blacksmith shop, where they did blacksmith work for their neighbors.
" The Eden post office was kept by Leonard J. Thomas in his dwelling house, which stood where John Hodgkins' house now stands. The settle- ment was known as the 'Thomas District.' The Thomases were, for many years, prominent and influential citizens of the town of Eden, but like many other families the name has almost become extinct in that neighborhood. Leonard J. Thomas
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and his father, Nicholas Thomas, at that time carried on the tanning and shoemaking business, having a tan yard and shoe shop and keeping four or five men employed making shoes and boots during the fall and winter. Their bark mill was run by horse power. Some time previous to this, Nicholas Thomas had a wind-mill on the ledge at the southwest of his house, in which Eleazer Higgins ground the neighboring farmers' grain.
"The office in Mr. Thomas' house was the only post office in Eden, and consequently people came there from all parts of the town. I well remember frequently seeing Mr. Tobias Roberts from 'Bar Island ' as the place was then called, Edward Brewer from Hull's Cove, John McFar- land from Salisbury Cove, and many others at the office after their mail.
" After I had been two or three trips Captain Thompson advised me to ask Squire Thomas to swear me in as a mail carrier ; so when I arrived at the office I requested him to administer the oath of mail carrier to me. The office was full of people, many of them strangers, and I, a boy who never had heard an oath administered, was required to stand there in the presence of that crowd, hold up my hand, announce my name and repeat after him the oath of allegiance to the United States ; and that I would faithfully perform the duties of mail carrier. I never was so frightened before or since.
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" The next place on my route was Town Hill, which received the name on account of the town owning a tract of land containing 450 acres extending over the hill from northeast to south- west. The settlers were Gideon Mayo, Simeon Hadley, Amos T. Hadley, Samuel Higgins, David Higgins, James Mayo, Joseph Higgins, Thomas Knowles, William Hamor, Thomas Mayo, and Benjamin Kittredge. They were occupied in farming and lumbering. The next settler on the route was Dr. Kittredge, who lived across the bound of the town of Mount Desert, where his son William Kittredge, now lives. He moved to Mount Desert in 1799, and was the only practi- cing physician on the island for many years.
" About one mile farther south was the Mount Desert post office, kept by John Somes. The village was then called 'Between the Hills,' afterwards Somesville, and it was then the most important business place on the island. It con- sisted of nine families, Dr. Kendall Kittredge, Captain Eben E. Babson, David Richardson, Timothy Mason, Abraham Somes, Daniel Somes, John Somes, John Somes, Jr., and Isaac Somes. There were in the place one small store, one blacksmith shop, one shoe-maker's shop, one tan yard, two ship yards, one bark mill, one saw mill, one lath mill, one shingle mill, one grist mill, and one school house in which schools and meet- ings were held.
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" The John Somes family, John Jr., Jacob, and Abraham, kept the stores, built vessels, ran the blacksmith shop and were interested in the saw and grist mills. Of the Abraham Somes family, George B. was engaged in the mill business, sawing long lumber, laths and shingles. He also owned an interest in the grist mill. Isaac owned and operated a carding and fulling mill, where the farmers from all parts of the island and ad- jacent islands and main land brought their wool to be carded, and their cloth that their wives had woven, to have it sheared, fulled and colored. The Daniel Somes family, David and Lewis, were tanners and shoemakers, and kept some six or more men making boots and shoes during the most part of the year. Some of these men were William S. Richardson, John Wasgatt, Nathan Salisbury, Israel Havens, William B. Stevens, Haskel Norwood, and Jacob Randlett. I dis- tinctly remember Old Uncle Abraham and Uncle John Somes and how they tended the grist mill by turns, one tending one week, the other the next; with their long coats and hats all covered with meal and flour. They appeared to me as very venerable men. I do not remember much about Uncle Daniel. They were the sons of Lieutenant Abraham Somes, the first settler of Somesville, and the other Someses mentioned were his grandsons.
" Timothy Mason was a ship builder and at one
Copyright by Charles A. Townsend
PATH TO JORDAN POND
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time lived at Oak Hill, where he built a small vessel and hauled it to Somesville. He was a son of the William Mason who was killed at Bar Harbor by the British in the war of 1812. David Richardson was a farmer and lumberman. He was a son of James Richardson, the first Richardson that settled on Mount Desert. The road ran to the west of all the houses in the vil- lage except David Richardson's, and crossed the brook near the cemetery. A branch mail ran from here to Seal Cove, where Squire William Heath was postmaster.
"There was a trail on the east side of Den- nings pond (as Echo lake was then called) but the road I travelled led over Beach hill and across the mountains to the head of Norwoods cove. There were eleven families living on Beach hill and they were located in the following order, going toward Southwest Harbor : Richard Rich- ardson, Stephen Richardson, David Seavey, Na- thaniel Richardson, Stephen Richardson, 2nd, John Richardson, William Atherton, David Was- gatt, Asa Wasgatt, John Clark, and Reuben Bil- lings. They too were occupied in farming and lumbering. There was a school house near the northern part of the settlement, and a saw mill at the outlet of Dennings pond. Asa Wasgatt was a local Methodist preacher and John Clark was the father of Davis Clark, who became Bishop Clark.
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"The post office at Southwest Harbor was kept by Captain David King in his two-story house on Kings point where his son Joseph now lives. Henry Jones of Ellsworth was deputy collector and lived in one part of Captain King's house. The inhabitants of Southwest Harbor were mostly engaged in coasting and fishing. A large number of fishing vessels were owned there. Many of them were sent in the spring to the Mag- delene Islands for herring, which were brought to Southwest Harbor or the neighborhood, smoked, boxed, and shipped to the westward, making a large business. After the vessels discharged their herring they were fitted out for shore or bank fishing, which business they followed for at least four months, to entitle them to a bounty which the United States paid, subject to certain condi- tions. Smoke houses were located all along the shores, in which the Magdelene herring were smoked in the spring, and the shore herring in the fall. The principal business men were the Fernalds on Fernalds Point, James Freeman the blacksmith, Nathan Clark and his sons, Henry, Seth and Eaton, who lived and kept a store and fish stand on Clarks point, and Samuel Osgood and his son, Samuel Osgood, Jr., who kept quite a large store on the south side of the harbor where Horace Durgan afterward lived.
" Rev. Micah W. Strickland, the Congregation- alist minister, who married Miss Mary Ann Kit-
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tredge, daughter of Dr. Kittredge, lived in the house afterwards owned and occupied by Mr. Nehemiah Cousins. The white meeting house stood on the south side of the harbor where it does now. The road to Bass Harbor began near this meeting house and came out at the head of Bass Harbor marsh, near where the bridge now crosses the brook. There was no mail route to Bass Harbor, but a man by the name of Farley was employed by the people there to carry their mail. He was an old man and used to carry his mail matter in a canvas bag. I carried the mail eighteen months, one trip a week, and am sure that there was not a bushel of mail matter in the mail bag at one time while I carried it.
"It may be of interest to know that there were no envelopes or postage stamps at that time. Letters were written on sheets of paper, then folded in different ways according to the fancy or ingenuity of the writer, then sealed with sealing wax. Postage on letters was 64, 12}, 182 and 25 cents, according to the distance, and usually paid by the receiver. There were coins or silver pieces of money in circulation, worth 6} cents called fourpence, half penny, - 12} cents called nine- pence. One fourpence half penny and one nine- pence were worth 182 cents. I do not think that there was a daily or semi-weekly paper taken on the island at that time. Postage on weekly papers was fifty cents per year, paid by the subscribers."
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Thirty-five years after the times thus described by Mr. Hamor, when Mr. Dodge printed his little history, guide book, and directory, a considerable change had taken place. There were then (1871) in the town of Mount Desert eight general or variety stores, the same number in Eden, and thir- teen in Tremont. Dividing among the villages, there were five at Somesville, five at Bass Harbor, four at Southwest Harbor, three at Bar Harbor, two each at Eden, Salsbury's Cove, and Goose Cove, and one each at Seal Cove, Center, Town Hill, Bartlett's Island, Northeast Harbor, and Long Pond. There were also three "merchants" on the Cranberry Islands. Most of these "stores" were very small, but at each of the principal vil- lages one at least carried a considerable amount and variety of stock. The Whitings at Somes- ville, the Holdens at Bass Harbor, Clark & Parker at Southwest Harbor, kept substantial country stores, while the Prebles on Great Cran- berry, the Hadlocks on Little Cranberry, and Dea- con Kimball at Northeast Harbor did a consider- able trade with passing coasters and fishermen who came in for harbor. The trades practiced among the people were naturally those most available in small communities, such as those of the carpenter, blacksmith, mason, cobbler, and cooper. In the four towns there were, according to Mr. Dodge's carefully compiled Business Direc- tory, thirty-four house carpenters, thirty-seven
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