USA > Maine > Hancock County > Bar Harbor > The story of Bar Harbor, an informal history recording one hundred and fifty years in the life of a community > Part 10
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cartoons of Swift-can be learned what sort of life these early visitors led.
The Forest Home set sail from near Hicksville, Long Island, with its cargo of Quakers, in July, 1866-the chronicler religiously avoids heathen names for months and days, and gives such dating as Fifth Day, the Tenth of the Eighth Month, for Friday, August 10. It was that Fifth Day, the Tenth of the Month, that the Willetts and Hicks families spent drifting about in Mount Desert South Har- bor, looking at the mountains and planning to cross over to "the North east end of Mount Desert, which is reported to contain the grandest coast scenery on our Atlantic sea- board." This the party did on the 11th, on a rainy day. Their own account of the adventure should be given in their own inimitable words.
Here is the description of the start: "After a deal of mysterious consultation, the ladies all disappeared in the cabin, whence they soon after emerged, dressed for the trip. They had wisely discarded their hoops and long cumbersome dresses and appeared arrayed in gay-colored balmoral skirts, white stockings, and fancy head-dresses. The latter were of four varieties, comprising sailor and Scotch caps, with a gentleman's straw hat and one of black felt." So dressed, the party climbed into Deacon Clark's sloop and set sail in the light air for Otter Creek, which was reached only by double banking oars, when they were becalmed at Hunter's Beach Head. Then, after landing "the rain com- menced in earnest," and "the gentlemen donned their yel- low 'oilers' and the ladies put on india rubber overcoats and oil-cloth caps. In this novel apparel, which was more useful than ornamental," they "marched gaily off in the rain." The party took the old "path under the Mountain," came out at Monument Cove, and started making to itself the most
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exaggerated picture of the beauties of the coast. Monument Cove was where "the sea had here eaten its way into the rock, making a basin of about two hundred feet wide and the same in length, with walls of seventy feet sheer depth to the roaring surf below." Then the narrator told how "it was a pretty sight to watch the party, in their pic- turesque costumes, winding in single file along the narrow woodland path, often stopping to avoid a drooping limb, or to gather specimens of moss and flowers." Eventually, after failing to get free glasses of milk at Great Head, the expedition reached the Lynam farmhouse, and proceeded to praise the beauties of the "Spouting Horn," which they estimated at one hundred feet high, and Anemone Cave, which they knew by Church's name of "Devil's Oven." They considered this to be one hundred and fifty feet long, one hundred feet wide, and fifty feet high, to be entered only by boat at high tide. If they so doubled the measurements of everything they saw, it is no wonder that Captain Mayo, their guide, "who was a very jolly fellow, entertained us by relating some of his sea-faring adventures in foreign lands." With so gullible an audience, he must have had a field day.
But probably he enjoyed the audience, too, for they were appreciative folk. They had been thrilled when a lady had sung an aria from Ernani, in the evening in Southwest Har- bor. They probably were fun to talk to and fun to sing with, as the sloop returned to Southwest Harbor. And cer- tainly these simple Quakers carried back a high opinion of Bar Harbor. They wrote: "Amid such grand scenery, the landscape painter can find a field for the exercise of the highest genius of his art, and we do not wonder that our artists love to rusticate here, sketching beneath the shadow of these mighty cliffs or exploring the picturesque recesses of their wild ravines." And, they added, "it was the opinion
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of members of the party, who had stood upon most of the celebrated mountain peaks east of the Mississippi, that in comprehensiveness and variety of interest the view from Mount Desert exceeded them all."
Such people, clearly, liked the sort of hotel where one had to get up at 6:30 for a 7 a.m. breakfast, and where complainers were told, "You came here for a change, didn't you?" They liked the feeling that between them and the nearest other summer resort were some fifty to seventy-five miles of sea. They liked the feeling that their fellow guests were literate, intelligent persons with whom one could strike up a friendship. And, in consequence, a special set of manners and customs arose. Fortunately for posterity, Henry Walton Swift, of the Harvard Lampoon, amused himself by writing a versified account of his visit to Mount Desert Island in 1873, when its summer life was at its height. In that account are all the usual jokes of the summer season -there is the attempted pick-up on the boat from Boston. There is the pleasure in the crudity of Bar Harbor's accom- modations. There is humor in the number of Higginses. There is the amazement at the name "Des Isles," and its anglified or yankified pronunciation "Dezizzle." There is the usual sort of jest about "rocking" and its avowed and actual purposes, and about canoeing. There are jokes about the way in which Dr. William J. Morton attended his patients on the porch of the hotel. And anyone can see that a resort that tempts such cheerful verse must have a special quality of its own.
Bar Harbor, in those days, was really isolated, and, as a consequence, attracted people of individuality-just be- cause it was a long ways from anywhere. When, starting in 1871, Dr. Richard H. Derby of New York and Colonel Albert Stickney, sometimes accompanied by Mr. William
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Robeson, rowed their wherries from the Union Boat Club in Boston to the Roberts Wharf in Bar Harbor, it was their custom to take in provisions at Cape Elizabeth. Up to that point they could count on staying at various hotels on the seashore, at Nahant-to them a Capua of luxury-at York, and at other points along the beaches of western Maine. But from the Ocean House on they must fend for them- selves, stay in lighthouses or at farmhouses. All the way along, past Owl's Head, through Fox Island Thoroughfare, and Deer Island Thoroughfare, along Merchant's Row, from Naskeag to Bass Harbor and Southwest Harbor, the masters of the Ilse and the Voyageur met no more personal friends lolling on piazzas. Instead, they renewed acquaint- ance with Maine fishermen and seamen, and took down names of lighthouse keepers to whom to write in the winter. Then, at Deacon Clark's at Southwest Harbor, the signs of rusticators began again. Once more did the wherrymen stop in an inn, to refresh themselves for the trip around Otter Cliffs, Great Head, and Schooner Head. Then, as they passed the Thrumbcap and sighted Ogden's Point, the news spread that the doctor and the colonel were on their way, and again a unique social event took place, as their friends came to greet them. In due course, the press of America reported to the country their safe arrival.
For Bar Harbor, with communications growing, was building up. The Lewiston, of the Portland, Bangor, and Machias Steamship Line, competed regularly with the Rockland, and the Mount Desert and Sullivan's Ulysses. For a while, with the Charles Houghton of independent management, in 1870, and the City of Richmond spelling the Lewiston, Bar Harbor would see four steamers in a week, appearing and reappearing. No wonder the town grew.
The census records show plainly what was happening.
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The trend from the sea to the farm, begun in 1860, was reversed. The number of farmers in Eden, which in 1850 had been thirty-one, and in 1860 as great as ninety-nine, by 1870 had dropped to only sixty-two. Eden had had eighty-one seamen and master mariners in 1850, ninety- nine seamen, mariners, master mariners, fishermen, and master fishermen in 1860, and one hundred and five sailors, sea captains, and fishermen in 1870. New trades were com- ing to town, too. Shipwrights and master carpenters still ply their trades, according to the 1870 census, but their number steadily diminishes. Now there are signs of the new way of life. A cotton factory and a woolen factory employ, between them, ten hands, largely girls of the Leland family. School teachers show the existence of a private school. There are seven hotel keepers listed, seventeen do- mestic servants, two masons, a brickyard employee, a mar- ketman, a watchman, and a daguerrotypist, as well as a locksmith and notary, Leonard J. Thomas, temporarily out of the Eden postoffice in the shuffling by which, at Bar Harbor, Mr. Des Isles adds to his storekeeping the attrac- tion of handing out mail, and then transfers the job to Tobias L. Roberts. Clearly, new influences are coming to what still was a primitive or frontier town.
Yet-and this was the important side of Mount Desert life, as was emphasized in the Harper's article, the old sim- plicity remained. The island was still enough out of the way of New England proper, and in the wilds of Acadia, for the two wherries to row through a fleet of Indian canoes on one trip to Bar Harbor, the same trip on which the wherry- men found no fresh meat when they landed. It was a very sophisticated kind of simplicity at times, when young ladies showed off their knowledge of Latin names for sea shells and plants, and when "wealthy gentlemen of Boston" built
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cottages that needed the year-round attention of a watch- man. It was a kind of simplicity that was inevitably on its way out, as more and more summer visitors poured in. But while it lasted, and while still the voters of Eden saw no reason to raise taxes for any public works, Bar Harbor would have to stay simple. Its roads would remain rough, travel would be by buckboard, sidewalks would be non- existent, water would come from local wells, sanitation would be primitive.
Such was the condition of Bar Harbor in 1873. It had been publicized in a national monthly, the August, 1872 issue of, Harpers. It had fifteen hotels: Carpenter and Brewer's Mountain House, Tobias Robert's Agamont House, J. H. Douglas's Atlantic House, Hamor and Com- pany's Bay View House, Charles Higgins's Deering House, the Ash brothers' Eden House, James Hamor's Hamor House, A. F. Higgins's Harbor House, A. J. Mills's Kebo House, William M. Roberts's Newport House, Tobias L. Roberts's Rockaway House, Daniel Rodick's Rodick House, Fred A. Alley's St. Sauveur House, R. G. Higgins's Way Side Inn, and Samuel Higgins's Ocean House. Three guide books were on sale: the Dodge, Martin, and De Costa books. The hotels were doing a record business, so much so that the newly reelected President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, was planning to extend his summer cruise to Bar Harbor, and was prevented only by bad weather. Bar Har- bor had achieved a national reputation.
Suddenly-overnight, if Henry Walton Swift's verses are to be believed-the Bay View House was emptied:
One night, when laugh and gay reply abounded, And loud with mirth the Bay View's walls resounded, The doctors, in a muffled conversation,
About their troubles held a consultation,
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But listeners keen, by anxious terror stirred, The words of evil omen overheard. Dark fell the cloud; concealment now was vain: From lip to lip flew one wild word: "The drain!" No caution could the dread announcement stay, That all must leave within another day.
What boots it now to bid them stop till morning, The timorous boarders bide no second warning; As robins that a cherry tree invade, Upon a gun-shot rustle from the shade, As rats that overrun the farmer's store, By footsteps startled scamper from the floor- So madly rush the guests from hall and stair In terror flee, and leave the mansion bare. While those whose illness must their flight postpone, In dreary comfort hold the house alone.
It was more than drains. It was typhoid, eight cases of it, with five more to break out when rusticators returned to their homes. Nor was that the only disaster:
But hark! what voices pierce the shuddering breeze? What stirs the natives from accustomed ease? To catch the cry each startled ear is turning: Help! Water! Quick! The Atlantic House is burning!
In valiant deeds the gallant boarders vie One tears the matting from a chamber floor, And bears it bravely through the flaming door; Another brings a tray of tinkling glass, And flings it from a casement on the grass; And Jack, the while, o'ershed with smoke and glory, A bathtub rescues from the upper story; The hostess, with a gesture of despair, Tears from her head her wealth of auburn hair (Not by the roots; t'was fastened by a pin), And casts it far among her trembling kin,
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That to some doting relative or friend, Though she should burn, the treasure may descend. In one short hour the fated house lies low, Upon the dust its smoking rafters glow; And now our friends may drive upon their way, Insured of talk to last them through the day.
Mr. Swift might take it lightly, and celebrate in verse the happenings of the summer. Others took it more seriously -so seriously that when Dr. Derby and Colonel Stickney at last rowed up to the wharf, they landed almost unnoticed. For yet one more crisis had come. Bar Harbor had yet another epidemic, scarlatina in the Rodick House.
All this was national news, and, as such, so much the worse publicity. It was carried in Boston and New York papers, and spread even further. There might be a lighter side to it-such as the formal introduction of her rescuers to a bedridden lady in the Atlantic House before she was carried out to safety-but, very obviously, Bar Harbor was "on the spot." Many a budding summer resort has failed because it got a reputation for unhealthfulness. Others have failed because improvements and sanitation cost too much, and put taxes up to levels above the capacity to pay. Bar Harbor, and the Town of Eden, must act if there was to be a future in the resort business.
Here is what appeared in the Syracuse (New York) Morning Journal, on Monday, September 1, 1873, over the signature, "Amos Cottle." Bar Harbor's problems were succinctly stated:
If the permanent dwellers on this charming island would not have its name a prophetic indication of its fate, they must clean up and secure an abundant supply of pure water. There must be no more typhoid fever, such as emptied the Bay
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View in a week, nor scarlatina, like that which has closed the Rodick House. To all parts of the country the word has gone out that this is a fever-infected town . .. The people must be roused to earnest action, or this loveliest of all the seaside resorts will be shunned like the pestilence.
The challenge was met. Fortunately, the character of the outbreak had been studied, and the study made public. In the eighty-ninth volume of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal appeared an article by Dr. William James Morton, "Mount Desert and Typhoid Fever, During the Summer of 1873," which reassured the world at large that one well and only one had been infected. The article was reprinted, and circulated as an eight-page pamphlet, one copy of which, at least, got into the hands of Joseph Williamson, to be recorded in his bibliography of the State of Maine.
But counter-publicity was not enough. Action had to be taken. Fortunately, Edwin Des Isles had, along with other inhabitants of Eden such as Orient H. Carpenter, had his try at mining in the West and had come home. He knew from that experience how to bring water not in expensive pipes, but in cheap wooden troughs, as is done in placer- mining flumes in California. When the legislature met in January, 1874, a petition was promptly introduced for enabling legislation. By the end of the month it had been reported out of committee, and on February 4 it went to the governor for his signature. Work then started, to be ready in time for the coming of summer visitors. The ship carpenters of Eden still found their skills useful to the town.
This was not all that was done. Surface drainage was ended. Again, this was done cheaply, by cesspools as well
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as by sewers leading into the sea water. No more would the conditions of the Bay View House continue, with the sewage visibly flowing past the well.
As a result, confidence returned to Bar Harbor. "A fleet of comfortable rowboats" was bought or was brought to Eagle Lake, to cluster round the miniature dock there. A trail was cut through to Jordan's Pond, from which latter place came the comforting news that two men, "in a short day's fishing," had caught five hundred trout. A new Atlantic House was "built on the site of the one destroyed by fire one year ago, in the modern French style and finish, surmounted by a Large Observatory, giving one of the best Panoramic Views of Mountain, Forest, Lake, and Ocean, that can be obtained at this celebrated watering-place." And it was announced it would be "well Supplied with Eagle Lake Water." As far as Bar Harbor went, all was well.
But-and here the results of the efforts of selectman and innkeeper Stephen Higgins may be seen-the world outside was told that all was well. On June 10, 1874, the New York Tribune-"The Tribune" of those days-still America's most influential paper even though Horace Greeley had died-bore on its editorial page, to which the nation would first turn, a letter from an "Occasional Correspondent." All this information was poured out, under these emphatic headings: "Mount Desert Island-Cause of the Typhoid Fever There Last Year-The Drainage regulated so as to Prevent all Possibility of a Recurrence of the Trouble- Delicious Drives, Mountain Walks and Scenery-Abundant trout." Mr. Selectman Higgins-with no mention of his innkeeping profession-was given as authority for all this.
Later on, July 4, 1874, a seventeen-piece band aided in the celebration of the turning on of the Eagle Lake water, with the opening of more cottages than ever before for
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that time of year. The first was the ostensible cause of the celebration; doubtless, the latter was the basis of just as much rejoicing. The crisis was over, the resort business was saved.
More than that-Bar Harbor was started on the way to high health standards, step by step, through the formation of a board of health, and the installation of a complete sewer system, to the foundation of the Mount Desert Island Hos- pital. A new era was opening for the town.
6 Cottagers versus Boarders
W HEN, within a year, Edwin Des Isles and Foun- tain Rodick had freed Bar Harbor from ty- phoid so thoroughly that it has had only four more cases in its history-two in 1899 from a broken sewer pipe, two in 1922 brought in from outside-they had turned a vital corner in the town's history. Not only had they saved the summer resort; they had given an impulse to energetic action that made the town forge ahead. The years 1866 to 1872 saw Bar Harbor transformed from a field into a resort; the years 1873 to 1887 saw an unequipped resort supplied with the equipment, institutions, services- whatever one chooses to call them-which are needed to make a first-rate resort. Those were the days of new sewers, the Green Mountain Railway, the Oasis Club (that became the Reading Room), new steamship lines, the Canoe Club, the Village Improvement Society, the Fountain Rodick Hose Company and the William M. Roberts Ladder Com- pany, and, above all, of many new cottages that were really mansions, and of the land boom. It was in those days that the town that was still legally Eden but was becoming in fact Bar Harbor had to fight to retain its economic inde- pendence, and won the fight.
The year 1874 was, so far as the summer trade went, better than ever. Loring, Short & Harmon brought out a new edition of the Martin Guide. The men of the summer colony rented a house for a male hide-out; it was called,
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presumably with reference to the "Maine Law," the Oasis Club. Confidence in the town's future rose, and this led, naturally enough, to a family squabble over the division of profits. The Robertses, father and son, had sponsored competing wharves. Tobias the younger wanted to extend his into deeper water; Tobias the elder, the original builder of wharves, feared that that would block what he had done. Both sent petitions, couched in salty terms, to the legislature. Both circulated petitions and got signatures. But progress -and the support of the Rodick family-was with the younger man. The legislature accepted the statement of David Rodick, the fisherman of Bar Island, that no inter- ference with commerce would be caused by a new pier.
By this time, two steamship lines plied to Bar Harbor- the Portland, Bangor and Machias Line, with the Lewiston, and the Rockland, Mount Desert and Sullivan Line, with the Ulysses and, after the Ulysses had been rammed at its mooring, the new and fast Mount Desert. That made two ways to reach Bar Harbor. One could take the Boston- Portland train, arrive at Portland just before midnight, and sleep on the boat. Those who could sleep on trains, or who had taken the Sanford Line boat to Rockland, could go on in the early morning. Then, after a passage through Egge- moggin Reach, Bar Harbor was attained at II a.m. If, however, one could not leave Boston so early, there was a night train to Rockland, which, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings, found waiting for it the Ulysses or the Mount Desert. This, it was claimed, made the total trip, Boston to Mount Desert, take less than twelve hours, thanks to the saving of going through Deer Island Thor- oughfare, by a route sixteen miles shorter. In 1878 the line could boast that it had missed connections on the return trip only once in three years, and then in unusual circum-
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stances, though probably there was an advantage in having the train wait on the Rockland wharf for the steamer.
Yet a third way existed-to go by train to Bangor, and by stage from Bangor over the hills to the island. This, too, began to boom. In 18 50 Bar Harbor had supported, accord- ing to the census, a stage driver. No such employment existed in 1870, but in 1880 two were back on the lists. At the Mount Desert Bridge, where the famous-or, at least, well remembered-Negro servants of the Thompsons acted as tenders, profits went up. Annually the bridge corporation leased to one Thompson or another the rights to the tolls, in return for a promise of upkeep and a lump sum. As the years went on, that sum mounted to $800. And, at last, a new competitor arose for the travel trade, the Bangor-Bar Harbor steamship line. With a grand party and a special excursion to Bar Harbor, including a free stay at the hotels, the Cimbria's service was inaugurated, in 1882. This meant more than an improvement in transportation; it was an economic invasion. Here was outside capital coming to Bar Harbor. Soon other Bangor business men would seek to make money on Mount Desert Island, only to lose out in competition with the natives of Eden.
For, as business in the village of Bar Harbor grew better and better, the resources of the local enterprisers increased. Daniel Rodick was twice able to enlarge his Rodick House, in 1875 and in 1882, until it could hold over six hundred guests. The Belmont Hotel was put up, "on the edge of the plain that is Bar Harbor,"-which was an apt descrip- tion of its position in the days when a clear view went from its site to the water's edge at the mouth of Eddy Brook.
Naturally, with such growth the life of the town of Eden changed. Internally, the change could be seen in the in- creased gaiety of social life. Invitations exist to a "sheet and
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pillow case ball," that was held on February 27, 1877. Soon traveling theater companies took to visiting Bar Harbor, which now had contact with the outside world throughout the winter, by sea as well as by land. This naturally induced pressure on congress for the construction of the Porcupine breakwater that now covers the route into Bar Harbor which Cadillac recommended. A coastal town was thus being transformed.
Also naturally, the transformation was observed by out- siders. In 1874 Mrs. Clara Barnes Martin added to her guide- book a lyric description of the farmers and fishermen who made up the population of Eden, and lamented that they would not turn the mountainsides into sheepfolds, and thus improve their standard of living. By 1885 she had altered her tune. Then she stated that that passage was kept in the guidebook as a record of an Eden and a Maine that were passing away. But as she wrote this, at the same time she pointed to the adaptability of the men of Eden. She praised the way in which they were cutting forests to make hay- fields, once they realized that there was money in the fodder needed for the horses of summer visitors. Here she made a point that can be repeated again and again: "Nearly all the hotels at Bar Harbor are in the hands of the families who lived in the half-dozen houses of the little hamlet of twenty years ago."
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