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- Barnacle - 1887
The Barnacle - 1887
Levi Gunn had 'The Barnacle' built for a Mr. Brown in 1887 but he backed out so Gunn sold to Edgar and Ella Fox of Norwalk, CT.
Barnacle Photo Gallery
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Detailed History of the BarnacleThe Fox Era (1887-1895) |
| Edgar Hart Fox (1857-) was step-brother to Mary and Charlotte Roberts, owners of the Bungalow Cottage. Edgar's father died in 1863, and his widowed mother Fidelia married Edgar's father Horace in 1871, but he died later that same year leaving Fidelia to care for 5 children. She moved to Greenfield and the children were partially raised by Lucius Nims (owner of the Sea Shell Cottage, 1911-1923), and by Mary and Francis McGee Thompson, builders of Alpha Cottage. Edgar must have been close to the Thompson family, since he got in on the ground level as one of the earliest cottage owners on Heron. The Foxes were originally from New York City, but for most of the time they were coming to Heron Island (1887-1910), they lived in South Norwalk, CT where Edgar ran 'Fox Cycle and Hardware'. He and Ella were bicycle enthusiasts and he was a city council member. During this period, the Barnacle was little more than 2 bedrooms with a living room and porch. The lower level had not been built, and there was no kitchen. It is assumed that most Barnacle residents in the early years took all their meals at the hotel. in 1889, Ella Fox invited her sister Hannah McClave and her family to the island and they stayed in the Barnacle, or 'Nutmeg Cottage' as the Foxes called it. Hannah McClave was married to a wealthy lumber magnate from New Jersey, Stephen Wood McClave, and together they had 10 children. How they all fit in the tiny cottage one can only imagine, but there is a picture postcard showing the Foxes and McClaves on the north porch of the Barnacle (right). The McClaves later built Chimneytwist in 1891 or 1892. According to Francis Nims Thompson, when Levi Gunn built the 'Sea Shell' (Morris) cottage in front of the their view in 1894, the Foxes were displeased and sold the Barnacle to Mary and Charlotte Roberts, who owned the Bungalow. The Foxes rented for several years, first the Barnacle, then Alpha, until they built 'West Point' (Long Cottage) in 1902. The Foxes were fixtures on Heron Island from it's founding until 1910, when they sold West Point to the Kidders, a family from Greenfield. This coincides roughly with the year the Foxes moved to New Jersey, closer to the McClave clan. |  Barnacle and Gunn cottages around 1887. The Sea Shell (Morris) cottage had not yet been built. Ella and Edgar (white pith helmet) are on the Barnacle Porch with their dog. Edgar and Ella Fox with Hannah McClave and children in the 'Nutmeg Cottage' on the McClave's first trip to Heron Island in 1889 |
Ella and Edgar Fox on Heron Island, 1886.
The Roberts Era 1895-1909 |
Mary and Charlotte Roberts
Mary and Charlotte Roberts |
The Roberts sisters seemed to have used the Barnacle as a rental and/or overflow cottage for their main residence, the Bungalow. Mary may have also used it as her primary cottage-- Charlotte sold it immediately following Mary's death in 1909. Dr. Roberts was in the habit of inviting her students and co-workers to the island, many of whom went on to become cottage owners, including Sarah (Caswell) Elley, Anne Caswell, Helen French, the Stevenson sisters, and Clara Burt, a former student who had visited for years as a guest and renter in the Barnacle.
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View from the Barnacle, 1907 |
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The Burt-Fielitz Era 1910-1958
Clara Burt had been a chemistry student of Charlotte Roberts at Wellesley College in the late 1880s and had probably been introduced to the island, like so many others, as a guest of Dr. Roberts in the Bungalow. Clara was a chemistry teacher at Morris High School in New York City when she bought the cottage in 1910, with the help of a loan from Charlotte Roberts, the seller. Clara brought her widowed friend Caroline (Carrie) Fielitz, to the Barnacle, and the two soon became island regulars. Carrie Fielitz lived with her brother Paul Bryant in New York City, and worked with the 'Little Mothers' organization that helped eldest daughters of orphaned children help raise their siblings. Paul Bryant came for two weeks every year and always slept on the screened porch, rain or shine. He ran a very successful laundry business in New York City and left his money and apartment building to Carrie when he died in 1925. Mrs. Fielitz was also a teacher at the New York Cooking School and was renowned for her kitchen skills. Floyd Humphries had this to say about her cooking: "Mrs. Fielitz really earned the title of cordon bleu of Heron Island. Besides unparalleled luscious blueberry pies, she added luster to the name of the Boston hotel where Parker House rolls were first made. You could buy those delicacies of the table at food sales held in the Casino. I have a very special reason for remembering Mrs. Fielitz's blueberry pies. A boardwalk led to the Barnacle cottage. One summer around 1910, a family of garter snakes nested beneath the walk and took turns sunning themselves on the walk. When either Mrs. Fielitz or Miss Burt saw, right at her feet, one of those harmless reptiles wriggling sinuously, she recoiled with a shudder. Finally, Mrs. Fielitz made a proposal to me. If I cleared the place of snakes, my reward would be a blueberry pie. Finest bargain I ever struck." Perhaps in part because of Mrs. Fielitz's cooking prowess, they added a kitchen on the lower level in 1912, and christened it with a lobster dinner. In 1919, Clara's niece Sarah Burt became orphaned and Clara took her in, and always knew Mrs. Fielitz as 'Aunt Carrie'. Sarah loved the island and visited much of her life, first as a guest of her aunts, and later in life as second wife to Floyd Humphries, grandfather of Sam Register, Steve Register and Nan Shepard. After Clara's death in 1926, Mrs. Fielitz and Sarah Burt continued coming to the island, along with Jim Oattes, Sarah's first husband, at least until the start of World War II. It is unclear if Carrie returned to the island after the war before her death in 1948. The cottage probably went to Sarah Burt after Carrie's death, and Sarah was a sporadic inhabitant of the Barnacle in the late 40s/early 50s. Somehow the cottage ended up in the hands of a New York City lawyer, a Mrs. Ebben Schramm, who sold the cottage to Pete and Liz Signell in 1958 for $175. Mrs. Schramm told Pete Signell that she liked the cottage, but that when she brought her husband to the island, he disliked the look of it so much that he refused to get off the boat so she had to sell it. The cottage was in quite a state of disrepair; a tree had even fallen and destroyed the the downstairs dining room that connected the kitchen to the upstairs living area. |
The Barnacle around 1910
Sarah Burt (back) and friend in Barnacle garden, early 1930s. |
The Barnacle garden in the late 1950s. The wires in the background are the telephone lines that ran between Sarah Elley's cottage (Long) and her sister Anne Caswell's cottage (Allard). |
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