52 Years at Heron Island

By Francis Nims Thompson

(This was FTS's answer to a letter to the Lincoln County News from a Mr. Henry M. Seaver.)

To The Lincoln County News:

 Mr. Seavy's letter, which I have just read, vividly recalls the earliest days of our colony at Heron Island, and there is no other Heronite to tell their story. A young Greenfield man, cruising along the coast, "discovered" the island -- with a single cabin on a bare ledge high on its almost treeless northern end, the rest of the 75 acres well covered by spruce and balsams. Older men came to inspect the find and appreciated the beauties and possibilities of Inner Heron Island, or "Christmas Island" as Lewis Perrin wished to name it. He and Dockray were the campers in the battened board cabin whose northern door and platform faced the smiling mouth of the Damariscotta river. Ribs of a whale were white against the little wood-colored buildings with several square windows. Early photographs of the Island show rocks and stumps, a clump of spruce -- mostly small -- near the wharf, and usually Perrin in shirt-sleeves and a pleased grin.

Some Greenfield, Massachusetts, men organized the "New England Land Company" of which my father, Judge Francis M. Thompson, and Levi J. Gunn were the trustees. My father's brother-in-law, Newell Snow, and our near neighbors, W.F. Smart and Ebon A. Hall, editor of our home paper, were other owners, together with Gunn's associate in the Millers Falls Tool Company, George E. Rogers. C.J. Day and C.M. Moody came down from Greenfield to make surveys and take photographs. Later the "Heron Island Company" was incorporated and C.A. Corliss made the official map showing some 250 little lots and many streets. There are now 25 cottages, besides casino and store, and the only highway runs from the wharf southerly up the hill and through varied woods of spruce and balsam, oak, white and yellow birch and maples, to the rocky south shore; thence up the east coast and at a right angle westerly to the casino on the main highway or "Centre Path." Path it is, and grass-grown, for wheelbarrows and little carts are the only vehicles on Heron Island and dust is unknown here.

During the earlier years we came from Portland on the "Enterprise," a freight steamer which could roll even better than it could pitch, but no boat had a better captain than Alfred Race of East Boothbay; and no old couple seemed younger than they did when I last saw them, but a few summers ago. I remember that when I first came, in 1886, from East Bootbbay, to Heron Island it was by sloop to Christmas Cove and thence by another sailboat to the island. We spent most of that first summer at Manly Brewer's at the Cove. The big spruce which grew half-way up the slope before his house stood until within the last few years. And I recall his pigpen, in a ravine between two ledges, because from it there was a very beautiful view of John's Bay. A scarcely-broken line of summer homes, extending from Anson Marden's cottage on the bar southerly to Thorp's Point, now demonstrates the appreciation by others of that changeless, but ever-varying picture of bay and islands, point and ocean.

It was in August, 1886, that our club-house on Heron Island was completed and we all moved over from the Cove. This building, in the form of a cross whose arms were twenty feet wide, stood southerly of the old cabin and soon became the hotel, "Medockawando Lodge" -- my father's historical lore having acquainted him with the name of the Indian chieftain. Jerome R. Brown of Parsons, Kansas, a business associate of my father, was with us at the Cove in 1886; and in 1887 he, my father, "Uncle Snow" and Mr. Gunn built cottages on Heron island. Ours, being the first to be occupied, was called Alpha. Brown's cottage, built of two-inch plank in one day by Jeff Coburn who (also built the other three), was soon sold to Editor Hall and then to Ed Fox. Gunn's cottage is now occupied by his only grandchild; and my father's by his son and only grandchild, a great-grandchild of Newell Snow whose cottage is now owned by his great-grandson, F.S. Browning of Wellesley Hills, Mass., and his family.

These summer places expand through acquaintance and relationship. My mother's brother and their cousin's daughters, the Misses Roberts, owned cottages here. After the death in 1917 of Professor Roberts, of Wellesley, her "Bungalow" passed to other college professors. Indeed it ,is safe to address an adult Heronite as "Doctor". Fox, a step-brother of the Roberts sisters, brought Rev. Dr. humphries (father of Mrs. Browning); and Dr. Humphries' widow and son now have cottages on the island. Mrs. Fox brought her sister, Mrs. McClave, with husband and two children. Though half-way down the island, the mother could usually speak to the nearest child by McClave voices notify John Albert Edger, down on the wharf, that "Ma says 'dinner's ready; come on home'." Mr. Rogers built a bungalow, which he sold to Capt.Geo. Warner of Lynn and is now owned by Edwin Fellows of Springfield, Vermont. The Damon family, at the south shore, have increased to twenty persons. The Bingham family is also large and Mrs. Flelitz is one of our :"oldest inhabitants" on this island of' many generations -- in one cottage there have been five.

One early islander survives among the Cove residents, the widow of Albion P. Gamage of the "Russell House." Her husband, with her efficient help, ran the store between thewharf and our cottage, and that building I later incorporated in the cottage next the wharf. With her and her children I can talk of Heron's early days. There were real herons here those first summers, but they soon migrated to Thrumbcap and doubtless those now nesting on Outer Heron are their descendants. I never knew the great blue heron to build here, but the osprey has. Bird-life is abundant and there is a considerable variety of trees and plants including some orchids. A really large striped maple has recently died, and the spicy moneses-uniflora used to blossom here, though there are very few pine trees. Before the north end of the island was so covered by trees the purple, gold and white of violets, dandelions and strawberry blooms made the grassy spots lovely in early summer.

"The Island" means, to a native, Rutherford's -- though you rarely hear that name spoken. Rutherford, if I correctly remember my Bristol town history, was an early minister; but Gamage Island would have been more accurate. Ask the next man you meet which of his ancestors was a Gamage. I saw a man on the boat which used to run to "Scotty", point to N.W. Gamage's store-sign at So. Bristol. and hear him say: "They numbered the Gamages till they exhausted the numerals, and now they're boxing the compass with 'em." It was on the wharf there that I saw a man take from a package a new cap, settle it satisfactorily and heave his old straw hat overboard. The woman beside me on the boat commented "Well, I never see anybody do that 'afore; did ever you?" Perhaps you knew her, as she said "Everybody knows me this side of the river, and most of 'em the other."

Yes, Mr. Seaver, I remember Eben and his length and lack of breadth. I last saw him perched like a daddy-long-legs above a hillside covered with birch wood; and he told me how he took out a window, covered the floor with some sticks of wood and pitched the rest in -- "and I don't have to go out-door all winter." You ask "if the Greenfield people still come to Heron Island?" Yes, I do; and Mary, since she was old enough. Last summer a Greenfield girl, who used to come here with her parents and grandfather, brought her son and grandson here to see the island and the Cutler cottage; but a half-century has made the usual change with nearly all.

There have been other changes also. The steamers that left Boston at 5, 6 and 7 for the Penobscot, Kennebec, and Portland no longer run. No longer do we have two -boats daily to Bath or a boat running up and down the Damariscotta. Now every man has a motor boat and automobile, and the chances are that Mrs. E. has a car too. After a stormy day the horizon once was white with sails that had been furled overnight in Boothbay Harbor, and the sea might whisper to us of that which moved it; then came the internal combustion engine and soon a prophet said "Well, I guess it won't be many years before there'll be a heavy fine on a man caught arowing off the coast of Maine"; and now there is a continuous pop-pop and, though the wind still "goes down with the sun" it is not noted. Even the face of Nature (fie, old dame,) has been rejuvenated where, as on Linekin's Neck, severe spruce and prim balsams have been succeeded by oak and white birch until the character of the coast has changed. In the old days one saw a few tiny and gaily painted cottages along the back river between Bath and Boothbay Harbor; now substantial summer homes of harmonious grey shingles stand all along the Maine shores.

An increasingly large number of people appreciate the beauties of nature and the need of real recreation of mind and body, and find somewhere on the varied coast of the Pine Tree State that which they need and enjoy. To some of us Maine has become a second home with traditions and associations and with a charm unlike any other. Yesterday I came I home to Heron Island. Last night I laid back the quilt made by my grandmother 75 years ago and slept in my four-poster beneath blankets woven a century and a quarter ago by a great-aunt. Today I write this in a chamber through whose wide-open casements come the swish and sigh of the sea. Tomorrow I will inspect my trees and perhaps do a little work about the place; and doubtless by the next day, the larder will require us to go a-fishing , or by Capt. Mark Thompson's boat for supplies. Perhaps we'll have a clam bake on the west shore. Our needs are very elemental and the world is far away.

— Francis Nims Thompson.