HERON ISLAND MEMORIES (1914-1995)
by JOHN HOWLAND

In 1914, 1 first visited Heron at age three months (not counting my parents' presence there the previous summer). I have missed only three whole summers since then: the War years of 1917 and 1944, and 1995. Jane visited in 1939 and we were wed in 1940. Despite possible references to earlier years, this account is based solely on my memory (which may not be infallible but can be corrected by other accounts) and perhaps will fill some gaps without trying to paint the total picture, as Damon can do better from the factual records. It may extend Floyd Humphries' memories to the next generation somewhat.

Physical Surroundings

Happily and amazingly, Heron is the same place. The hotel and annex burned in 1917 and I have no memories of that island.  Since then, Hill House, the White's cottage and study, the Pine Cone and the Damon guest house (west of the center path), are the only additional structures in 80 years although many cottages have been remodeled and sundecks have sprouted. The hotel's icehouse and the bowling alley on the south end of the shop are gone. The Allard cottage is a replacement on the site where departing occupants dumped their "cold" fireplace ashes out on the grass, thereby adding the "hot" ashes of the whole cottage.

The great old steamboat wharf with its freight shed and chain hoisted gangplank has been succeeded by three others. First, a log crib filled partly with rocks and connected to the shore by platform. Winter storms lifted the crib over the rocks and onto the shore, where it was cut up and burned with old tires. Some of the rock pile is still seen south of the current rowboat float. The original wharf was far enough west that the motorboat-rowboat float was east of it and inside the reef on which the current wharf sits. The space between the float and the reef was so narrow that a cottager explored the cost of removing the reef! Sarah Humphries, then Sarah Burt, was mortified when a cottage supper on the Gunn porch broke up to watch Sarah in a visiting sailboat perched on the reef with an outgoing tide.

The shorelines are unchanged. The black rock at the north shore from which kids have first launched into the water is just as it was. The reefs, tidal pools, sandy areas, and landmark rocks around the island seem unchanged, although the piles of storm-tossed rocks along the southeast shores are higher. Roads and paths are little changed. The center path ledges feel the same underfoot as when we walked them at night but without the vehicle ruts. Clarence Hale and I marked off the Birch path for the Heron Island Company when adjacent land was sold to the Damons, and the markers are still there.

Some of the largest fir trees grew on either side of the center path, just south of Damon road (Cot's) but were lost in the hurricanes of the 1950's. Some old stumps are still visible. The largest oak in girth still stands by our entrance path and the largest fir still stands south of our dining room, although its top (like some of ours) has turned gray. Remains of the great birch stand along the Birch path. There may be fewer gooseberries and currants but the wild berries, taller ferns and flowers grow in the same areas. Where storms and hurricanes have cleared areas once we could see Xmas Cove from our porch and the ocean from the center path between us and Floyd's rapid growth have filled them in. I recall a single great pine tree south of Floyd's but the hurricanes of the 50's spread cones through the woods and there are now many, a number of which I replanted and nurtured in our area. There are more aspens. The lone Morrill hemlock (along the west side of the center path just above the Damons) flourishes but needs company as its mate along the Damon road was lost several years ago. Birds abound although fewer in number and variety. The evening thrush sings on, and ospreys train their young high overhead. The skies are the same. When the air and humidity is right, one can still hear a dog bark on the mainland through the silence of our island.

The scene at the Center well with the Casino (minus its porch), the three cottages and the paths leading away, is timeless.

People

The people have changed but many names are the same. Who were they in my early days? Ministers and professors were always present.

On the North Shore were Dr. and Mrs. William Bennett, a minister, and children John (who recently died), Katherine (Vassar, later married to Gardner Day and summering in South Bristol) and Bill (later on the Williams faculty). Bennett children and grandchildren live on. Judge Thompson already a widower, and daughter Mary (Alexander) and a housekeeper in Alpha Cottage. Grandchildren and great grandchildren live on there with Russ. The Judge was a probate judge in Greenfield as had been his father before him. Mr. and Mrs. Fellows in the present Harkness cottage. The Frederick Brownings (she a Snow of the original owners) with their sons Franklin, Paul and Clyde (near my age). Mrs. Browning's sister, also a Snow, and her husband were the Stoddards of Greenfield, Mass., who visited often with sons Charles and Whitney (also near my age). Paul's daughter, Nancy Peterson, contributes grandchildren who mark the 6th generation in that cottage, if I can count that high correctly, and I have known all but its first generation! All Heron Island lovers. During my teenage and college years, Franklin Browning and wife Kay (Humphries, sister of Floyd and Romilly) and son Jr. (Nicknamed then Mike) were the dwellers. Frank owned a large Boston advertising firm one of whose customers was Old Mr. Boston, and he introduced a Filipino "houseboy", and a baby sitter for Mike Christine Leavitt who, I believe, was the first to swim from Heron to Xmas Cove. I know, because I rowed along and made her row part way back when the chills set in. Kay was a lovely person, always interested in Heron during her widow years on Siesta Key (Sarasota) and her final years in a retirement home (Bay Village) into her 90s where Heronites like me enjoyed visits with her.

Around the comer of the tennis court (which we bolstered from clay we dug in Xmas Cove very successfully) were the Binghams. He was a merchant from the Midwest, always with starched collars. I don't remember his wife. His daughters were Doris and Margaret (mother of Elizabeth Signell) and adopted son Billy. Doris was a maiden lady. Bill, with a game leg, I assume from polio, was an avid and gutsy tennis player, (although 4th or 5th on the island). Margaret married Carlisle Morris, an avid bird watcher with field glasses and all. The Signells presence next door represent a 3rd, 4th and 5th generation.

Next came the Barnacle, occupied by New Yorkers Mrs. Fielitz (whose baked goods, especially Parker House rolls were legendary), Miss Clara Burt, a fat spinster, niece Sarah Burt, and Paul Bryant who lived and slept on the East screened porch come rain or cold. Sarah was nearer my brother's age. She married Jim Oattes (I believe to have been a Florida real estate speculator in the days of the Florida collapse) and he was on Heron for several years, restless, prevailing on me to take him up the river to shoot seals (he always missed), etc. They were later divorced. Sarah remarried for a few years and somewhere spent some summers in Wiscasset, and late in life, she and Floyd Humphries were married; wintered in Naples, Florida, and moved back to Kennebunk and returned to summer on Heron Island. Jane and I last visited them in Venice, Florida where they had rented for several winters, finally in a high-rise condo viewing the length of the beach. Both were as bright as could be, but Floyd passed away the next day during an afternoon nap; February 1990 at age 91 and Sarah followed a year later. Like Kay and Frank Browning, they were an all-Heron Island couple

Alice Gunn, then a widow, presided in the Gunn Cottage with sisters Dolly and Linda Graves of Boston as regulars. As one of the two large stockholders in the Heron Island Company (Judge Thompson being the other, who would have nothing to do with the Gunns because of some personal collisions in the long past: another story), she was the dominant figure. Annual cottage suppers, followed by cottagers' meetings were usually held in her cottage. But she turned over most of the affairs of the island to my father, and others who became minor stockholders for the purpose. She was always fond of the island children. Later, of course, the Barker clan took over the Gunn cottage.

The 3 cottages around the center well were owned by the Andrews, he a tall suspendered man who lived in the Lodge and rented out the other two. Tenants in the yellow cottage included Barnetts and Bartletts. Later Romilly Humphries, Floyd's brother, and family moved into the Lodge. Jerry Brand, a N.Y. area realtor, and wife and daughter, owned the others, which went to the Hoogenbooms and to Chuck Stevenson who converted the red cottage to a single home from a 2-family unit. The Lodge returned to the Damon clan where Niven and family preside. Floyd's account tells of many of the red cottage people who were there too early for my memory.

The Allard cottage was owned by Anne Caswell, Sarah Elley's maiden sister and professor at Milwaukee-Downer. Dr. French (college professor) was also in residence (first name forgotten). Another friend, Miss Jones, was a regular. Once Ed Damon met her on the path.  Ed, groping for her name asked, "How do you spell your last name?" She stared him down with "J-0-N-E-S."

The Harpers were in the Van Dyke cottage, she towering over him, but soon the Karl Van Dykes came, he a Wesleyan physics professor. Their 3 children, Karl (a Wesleyan graduate), Florence and Muriel grew up on the island and grandchildren, etc., extend the generations.

Dad, Mother, Roy Jr. and I were in the Wroth cottage, which Dad bought from Judge Thompson in 1911 when Roy Jr. was a year old and Mother named it Greenledge. Mrs. Gunn provided additional land to the shore. Mother was active in putting on plays in the Casino,  acting as Secretary of the Cottagers' meetings from at least 1919-1937, etc. She was a Radcliffe graduate: her story in their archives. Dad was often a Director or presiding, and sometimes, absent an available minister (Bennett, Helfenstein, Humphries, mainland visitor or Maine Sea Coast Missionary) would conduct a Sunday service including a simple sermon. Dad graduated from Wesleyan in 1900 and received his Ph.D. in Munich. Dad was professor of Mathematics, Vice-President for 14 years, Acting President for 2 years and Dean for 13 years at Wesleyan (a total of 45 years there) so his summers were sometimes interrupted for a week or so at a time, but he and mother missed only 1917 on Heron until as he gradually went blind after retirement, they had to give up the island and sold to Ginny in 1955. Giving up tennis, he was one of the avid players of the new Wawenock Golf Course the only regular from Heron. He spiked a golf ball, attached a codline and drive it off below our front steps. When nearly blind, he would cut up firewood, by feel, in the same spot.

Next door were the Romilly Humphries, Dr. and Mrs., who died in 1931-32, and children Floyd, Romilly and Katherine (Mrs. Franklin Browning). Wonderful people. He preached Sundays in the Casino she played piano for the hymns. Dad and he laid the joint sewer line, which still exists. Later, Floyd and Anne Humphries and children Ginny (Wroth), Bro, and Romilly (Punks) lived on there. Anne died in 1961, a Heron Islander all her married years since she came as a Helfenstein in the Alpha Cottage. A wonderful person. Floyd and Sarah (Burt) lived on until their deaths in 1991 and 1993.

In our own cottage, Lucy Pond, the daughter of Captain Pond who built the cottage in 1908. No significant personal memory. Clarence and Bertha Hale bought it in 1923 and lived there for 30 years until Clarence died in 1953 when it became ours for the next 43 years. Clarence was a Wesleyan man who became a professor in the New York State System in Albany. An avid boatman, he was envied by Heronites as he docked at the Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club instead of the town float. A loved person: Bertha was one of our top bridge players (like my father) and, on Saturdays, would put beans on to bake all day in the oven in the cottage basement. No children.

I don't remember the Butlers across the center path in John Stevenson's cottage but vividly can see Aunt Louisa (Professor at Mt. Holyoke) and Aunt Lucy who raised the three Stevensons boys there (what a handfull they were). What wonderful ladies.

The Knights were in the present Hagen cottage, a vague remembrance. Later the Schneiders (Professor of Biology at Wesleyan) with children Ed and Marion (Joyce). Roy Joyce, a professor at a Michigan college, died at an early age. In later years, John Hagen bought the cottage. John was a Wesleyan graduate who became the boss of the first United States manned flight into space for NASA and was later at Penn State Laboratory. His son has been renovating the cottage, a most welcome return.

The Bugbee cottage was built by the McClaves near the turn of the century with lumber barged up from Connecticut. They had a host of children (9 or 11?). But they left one day in the early 1900's with the dishes left on the dining room table, and the house was "haunted" for many years. From its cupola (since torn away as rotted) one could see across the island to the river. It was considered unbuyable because of the number of heirs involved but, as a young lawyer in 1939, 1 traced the title to a family trust and young Ed Schneider bought it for $500 for his family. A bear rug had rotted down through the floor in front of the fireplace, leaving its outline, but material from the "hard wood" closets in the many bedrooms yielded material for repairs. Old bricks from the hotel fire restored foundations. Later, Ed sold it to the Bugbees, Edith, a daughter of W.C. Damon and a sister of Ed, Ralph and Katherine Kletzien who with her family shared the cottage. Children and grandchildren join in a fifth generation on Heron.

I wish I could contribute more to the McClave story but to me it was just a "haunted house" for my boyhood years a house with eight or nine bedrooms, a stairwell surrounded by 2nd floor rooms, hard wood in the closets, a cupola with a view for 360 degrees, a baby grand piano: nothing ever like it. Some McClaves occasionally but rarely visited the island for a day in later years but I didn't get to talk to them. What happened to such a clan after a decade or less on the island may never be known.

Next door to the South is Sprucetops owned by Raymond and Henrietta Dodge, he head of the Psychology Institute at Yale and formerly a Wesleyan professor great people. A grown daughter visited. I picture him walking down the island, white-haired in a white yachting cap, with a trembling right hand held waist-high, followed by his little old white terrier, Teddy, who trembled in unison. Later Ed and Alison Damon lived there with children Cot, Niven, Sonie (Ziegler) and Faith (Frasca), Alison continuing on after Ed's death and with the children grown until she entered a nursing home .

The Damon Cottage at the South Shore had been built by William C. Damon at the turn of the century and was occupied by him, his lovely and dainty refined English-accented wife and the four children, Ed, Ralph, Edith (Bugbee), and Katherine (Kletzien). He was a large dominating man used to managing textile workers. When he himself built the guesthouse across the center path (late '20's), I was employed with a young native to haul lumber and supplies from the north shore and Mr. Damon kept a careful watch on the time we took per trip as we were paid by the hour. Ralph grew up, I believe, in Curtis Wright, during the war was asked to run Republic Aviation, then emerged as head of American Airlines and was made head of TWA by Howard Hughes. I had lunch with Ralph in Pittsburgh in the late 50's, and the next day was awarded membership in the TWA Ambassador Club by the local manager (along with my immediate boss). TWA was celebrating a major anniversary (it was the beginning of jet travel) and had gathered some aviation leaders to present what passenger travel would be like 25 years hence. The forecasts were sealed and to be announced on that future date at which time I called the TWA P.R. office: no decision had yet been made as to how the forecasts would be used and I never heard the results. (I guess they predicted we would be shot in missiles from coast to coast in three minutes). The Hughes stories are legend, but he treated Ralph and his private life more respectfully than others of his world. I recall Ralph hurrying down the island in route to Egypt where a plane had crashed. Harriet is a lovely lady and came to Heron as long as she could manage. I'm happy that sons Ted and Bill and families are more frequent visitors these days. The Damon well is a story unto itself and a fascinating one but as it occurred before my time, I pass.

Isle End (built by Perley Horne, a master at Dummer Academy and before my time) was owned by Dr. and Mrs. Walter Eddy, a Columbia professor, tall and erect and an avid boatsman. Later, Ernest and Lillian Dodge owned it for many years, he a nephew of Raymond Dodge and a language teacher at Horace Mann School. He never shed a slight German accent (which I suspected he cultivated). Lillian was a charming woman. His German mother visited and gathered mushrooms around the island. She obviously knew her mushrooms as all diners were delighted and never ill. Linwood Otis, a deck boy on Mark Thompson's boats as a boy, did the chores and ran Ernest's boat. After, Lillian died, two women stayed with Ernest. Helen Wilson, and a blonde whose name we've lost. Helen was the one who named the cottage "Isle End" and had Linwood make the sign. Her ashes were placed on the property by Linwood. After her death, Ernest married a lady named Katherine, who as Ernest's widow (I guess) transferred the cottage to the Damons next door. Then, for years, Polly and Buss Morrill occupied the cottage, he performing many religious services for the island as well as being my frequent fishing partner as we caught cunners and rock cod off the southeast rocks with our bamboo poles. After Buss died (the hemlock on the center path is a memorial), Polly and Fred Waldron came, before Fred's cancer impaired the Heron life style. Happily 2 later generations have visited the island. Polly and Fred were neighbors of Jim Barkers in both New London, N.H. and winters in Naples, Fl. where we fortunately occasionally see Polly and Jim.

In the thirties, Dr. Bennett built the White cottage (the last cottage built) and study for son John who in turn sold it to my brother Roy and wife Gretchen before W.W. II. My brother, following a divorce and summers as a master at School Camp Wassokeag in Dexter, Maine, sold it to Cliff and Reva Vanderbilt, New York friends of Ernest Dodge. After some years, it went on to Tom and Helen Greenwood, (with grown children) joining the New Hampshire contingent, until, in their failing health, it passed on to the Whites. The last three families have been all-surnmer residents.

I interject, at this point, a word about my brother Roy. Coming to the island as a 1-year old, he missed only 1917 until in his teens much of the summer was spent otherwise; first, as cabin boy on Dr. Wilfred Grenfell's summer missionary cruises to the natives on the Labrador Coast up to the Arctic for two years; then living abroad and taking care of the sailboat of Professor Slocum, Astronomy professor at Wesleyan, on Cape Cod where he learned navigational skills; at college age, coming down with acute appendicitis on a freighter in New York about to sail to Europe and ending up as a master at Camp Monomoy on Cape Cod; then on another freighter trip; followed after college as a master at Camp Wassokeag in Dexter, Me., where he taught languages, supplementing his regular teaching and tennis coaching jobs at Hamilton College (1 year), Peddie School, Hill School and finally at Belmont Hill from which he retired, living in Lexington, Mass. where he died at age 72. He was graduated from Wesleyan in 1931, after spending his Junior year at U. of Va., and received his Master's degree from Harvard while I was there in Law School. Daughter Anne by his first wife recently died leaving 3 children and grandchildren. An adopted son lives with Roy's widow in Florida.

The other cottage of the first half century plus is Hill House, (around 1926), built for Mrs. Gunn's sister Dolly Graves, a strong mannish bone doctor and spinster. Sister Linda Graves always stayed in the Gunn Cottage. Hill House was then sold to Elizabeth (Elley) Newton who sold it to Jim and Barbara Barker when Miss Caswell (Elizabeth's aunt) died and Elizabeth succeeded to her cottage which she later sold to the Allards.

The Long cottage was occupied by the Kidders barely remembered, rented to the Falls of Middleton, Conn. And then became Harold and Sarah Elley's where daughters Carolyn (Long) and Elizabeth (Newton) were reared and where the Long family presides. Harold headed Dupont research in Wilmington, Delaware. For a year or two I ran the Elley boat and stayed on as gofur in September after my family had gone home. Caroline for years was our best woman tennis player and played Teddy Myers in the Xmas Cove finals in college varsity-type play.

Jane and I and her mother, Mary Snyder, lived in four other cottages before acquiring our own in 1953 6 years in my brother's cottage, some weeks in my parents', two years in Alpha, and four or five years in the Bingham/Morris cottage.

My apologies to all I have missed. The Barker clan as it has grown into 2½ cottages and four families with visiting relatives, in-laws and all, and the heart of the New Hampshire delegation and the center of the island. What a great bunch and now already deep in a third generation on Heron. The Ellery Hutchins family who succeeded to the Fellow cottage (and our boat, the Mistletoe) with daughter Leanne and Warren Harkness, the present owners, with their Heather and Jeff (another Wesleyan graduate). I should mention the Helfensteins, another cleric, and daughters Grace, Mary Grace and Anne who became Mrs. Floyd Humphries, mother of Ginny (Wroth), Punks and Bro. They were in Alpha cottage for some years. Also, innumerable island guests who came often. I make no effort at current tenants and visitors as they are current experiences, not memories!

Note that the Bennett, Alexander, Peterson, Morris, Humphries and Damon cottage are still in the same family after my 80 years; that Isle End, Spruce Tops, Bugbees, The Lodge, the Signells and the Wroth Cottage are all owned by members of those same families, and that the Long, Harkness, Signell, Gunn, Allard, Van Dyke, Wroth, Sprucetops and John Stevenson cottages have only changed family owners once since 1914. Note also the number of cottages which have housed fourth, five and six generations.

Except for the Judge Thompson's long antagonism toward Mrs. Gunn arising out of an incident which predated me, we have all enjoyed and respected each other. I know of none who were arrested or committed any crime on Heron Island (or elsewhere)! The kids all grew up to be fine people with a sense of values that Heron must have fostered. We lived without fences, real or imagined.

Transportation

From Middletown, Conn. to Christmas Cove is now an easy six hour drive interrupted by only one stoplight (Brunswick) and 5 toll booths. But then our trip started by train to Boston South Station. There we had several options. The most tedious would be to transfer to North Station and the train ride through every town to Portland, Brunswick and Bath. There the train was broken up and ferried across the Kennebunk and reassembled, before moving on to Wiscasset and Newcastle. There came the transfer to Damariscotta and Mark Thompson's boat, either the Pilgrim or the Caroline, to Heron and the wheelbarrow. Trunks and steamer trunks, the normal luggage for a long stay, went the same route including the wheelbarrow.

The preferred route from South Station was to transfer to an overnight Eastern Steamship boat, with the small paint-smelling staterooms, and throbbing hums of engines, to Bath with an early morning change to a boat which either by stop or change in Boothbay Harbor landed us at Heron. Once or twice we took the overnight boat to Rockland the City of Bangor or City of Rockland then by train to Newcastle and the Heron boat.

We began driving our first car when I was eleven or so and it was most of a two-day trip. Trunks were sent ahead by Railway Express. Luggage was in a large wood box mounted at the rear of the car and painted black to match the Hudson. Dad was the cabinetmaker. The only straight stretch, for some time, was the Newburyport Turnpike, all of 12 miles or so, but straight and a 3-lane road. Otherwise, one went down the main street of every town including all the towns around Boston, Waltham, Woburn, Malden, etc. At the end, there were 93 curves in the narrow road from Damariscotta to Christmas Cove, traces of which can still be seen.

I believe Floyd and others have mentioned the various boats that came to the island (Virginia, Wiwurna, etc.). I joined any other kids in delight at catching the line (then a rope) from the docking boat and laying the loop over a pile, reversing the process as the boat headed away from the old wharf.

Although public boats running to Boothbay Harbor stopped at Heron on schedule or by flag signal, we had our own boat the Mistletoe built by Capt. Ed Leeman in Round Pond a solid boat started with left-overs from the Betty B., a slightly larger boat which was in the Cove for 50 years and may still be around! It had a teak backrest in the stern seat. It had a one cylinder Lathrop engine with a fly-wheel which had to be thrown over with a spring pin, to catch the starting spark. Believe it or not, most lobstermen in those days worked with similar slow boats throwing the wheel to move with no reverse gears to slow their progress called putt-putts as the one cylinder repeatedly fired. More about island boats later.

Fifty years ago from N.Y. City commuting was great on the Bar Harbor Express from Penn Station, dinner on the train, a good sleep, Rockland cars separated from train in Portland and into Newcastle early a.m. Friday or Saturday, and then return Sunday Night. Often, some familiar faces, including occasionally a Xmas Cove commuter to his dental office in N.Y. who flew his seaplane up and back unless weather forced him to the train. Forty years ago, we drove from Washington and then from Pittsburgh for fourteen years. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was there and other highways coming in. We would drive from Pittsburgh to Middletown, Conn. with our Siamese cats yowling as we went through the Allegheny mountain tunnels, spend the night with Mother and Dad and go on to Heron the next day 800 miles or so. I would do some flying back and forth during the summer. From '67 on, we were driving from Washington. Usually, we started early in the morning and drove 530 miles to Portsmouth. Then on to the island after shopping in Dami. When commuting, I occasionally left after work and drove through to arrive at the Cove in time to go off with Arnold in the a.m. (650 miles). In later years we drove to Scranton, then to Portsmouth 2 nights on the road to avoid the New Jersey and New York area as traffic grew and road construction was perpetual, and to enjoy the Pocono scenery. 10 and 20 years ago, much of my commuting was by plane leaving the car at Ho-Jos, Portland Exit 8 for early a.m. plane, and late night returns to stay at Ho-Jos and on to Cove by 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. Easy trip.

Once forty years ago driving all night from Washington I was greeted by a telegram saying to return that day. I arranged not to receive the message until 2 p.m. and went back by plane. My shortest stay on Heron!

I guess my total mileage to Heron over 80 years by sea, road, and air would rival an astronaut. A lot of gas. I got only one ticket speeding in Massachusetts.

Boats

I have mentioned the Mistletoe, our boat. All boats were inboard until after World War II or later. I had an early Johnson outboard on a dory, probably the first outboard on the island. The boats were open, some with canvas hoods for bad weather where people could huddle. They were all wood, well-built and lasted many years: notably our Mistletoe, the Humphries (KREF initials of the family), Eddy's, Bennett's, Bingham's, Elley's, Harper's, Hale's, Raymond Dodge's, Ernest Dodge's, Damon's. The Fellows had the largest and their own skipper. They were tough, seaworthy but graceful; a number with McFarland's cone-shaped stem. Engines were housed amidship. There were a number of round-bottom rowboats designed for two rowers and wood skiffs. We had a nineteen-foot dory to which Dad had added an oak keel and stepped a mast which I sailed for many young years until it was torn loose in a storm and smashed up in Sand Cove. It was left for us by a Wesleyan trustee who had a nest of heavy ones built for fishing in Labrador rivers to which he sailed his large motor-sailor yacht each year. One year he also left a custom built Old-Town canoe which ultimately went to the Wesleyan boat club where I continued to use it on the Connecticut River during college.

The only other sailboat of my earlier years was one built by Ed Schneider in Middletown and brought to Heron.

Our Mistletoe took us to Boothbay Harbor perhaps once a week, but much of our shopping was in East Boothbay where the market was right at the head of the public wharf. In that boat, we rode over to see the Holly Inn burn down in Christmas Cove; went up John's Bay to anchor at High Island and row in to dig clams by the bushel; fished for cod, hake, and haddock (then plentiful) in various known spots south of the island, off Thrumcap or the mouth of the river; visited Outer Heron and Damariscove, New Harbor, Newagen, Pemaquid; went to Wiscasset and Damariscotta rarely; made my daily run for the island milk and laundry for some years; went to John's Island (later Tunney's) for picnics etc, etc. for 20 years. At some point our one-cylinder engine was replaced with a converted car engine and we could reverse! It also took me to the weekly dances at Christmas Cove Casino each Friday night.

We all bought our gas from Will McFarland at his dock across from the present Coveside marina. We generally landed at his float or the Casino-side public float. Cars were parked at various spots: S. Bristol in Wilder Kelsey's garage at the bridge, French's barn garage on the road above Will McFarland's and several other Coveside locations: none as convenient as our present lot. Each cottage found its own place until HIVIS made arrangements to use the lot behind Coveside. At one time several were parked in a structure a bit south of the Casino tennis courts.

During the World War II years, our boats were not permitted to go outside of the River and gas was rationed: we sometimes went to E. Boothbay and walked to the Harbor on a trail that went around the head of Linekin Bay and over Mt. Pisgah, stopping on our return walk at the ice cream parlor at the top of the hill in E. Boothbay. Jane recalls such a walk with Alison Damon and Anne Humphries in the rain seeking rationed meat and "booze" supplies.

Although my dory was the only sail on the island for many years, sails abounded. There were four-masters in the Harbor. For years, the Royals (Baking Powder) had one tied up at their dock in Little River, used as guest quarters. A son was the founding proprietor of Fisherman's Wharf in Boothbay. Yacht club cruises from New York to Marblehead would fill the Cove some evenings: gunwale to gunwale. But a few great power yachts were occasionally seen e.g. J.P. Morgan's Corsair and Astor's Nourmahal. The Corsair with its graceful clipper bow was used in the area by the Coast and Geodetic Survey during World War II. I remember sailing up to Dami one day on a prep school roommate's family's racing 46' yawl (a Monhegan and Bermuda racer), going and returning with the tides without as much as an outboard on board.

The largest boat locally was the Farnsworths' 65-foot schooner based in the Cove. I was scheduled once for a Bar Harbor cruise aboard, but following some Yale boys' roughhousing at a Cove dance which ended with Sally Farnsworth being dunked in the pool in her dance finery, we were all cancelled.

Occasionally, visiting yachts stopped at the island. I have a picture of the beautiful shiny black "Baruna" (visiting, I think, Ed Damon) tied to our float.

Captains Ed Leeman and Frank McFarland (Pete's father) had large party boats they built for day and moonlight cruises out of the Cove. McFarland boys crewed the Defiance and Dauntless. Mark Thompson's "George Popham" ran daily to the Harbor, stopping on signal, as the steamboats dwindled away.

Monhegan trips were usually made on Capt. Brackett's large Boothbay Harbor-based boat: the Novelty. Typically we were there long enough to walk over to the cliffs, have a picnic lunch, explore a bit and sail around the island. The Captain would lean out of the pilot house and spin tall yams. My favorite spot was in the rolling crosstrees. We spotted whales and great frothing areas of mackerel schools. Once a great blue shark whirled away from the hull.

One summer, a Mr. Bartlett (Hollywood screenwriter) rented the yellow cottage and also rented a sailboat from South Bristol although he was obviously unfamiliar with boats. One day he anchored at Little Thrumbcap, rowed ashore, pulled up his little dinghy on the beach and set off around the island. On sunny rocks at the South End he stretched out and napped. When he returned to the beach, he found the tide had gone out, leaving his sailboat high and dry. Unloading pig-iron ballast, he managed to work the boat back to the water, gathered his dinghy and sailed to Heron. The next day, realizing he had left the ballast on the beach, he returned. This time he anchored far out, retrieved the ballast, pulled up the dinghy, and again explored. After his walk, sunbath and nap, he returned to find the tide had come in and his dinghy was floating away. Stripping off his clothes and placing his glasses on the beach, he swam after the dinghy to the delight of a passing Boothbay Harbor tour boat that stopped to cheer his progress, as he boarded the dinghy and rowed back for his clothes and glasses. Ultimately, he got back to Heron. Several days later the boat broke loose from its mooring in a gale. After hunting along the shores for several days, he gave up, paid the owner for the lost boat and left Heron forever. Several days later, a fisherman found the boat well down past the Kennebec.

During that period, a younger yellow cottage occupant took Sarah Burt (Sarah Humphries) for a sail in the same boat. Becalmed, they were late returning on the day of the annual cottage supper, at the Gunn cottage. Word reached the assembly whereupon all trooped down to see a mortified Sarah in the boat, firmly stuck on the reef (then a few yards east of the float) with an outgoing tide.

I remember no real boating accidents. Mrs. Elsie Schneider once went down between a boat and the float and went briefly under but the Aladdin lamp she held high in her hand never got wet! As a youngster I fell off the float with hip boots on but Dad fished me right out (and I will tell one on him later).

Provisions and Services

We ate well without the work-saving conveniences. Ice and cool wells were the only refrigerants. Most cottages had ice-boxes by the 20's. After the Inn's ice house was gone in the earliest days, ice came by boat and was slid up the wharf with ice tongs in 100 pound blocks, chipped into manageable size and wheeled by Frank Jordan or a helper to the cottages ice boxes, often located under the cottage or on a north porch. We hung butter and milk on codlines down the Hale's well (by invitation).

Milk had a special route. It came to the island in huge milk cans. One family was assigned for a week to take the orders, manage the distribution and do the billing. Each cottage came to the wharf at milk time with containers of various sorts, which were filled with pint or quart measures ladled from the can: an island social hour. In the later twenties and thirties, when milk came in bottles (with the cream on top) orders were marked on the storefront chart and I went in the Mistletoe every mid-afternoon to Will McFarland's dock in the Cove to meet the Round Top truck. I returned around 4 p.m. with wooden crates of 12 milk bottles each often four crates, extra bottles of cream and eggs. In those days, Sunday dinner was usually at mid-day following church and the "cow" arrived earlier in time for ice cream to be rushed home to each cottage for dessert. The milk crates were on the dock and each family picked up their own order usually carrying the bottles in wooden boxes with rope handles designed to carry two or three quarts in divided compartment. Empty bottles were returned to the crates whenever convenient. Now you understand the old tin pails and boxes in the junk under your cottage. But before World War II, the island service was gone and milk was bought in grocery stores.

Twice each week I took laundry off the island, which was returned in three days by a Bath laundry in flat brown-paper wrapped flat packages. I missed only one milk run in some years on a day when Frank Jordan told me a storm was so bad that I would not be able to land at the float. One family was still responsible for billing and paying Round Top. I was paid a daily fee and my family donated the gas. The laundry business was my own enterprise. My greatest reward was sitting in Will McFarland's shed while he and Ed Leeman swapped stories, discussed the mosquitoes they saw flying off Ram Island,  the sound of their flapping wings, etc., took apart a landlubber who kept missing his mooring, or the lonesome cow bawling on the Hill and the causes of her lonesomeness. Occasionally Mrs. McFarland, in apron and with her arms bent as if she were continuously beating batter would "Jawn, come back heah". In the kitchen of the boarding house (now a cottage) on the shore, I would be treated to fresh-baked blueberry pie or other treats.

One day the Mistletoe's rudder broke loose coming into the Cove. I brought it to the dock with an oar. The milk came and I loaded it aboard. Dad and an islander came from the golf course. The fog rolled in. Dad rigged the big boat oar from the stern ringbolts and we started out of the Cove. I was in the bow with the compass giving Dad directions in the stern. Half way across, the oar broke water, and Dad went overboard backwards. With the idiot yelling at me to turn around (name withheld), I managed to catch the engine switch to reverse fast enough to get sight of Dad, then throw a life-preserver which he swam to and dragged to the boat. We got him aboard, re-rigged the oar and made it to the island (SSE 1/2 S?). When Dad picked up his glasses where he had placed them because of the fog, both lenses fell out! The fireplace and blankets restored his serenity until some time in the night.  Dad and Mother's bed collapsed with a crash. Otherwise, despite some rough trips, I never ever broke an egg. Incidentally, the milk with the cream on top and the farm eggs were better than today's homogenized milk and store-bought eggs.

Although most groceries were bought ashore, Frank Jordan had a small store in our Post Office. He was then a U.S. Postmaster and Heron had its own postmark (and in the early years the mail sacks came down the River direct to the island on Mark Thompson's boats). Frank stocked potatoes, onions, flour, sugar and canned goods (plus a variety of candies in a glass display case). In the '40s, a canned ham sat on the shelf all summer. Late in the summer on a cold rainy day, it seemed to Jane a perfect dinner answer. As Jane went into the store, Lillian Dodge was leaving with the ham. Jane has never forgotten the disappointment.

We ate the island berries. But at the height of the blueberry season, we went up to the Rockland area where a family friend had acres of blueberry bushes. Coming home with buckets, we had blueberry cornbread, pancakes, puddings and pies for days. Although Heron had a few and John's island had more, we had nothing like the patch by our cottage now. That area was all trees right up to the cottage when the Hales lived there. They could not see the water from the cottage. My trusty bow saw took care of that.

The Howland family seldom ate meat because we lived on the sea: fish, clams, lobsters, mussels, crabs were our staples. We fished often and the sea was then full: cod, haddock, hake, pollock (both deep sea and harbor), flounder, cunners were all ours for the effort. Only lobsters were bought, from the lobstermen. We loved it. I don't remember ever being skunked but once: on our honeymoon on a cold rainy June day with nearly bare shelves in my brother's Cottage  now the Whites I reassured Jane that we had only to go out on the rocks with poles and catch a mess of cunners, pollock or rock cod. Result: one small sculpin. But for decades from below Blackberry Lane, a rock south of Tree Tops and the black rock at the South Shore, we caught them with long bamboo poles using snails or clams as bait. My favorite serving was filleted, rolled in egg and a mix of flour and cornmeal and pan-fried, for breakfast, lunch or dinner! Frank Jordan was adept at spearing flounder at low tide along the reef on which our current dock sits. I caught them from a skiff on hand line, Damariscove and Christmas Cove were often loaded with flounder. The mackerel we caught were always split and broiled. We never heard of bluefish in those days.

Anchored above various favorite ledges, with codline and clams for bait, we caught cod, hake and large pollock off Little Thrumbcap, toward the White Islands and John's Bay. Haddock was plentiful at the mouth of the River west of the South Shore. As a youngster I caught a pollock nearly as big as I was in our photograph. Dad would split some of the larger fish in their skins, cure them in a salt barrel for several days then hang them to dry on the clothesline.  They went home to Conn. for Sunday morning fish balls all winter. If we ran into dogfish, we upped anchor and moved to another location. Many islanders were treated to our bounty, all cleaned and filleted.

Jane's and my favorite fish (including fresh water yellow perch) were the small harbor pollock which we could always catch from our skiff off the ledge between the store and the Long's, the north reef or along the shore between the Allards and Peterson's. The trick was to keep them firm in cold water, after catching, while skinning and filleting and until they reached the refrigerator or freezer. They were our favorite pan-fry. I loved the tinker mackerel, always split and broiled or grilled (now they have discovered they are a great source of Omega-3 fat, along with salmon, sardines and tuna, which may forestall a long list of health problems).

Curiously, relatively few of the islanders with boats were fisherfolk. No one used rods in those days. My first one was a present after my brother married Gretchen Mills whose father was in the business. Many islanders liked fish but bought it ashore or enjoyed our bounty.

And clams! The best steamers so much better than the "Ipswich" clams so touted farther south. Free for the effort! Then sold by the peck, not pound, and not wholesaled at 100 a bushel as now! Occasionally, we would tow a skiff up John's Bay to a spot just north of High Island, anchor, row ashore, and with clam forks dig up a few bushels of clams. Usually, several of us, e.g. Clarence Hale, Ernest Dodge, would go along. Ernest liked to shuck and eat them raw on the way back; we filled clam boxes and burlap sacks hung off the wharf. We ate them steamed, in chowders, in patties, however, and had unlimited bait. After a couple of weeks, back again. World War II ended all that, oil slicks, controls, over-digging etc. The day of licensed resident diggers and managed flats came.

Lobsters were cheap and abundant. Not quite like the early days, but I remember a friendly lobsterman throwing a bunch of smaller ones into my sailing dory several times. And Jane was the beneficiary of one that stretched the length of an orange crate which Frank had boiled in a big pot over the Post office on his kerosene stove. It was well over 20 pounds.

Mussels were picked off the rocks at low tide, but were seldom eaten by the other islanders for unknown reasons. There were even crabs in the tidal pools big enough to eat.

We seldom bought fish except for salmon for the Fourth of July. Dad was away and Mother sent me to South Bristol for salmon. Irving Clifford, who had a fish market next to where Farrins now is, a small gnomish man usually deep in his cups, and wearing carpet slippers as usual, grunted at me. I asked for my two pounds of salmon. He whetted a knife, peered at the fish, cut and put it on the scale: two pounds exactly. Pleased with himself, he not only gave me the two pounds but threw in the rest of the fish and lumbered out.

We never heard of blue fish in those days, which may be why we had all the other fish around. The giant tuna, or horse mackerel, were harpooned near dusk when the water was calm off the bow of commercial boats over in John's Bay. No one harvested sea urchins as now but it is only in recent years that they have destroyed all the seaweed and kelp that covered the bottom then.

Island clambakes moved back to the shore, with Frank Jordan presiding on the West Shore for some years at Judge Thompson's bake spot.

Saddened, I read that bottom fish have nearly disappeared from the Gulf of Maine and the 1995 catch was the lowest since records began in the 1870's.

Other Shopping

We seldom went to Damariscotta. Stores in East Boothbay and South Bristol and occasionally the Harbor satisfied our needs. We went by boat: Little's market in South Bristol, later replaced by House's was most used but McDougals in East Boothbay was better. I recall being told, on asking for marshmallows in midsummer, that they stopped selling them because people kept asking for them and they were always out of them. Yielding the Maine story: fellow comes in looking for sugar and can't find any on the salt-laden shelves. Owner takes him to cellar, still no sugar but barrels of salt. Fellow: "You must sell a lot of salt". "Nope but the fellow sells me salt, he sells a lot of salt."

In the earliest days, a grocery stood on the Christmas Cove wharf: Ed Gamage had a general store by the South Bristol bridge with some hardware, a soda fountain and medical needs. A schoolteacher came around once a week by boat selling fresh vegetables. He did a good business at the island landing, but nothing like our current produce boat.

We picked peas and corn in season at Brown's farm on the Dami road (and rushed it to the pot so good) and bought local chickens, eggs and farm vegetables (at roadside stands), decades in advance of our current Friday boat.

At cottage suppers, Mrs. Fielitz brought pans of delicious Parker House rolls from her kerosene oven. Every Saturday, Bertha Hale baked beans on a wood stove in their basement most of the day.

We might go for weeks without wanting meat! Although the stores carried good meat and local chickens were delicious. Few islanders were fisher folk or clam diggers, buying fish occasionally from Irving Clifford's fish market in South Bristol, or treated to cleaned fillets of mackerel which I sometimes carried to them right from the water. Clarence Hale, the Dodges, and Van Dykes were among the fishing group and I spent hours with Buss Morrill and our bamboo poles on the rocks off Isle End.

Romances

I am not an expert of the numerous Heron romances because I was between generations, there seldom being anyone on the island of my age other than occasional visitors. I was aware of young couples gathered around the Casino Victrola playing records in the evening or strolling to the South Shore. With no jeep ruts on the center path, flashlights were seldom used as, except on darkest nights, the tree line could be seen against the sky and the rises and falls and ledges underfoot were familiar. There were many summer romances.

Several, notably, come to mind. Floyd Humphries and Anne Helfenstein, whose family rented Alpha (Alexanders) for some years, were married and raised their three children here. Floyd's sister Katherine married Franklin Browning, Nancy Peterson's uncle who was also reared on the island, and were parents of young Franklin "Mike." And Floyd's youngest son, "Punks" who married Betty Prescott who summered all her life in Christmas Cove where they now live and preside over their children's weddings. I am sure there were many others.

Activities, Sports, and Entertainment

I will not recount all the Casino activities as Floyd's boyhood account describes what went on in my early years, masquerades, plays, dances, Sunday services. One Sunday service each year was conducted by the head of the Maine Sea Coast Mission who arrived on the yacht "The Sunbeam", thereby soliciting donations to the mission which serviced all the islands year round with medical, schooling and religious help. Otherwise we seldom had guest pastors as we had a number on the island, notably Dr. Bennett and Dr. Humphries. But the Casino was often a center of activity.

Although Wawenok was there sixty years ago, we had virtually no golfers. My father and Clarence Hale played occasionally. We are indebted to Pudge and Nancy Peterson for the Igloo Open each August during the last decade. What fun.

The tennis court was busy. Twice we resurfaced it with clay, which we dug mostly out of a bank in Christmas Cove on the far side from our current landing. It made an excellent and long lasting surface, although we battled weeds and grass as to-day. We also had singles tournaments in those days. I won a few. Carolyn Elley (Long) was our best woman player, a college player. We battled in the finals several years. We also played in the Cove tournament where Carolyn battled Teddy Myers in the women's finals for several years. Once we played in the Squirrel tournament. Bill Bingham, Liz Signell's cousin, was an avid player. The Brownings all played, Paul being the best.

In earlier years, the bowling alley extending out from the south end of the shop saw good use, particularly on rainy days. Floyd described the dangers from flying pins for us kids who set them. There were some good horseshoe tossers from time to time.

The croquet court, smoother than to-day, was very popular as were the tournaments.

As youngsters came along, they were taught to swim at an early age, a prerequisite for being on the wharf alone, and were cheered the day they first jumped off the dock, having graduated from the black rock to the float to the dock. As noted, a Browning baby sitter swam to the Cove. Several others, including Cove people, tried but tides or cold water cut them short. I am told that later Polly (Morrill) Davies swam it twice, once as the youngest and once as the oldest to do so.

I believe many more people were in the water daily than now; some of the older ones on the West Shore below the center well e.g. Ethel Howland, Bertha Hale, and later Floyd Humphries. The Damons often used their West shore pool dammed with rocks to hold in tidal water and warm in the sun. Occasionally we used the Cove pool, John's Island inlet when picnicking there, or Little Thrumbcap and the outer islands. Sally Pratt, a Bennett Cottage renter, won the Cove diving contests for several years.

We often combined picnicking and exploring. John's Island was a favorite spot. Anchoring in the cove on the north end, we explored the island, picked blueberries in the field, lunched on the rocks and swam in the Cove. This all ended when the Lauders bought the island and built their house. When Polly Lauder married Gene Tunney they honeymooned there. As this was not long after Tunney's fight with Jack Dempsey, they were much in the news and city reporters and photographers sought ways to intrude. An island bodyguard protected the shores but, as a teenager, I was offered a then handsome sum to try to land one of them from the Mistletoe. I declined but one did get ashore to publish a picture of Gene chopping wood. South Bristol was often agog with the Tunney family in later years, as friends and family came and went including President Kennedy and Congressman Tunney, etc. Gene and Polly often played in the Cove tennis tournament.

Of course, outer Heron and the White Islands were favorite spots before Dr. Fosdick built his cabin at the top of the eastern cliff. The gulls nested there in droves. Once a young gull was brought back and hand-fed fish at the float until old enough to take off. But for several years, he was unafraid of us and often perched on the wharf rail as people came and went.

Damariscove was a favorite also. The residents were gone, but traces of their existence were still visible and the cove was full of flounder to take home. Thrumbcap was uninhabited so we were not confined to Little Thrumbcap until the Tracys built there. We also explored all the little islands within reach and went by boat to Pemaquid Harbor (to eat lobsters, clams, and blueberry pie - all for $1.25), New Harbor, Friendship, Wiscasset, Newagen, and up and down the river often taking lunch as our boat was slower than any to-day!

Evenings were quiet times generally in my earlier days: Dad, Bertha Hale and Dr. Humphries were top-flight bridge players and others like Mother, Clarence Hale, etc. were good so there were many lamp-lit games. We younger ones tended to gather at the Casino where we had the old Victrola phonograph kept in a large wooden box wound up between records mostly big band type and jazz music. We had a fine record collection brought from home or bought in Boothbay Harbor which had a record store. I was between generations so there was little social activity. Full moons drew us to the South Shore rocks. Friday night was Christmas Cove dance night at the Casino and usually I dated the Cove girls. (A particular Friday night is related further on.) Island plays and masquerades sometimes filled the Casino. Islanders were elaborately costumed for the masquerades. One notable example was the Bennett lighthouse which various Bennetts wore for some years. A cottage supper filled the Gunn cottage. In my time, however, evenings were quiet. Island boats rarely were in use after dark and no one went ashore for dinner.

One summer in the '20s, all island activity was slowed for a while by an island epidemic of pneumonia, starting in the yellow cottage with some renters and spreading. All four Howlands came down with it serially. Dad, recovering first, would take the Mistletoe to East Boothbay and bring back Dr. Fernald, the only doctor around for Heron Island house calls. He was a slight humorless man who wore a dark wool overcoat and hat even on the hottest days, carrying his little black bag. On one trip, the pin in the flywheel did not retract and took a hunk out of Dad's knee. Dr. Fernald bandaged it and sent him back alone to bed for a week. Even without antibiotics, all the affected islanders recovered. We were a hardy lot! One broken arm went to Boothbay Harbor hospital (I think it was a young Van Dyke) but I don't recall any other crises.

Clothing, etc.

It was well into the 20's before clothing slowly moved toward modern wear. Boys wore knickers, often corduroy, and stockings. Men looked as if they were headed for the office, unless sweatered, and collars were often starched. Women wore dresses, often long with sashes, even on the tennis court. By the thirties, however, boys wore shorts and girls followed. Sport shirts replaced long sleeve shirts and collars. Bathing suits became more functional. Jane tells the story of the woman who was about to buy a new bathing suit when her husband objected that the one she had was fine: "There aren't any holes in the knees yet." Instead of huge wardrobe trunks, clothes began to come in smaller trunks and even suitcases. Washtubs and wringers began to disappear but there were still no laundromats! (Except for my laundry service). Heavy yellow oilskins began to be replaced by other rain-gear. Sneakers or moccasins replaced city-wear. Eventually, women's slacks appeared. And even hats went or were replaced with caps!

Caretakers

Without our caretakers, the island would have reverted to sheep pasture long ago. They have been an integral part of our lives from day one. They have kept us in roofs; shored up our foundations; fought the rot; rebuilt our chimneys; saved countless boats in storms; kept our cottages standing and shingled; restored us after hurricanes; kept us in water; nursed and supplied through eras of wood, kerosene, gas and even some electricity; took us from outhouses to bathrooms; wheeled or drove up all our possessions and supplies; remodelled most cottages: supplied transportation and maintained boats and moorings; maintained our roads, paths and landing facilities; helped in all sorts of emergencies real or imagined; was our link to the outside world and the mainland community.

But so much more, they have been loyally devoted to us, our safety, convenience and welfare, both young and old. Indeed we have been blessed.

Incredibly over a century, we are talking about a handful. Only four in my 82 years! With a helper or two.

Frank Jordan virtually all his life into his seventies and until 1953. 1 didn't know his father Will who helped build the early cottages and worked on the island but I consider Frank the first full-time caretaker. Frank, before modern jeep, wheeled virtually all the island into place. Trunks, refrigerators, shingles, kerosene cans, roofing, paint, everything arrived at the cottage on Frank's wheelbarrow. He also whittled little rowboats with tiny oars for the kids and did fine wood inlay work. I once sent some pieces to New York to a national association which fostered such work, run I believe by a Frank Lloyd Wright relative. Their expert jury praised his craftsmanship highly but advised that the particular items of cigarette and cigar boxes, scenes and book ends were not in sufficient demand for their distributors, although I sold a number to friends in Pittsburgh. Frank was slim, wore a cap and suspenders. Often stood with hands on hips. A carpenter before power tools, he worked with a middle finger in one hand sticking straight out as a result of an early injury and blood poisoning.

Frank's porch in Christmas Cove had a clear view of the island. Frank and wife Helen had four daughters: Catherine, Helen, Ethel and Florence. Had there been a son, we might still have a Jordan caretaker. Catherine married Phil Sawyer who virtually ran the island for a year or so, when Frank was becoming increasingly infirm, before leaving for the Merchant Marine. He was a fine man. He died as a young man. Catherine became the Postmistress of Christmas Cove and then of South Bristol for some years, remarried and lives on the north side of our Christmas Cove driveway: Catherine Walker. In Frank's later years, he slowed down considerably but was good for hours of conversation between service calls, wheeling the 5 gallon kerosene cans up the hill and finally had some help. Frank once billed Frank Browning for "hunting one stink" when something died in the basement. When Dad once asked why a bill was so much over the estimate, Frank could think of no reason "except mebbe I needed a new car."

Frank and Helen were an integral part of the island family from its earliest years through the first half of this century.

Beginning with the 1953 hurricanes era and Frank's retirement thereafter, Kenneth Chipman took over for some years until a mainland work accident. He and his wife Hazel were the parents of Gloria Gamage, Trish Polend and Joyce Donahue as later and current links to Heron. His widow Hazel still lives on the opposite side of the Middle Road near Arnold and Gloria.

Then came Arnold Gamage for a score of years and second longest tenure, followed by Chet Pinkham and Anne. I will not write of them as Arnold and Gloria, Chet and Anne are known to the present islanders, and "memories" of them will be recounted in later years. What great people they are. There could have been no one to equal these fine men. How lucky we have been that they have been willing to serve, nurse and care for us! They have occasionally had some helpers, Tom Foster, several young Gamages and now, of course, Chet's brother Tom to whom the island is most grateful.

The caretaker's tasks were much eased when Jane came back from her many-month U.S.O. tour of the Orient following World War II and urged that an island jeep replace the back-breaking wheelbarrow and was rewarded with the first ride in it. Granted it produced ruts but they are worth it! Also came power saws, power mowers etc. I refused to scare the birds and stuck to my hand-saw for clearing and the wood-pile. A few have criticized my clearing a view but normally I cleared only dead and fallen trees, and some clearing is beneficial not only to the trees but in the substitution of oaks, birch, aspen, pine, berries, ferns, Indian pipes, princess pine and other mosses, flowers, lady slippers, none of which thrive in dense underbrush, and the trees themselves grow taller, bigger and long-lived.

Incidentally, another of Jane's contributions came when she urged the store toilet be entered from the front porch instead of the route south of the shop, up steps over the rocks and along the precarious catwalk to enter from the rear as previous generations had to do. The front door was placed and we called it Jane's John in her honor.

Native Friends and Others

As part of the Town of South Bristol, along with Christmas Cove, we had close links with many people ashore. To mention only a few.

The Cove summer population, except for the Inn guests, were as stable a population as we were. Families came for generations. Summer families included such names as Prescott, Tracy, Myers, Farnsworth, Smiths and Thomases, Warners, Wrights, Sewalls, Shipleys, Popes. Residents included the Jordans, Will McFarlands, Frank McFarlands (Pete's family), the several Coveside owners, Thorpes (father Eliphalet), Fosters (Tom worked on the island for some years), Linwood Otis who in early years was the crew on Mark Thompson's boats to Damariscotta and later skipper and handyman for Ernest Dodge, and the whole Arnold Gamage family in more recent days.

We knew many in South Bristol. Wilder Kelsey owned the garage north of the bridge and lived above it. Wilder was a strapping burly man who had wrestled semi-professionally, and more notably, saved my life one night. Returning the family car to his South Bristol garage after a Christmas Cove dance one night (Of course, I had to use the car to pick up my date although she lived almost in sight of the Casino), I paused in one of the large garage doorways, as a large dark car came down the Hill and stopped with me in the headlights. A voice invited me to move but emboldened by my first drink of Prohibition rum, I pointed to the other garage doorway. The car door opened and a figure unfurled taller and taller as Wilder raced down the stairway picked me up to move me aside as Gene Tunney drove his car into the garage. Incidentally that night I fell asleep as the Mistletoe came down river, went past the island and safely out to sea until I woke and triangulated my way home by Pemaquid and Ram Island lighthouses. Tip-toeing on to our porch, I knocked over empty milk bottles to the roar of laughter from my parents. Incidentally also, those Friday night trips were made in white flannels or white blazers which took careful handling in dew laden skiffs and boats and greased fly wheel handles.

Ed Gamage lived over the store at the southwest corner of the bridge and beside being the storekeeper was a noted hunting guide with his own dogs.

Harvey Gamage built large boats in his yard. His brother Charlie was the best boat mechanic around. They stored and serviced many of the Heron boats including ours for some years.

Will McFarland and his wife rented several cottages to summer guests across from Coveside and Mrs. McFarland ran the dining room for the guest on the waterfront. She was a fabulous seafood cook and baker. Will spent his days in his shack on the dock (north of the dining room which is now a cottage with a landing south of it) with its gas pump. Ed Leeman based his charter boat from that shack also, although he lived in Round Pound. Will had been to sea in his younger years. They lived in the house up on the main road. His brother Frank and family lived across the road and to the north. Frank was a charter boat captain and boat builder with his sons including son Pete now our good friend above our parking lot. I remember him as a roly-poly youngster aboard the family boats. Frank and Will never spoke to each other through the years. We never knew why it may have been loyalty to feuding wives.

The Eliphalet Thorpe family built some boats for their use. One sloop, whose design was laid out in Yachting Magazine, went aground on our West Shore when it would not come about in a strong southwest breeze. Mortifying! The Heron and Cove people went their own ways except for a few at college age. Of course, there was one close relationship, the Humphrey-Prescott marriage! Even the people with boats seldom left the island at night.

The (then Reed) island which forms the mouth of Little River and which now houses clambakes in its building was originally built on by twin brothers Drs. Edgar and Edwin Fauver ("Gar and Win"). Gar was the Wesleyan College physician and Athletic Director and Win held similar positions at the University of Rochester. They owned the Pemigewasset boys camp in New Hampshire and sent groups of their boys up to the island for a week or two, most of whom had never seen an ocean. Deep sea fishing was included in the curriculum and buildings housed them. Needless to say there were many visits back and forth with the Heron Wesleyan contingent for many years.

Other Thoughts

I started my amateurish painting 50 years ago when confined in our N.Y. apartment with an illness, I toyed with a child's water-color tin set, and then took a very brief adult education evening course in oils. But then I began at Heron to be out on the rocks several hours at a time. The great reward was the new appreciation of colors, lights, shadows, shades, sky, trees which I realized most people never see: a whole new world. No longer was everything white, green blue or brown. I recommend it to all for that reason. Before the era of Whites, Masons, etc., the current greats, we had Harriet Damon who captured our scene so beautifully in water color and with whom I was privileged several times to share a rock with our easels and her quiet advice. I love the little watercolor of me as a tot fishing in a pool, by an unknown (to me) island visitor. Several times, Paul Muncy, a leading portrait painter came up from his Carnegie Hall studio, to visit us (Howland friend from our 1926-27 Paris winter) and painted some full seascapes most beautifully. Otherwise, I remember only Russ Alexander and Floyd and Sarah as other dabblers, although I never painted with them. At one period, I was fairly prolific and at least added a bit to the HIVIS coffers as auction items, and am honored to have a few still scattered around in N.Y, FL and a cottage or two. Mine were all sketches, as I never went back after the initial session to work on a picture. There was always another view to see! And then I found I could take a water color pad and paint-box on trips to sketch palms in Florida or a southern fieldworkers shack in a cotton field seen from a train etc. and in the '50's, I rode all the great (mostly all-Pullman) trains to the West Coast from the Mexican to the Canadian border seeing the sights with my new perception. Do it and you will appreciate Heron even more with new vision.

Pets and Wildlife

Heron has always been a heaven for pets too many to list but a few, and before the labradors of modem days. I have mentioned the Raymond Dodges' little white Teddy. The Humphries Skipper was a cross between a Setter and a Chesapeake Retriever who obviously would both point and retrieve? Neither. But he raced around the island, woke Jane as he clomped across the "now-Whites" porch in the night, chasing seagulls down the wharf, happy and loved. After those joyful years, I can still see him leaving the island, sitting on the back seat with his head hung down, somehow knowing he would not be back for another summer. Our own cats including our Siamese brothers who lived with us for 20 years and were permiitted to walk out only with harnesses and leashes but were happy guys. And the Greenwoods big white dog whose muddy paws colored many shirt fronts in greeting, and the Alexander's beagle who managed to save shaking his swim-soaked skin until greeting party-dressed Jane indoors, and the Barker's Chesapeake puppy, Pandy, that Jane so loved. I will not list all the great recent dogs as this is a memoir, Felix, Blue who would pause for a brief visit say hello as I worked on my woodpile etc. etc.

Jane was up all one night calling to our cat "Ampersand," who always came home for dinner, only to find her on our screened porch in the morning.

One summer we had a deer and a fawn on the island for awhile although seldom seen. There used to be traces believed to be of moose but not in season. Mink lived in the rocks west of Isle End. One summer around July 4th, we had several whales along the north reef, west of the store and in near the moorings. We watched them blow and feed with their tails out of water for a long spell. Although they seemed huge, Will McFarland said they were the kind that were thrown back when he was whaling! And in our boats we approached them several times that month near Thrumbcap. Porpoises were a fairly frequent sight even between Heron and the Cove. Seals were seen up river, off the Thread of Life and around Green Island.

And the birds. I believe they were much more plentiful although the evening thrush still does the concert regularly and the gold and purple finches abound. All sorts of warblers were heard or visible including the magnolias, parulas, black and whites notably, plus cedar wax wings, grosbeaks and once, on our aspen tree by our cottage, a stray western Tanager with his all-yellow head stopped on his transcontinental journey by the Atlantic Ocean according to the Audubon people. In 1994, we had only a few sightings of hummingbirds at our feeder which had always been a busy spot and very few nuthatches. Hopefully, the birds will all return. We know they were hurt one year when a late spring freeze eliminated bugs and other feed. We are glad the osprey still makes his shrill cry overhead. But we wish the gulls would come back instead of haunting the garbage dumps inland where our fish-cleaning and edible garbage must now go!

H.I.V.I.S.

Most of the first half-century, Heron was governed by the Heron Island Company, owned by stockholders principally Mrs. Gunn and Judge Thompson with many shareholders who were merely names to me, who never voted even by proxy. In my years, the Company was managed by cottage owners who had some shares like my father, Clarence Hale and others. There was also a Casino association and a cottagers association. The Heron Island Company still owned the store, wharves, paths and some large parcels of island land. The transition to H.I.V.I.S. for the second half century was most desirable as it put control in the hands of the cottage owners on an equal basis. The Company sold off most of its land to individual cottage owners reducing its tax liability and assuring care of the properties without burdening everyone. Although as, I believe, the last President of the Company (Island records can tell) I shared some of the concern about the absent minority shareholders, we ended up with no assets of value to be reached and an empty treasury, paying island expenses. The Company was put into an inactive status with the Maine authorities. And the new era began. How well it has been.

Miscellaneous

I have no memory of the hotel days as it burned when I was 3 years old and absent from the island that year other accounts will fill in the $1 a night and 50 cent dinner visitors, the earliest steamboat days, the finery and parasols although I treasure a picture of Mother dressed in white finery to the ground with a red sash leading me at age two up the center path on probably a Sunday afternoon walk past the hotel! For several decades afterward, islanders salvaged bricks from the hotel site to shore up foundations, particularly when Ed Schneider shored up the McClave cottage when he bought it.

But I have a fairly vivid memory of sitting in our boat watching the Holly Inn bum to the ground in the Cove, the long several-story building with a porch its length, on the hill top with views east and west dominating the whole scene, before a smaller inn replaced it and the Farnsworth house with its black schooner moored below it became a dominant landmark along with the Miles Tower. There was a tea-house on the small island connected the mainland at the end of Middle Road just west of Coveside where we sometimes landed e.g. for the short walk up to Frank Jordan's, and there was much more use of the public float at the Casino, and the South Bristol town float (as cars were scattered around for garaging, beginning in the mid-'20s), although most shopping was by boat. Sometimes we walked from the Cove to South Bristol to shop.

Although I have been in the heart of the 1938 hurricane in Massachusetts and the 1944 hurricane in Connecticut, Jane was on Heron as the 1953 monster approached. Frank Jordan ordered everybody off and took up the float and hauled boats out or they went ashore. Only the Elleys stayed. Jane went up to Ken Chipman's mother's house (Ken was working for Frank and took over for the following year) north of Augusta with her three cats until the storm was over and she climbed up the ladder on the wharf with her cat carriers to find no cottage damage just some saplings across the steps. By the time I got to the island, Ken had a path cleared down the island with help from Linwood Otis at the south end but trees were down everywhere e.g. from the Center path between Floyd and us, there was a clear view of the ocean. Most significantly the large trees which bordered the Center path all my life were down just south of Damon Road. It took another year and a summer clearing bee to restore order. We experienced some other heavy easterly and southerly blows over the years, but none were comparable. I don't think there has ever been much cottage damage from storms, although Isle End, the Van Dykes, etc. have had some major window-washing from wind-blown surf, and, of course we are safe from flooding: the great killer. Many times we have hauled the skiffs out on the shore and boats have moored in the Cove on occasion but the main concern has always been the inability to get someone off or on the island because of high seas and inability to land. But hasn't the surf been gorgeous sometimes, as high as the cliffs out on White Island?

Excerpt from Ethel Howland's memoirs filed at the Radcliffe library:

"It became apparent after an expensive summer (1913) at Weekapaug on the Sound that we could not afford that kind of thing. I had been to Bailey's Island where my grandfather had hired a cottage one summer. My thoughts turned to Maine. When playing tennis with Mrs. Boisy Reiter one day, I asked if she knew any place on the Maine seacoast. She replied at once enthusiastically, 'a heavenly spot. I think I know a cottage you could get.' It was the Pearl owned by Judge Thompson of Greenfield. Roy did not coddle to it as he had been used to the South Shore and Buzzard's Bay, but finding we could get the cottage for $80 for the whole season, I persuaded him. And so began the long line of summers at Heron Island ... It was through us that the Van Dykes went up because we offered them our cottage rent free (presumably 1917) after they had a sick winter. The Dodges came to the Inn first because we were there, and later through them came Ernest, and so it went a kind of chain. The Hales because of the Dodges and then of us."

Mother renamed the cottage Greenledge. About those summers, mother wrote "They were literally life-savers for us both, for we went up there in June in a well nigh exhausted condition and slept and worked and lazed and came back rested and ready for the year ahead. It seemed like Paradise and we would hail the first sight of it as a kind of view of Heaven."

As I think of Heron this August, I remember the words of the aged retiree directing would-be parkers around the full parking lot in Dami one July 4th shopping weekend. "They's all heah and them that ain't is comin'."

Some Apologies

Ralph Damon came to the Owls and accused Jane of giving liquor to a caretaker that day. My mother later told him that the caretaker was drunk when he brought her and Dad to Heron much earlier. Ralph came to the Owls and apologized to Jane profusely.

An angry Harriet Damon once exacted an apology (rare, I suspect) from Howard Hughes because he called Ralph in the middle of the night (at home) to attend a West Coast meeting the next day.

And finally, my apology for omitting stories about John and Pat; Chuck and Mara; Niven and Jackie; Sherm, Steve, and Allison; Chris and Fran; Cot, Sonie and Faith; Leanne and Hark; their wonderful kids, etc. etc.; and you others; and Mary and Barbara who left us in recent years. But you will, by now, be glad for me to stop. There will be others' memories to catch up in the future, I am sure.

So: "Thanks for the memories."
 

Heron Families In My Years

 I . Kidder, Elley Long
 2. Bennett
 3. Thompson Alexander
 4. Fellows, Hutchins Harkness
 5. Brownings Peterson
 6. Bingham Morris
 7. Fielitz and Burt, Signell
 8. Gunn Graves, Barkers
 9. Gunn Graves, Newton (Elley), Barker (Hillhouse)
10. Andrews, Romilly Humphries, Damon Frasca
11. Andrews, Brand, William Stevenson
12. Andrews, Brand, Hoogenbooms
13. Caswell - Newton, Allard
14. Harper, Van Dyke
15. Howland (L.A.), Wroth (Humphries)
16. Humphries Register
17. Pond, Hale, Howland (John)
18. Butler, Stevenson
19. Knight, Schneider (Sr.), Hagen
20. McClave, Schneider (Jr.), Bugbee
21. Dodge (R.), Damon
22. Bennett, Howland (L.A. Jr.), Vanderbilt, Greenwood, White
23. Damon
24. Eddy, Dodge (E.), Damon
 

Notable Renter Families excluding current people

Helfensteins Anne became Mrs. Floyd Humphries in #3
Morrills & Waldrons in #24
Barnetts and Bartletts in #11
J. Howlands in #3, 6, 22 before owning # 17
 

Cottages Changing Hands (1914- 1995)

Cottages changing family ownership never:
 #2, 3, 5, 6, 16, 23
Cottages changing family ownership once:
 #1, 4, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21
Cottages changing family ownership twice:
 #9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 19, 20, 24
Cottages changing family ownership more:
 #22 (4 times)
 

Families, some member of which has owned more than one cottage (1914-1995)

 Damon (#10, #20, #21, #23, #24)
 Elley Caswell Long Newton (#1, #9, #13)
 Humphries (#10, #15, #16)
 Howland (#15, #17, #22)
 Bingham (#6, #7)
 

Family Generations on Heron (down to visiting grandchildren) as far as I know, of families still on the island (1914-1995)

 Elley 4
 Bennett 4
 Thompson 5
 Brownings 6 (including original Snows)
 Binghams 5
 Humphries 5
 Damons 4 or 5
 Stevenson 4
 Van Dyke 4
 Several with 3