OLD DAYS AT HERON ISLAND

Absorbing Story of Early Visits to Heron Island told in Letter from Henry M. Seaver to his Nephew —
First Trips, Trying Experiences.

(This letter was reprinted in the Lincoln County News, 1939.  Francis Nims Thompson wrote an answering letter that appeared shortly thereafter.)

Dear Nephew —

You are at Heron Island. How I envy you. Your being at Heron Island reminds me of my childhood days about there, when I used to sail around the island and sometimes land on the rocky beach to pick berries. It can't be that Heron Island is now more attractive now than it once was. As I remember it, Heron Island was grown up thick with trees except for a little open pasture land at the north end. It cannot be more than full of trees, so perhaps your Heron Island is about as I knew it. Anyway the sky, sea and rocks have not changed.

I feel quite aged when I recall my first acquaintance with your island, 54 years ago. In 1882 my father, who loved to prowl around the New England coast, was advised to go to Christmas Cove and went there for a day or two, and the next summer he took mother and us four children to board at Eliphalet Thorp's. Soon came some other West Roxbury people and some from Jamaica Plain. As children our play was largely on and about the water, and we went swimming, too, in spite of the general feeling that the water is too cold. As a little boy I learned to row, and later to sail a boat, and we ventured further and further out of our Cove on voyages of adventure, to Linekins Neck and to Heron Island. As I became more adventurous, I sailed around the White Island, and as the greatest achievement of all I one day I sailed my little open boat around Pumpkin Rock; you know it, far out south of you in the open sea.

I suppose it was about 1884 or 85 that we used to go out to Heron Island (no wharf, no buildings, no owner) to pick blue berries and wild raspberries. I remember there were skunk currants. Are there any now, — fuzzy, ill-tasting things? There might have been a path, but certainly there was no road to the south end, that came later. It was "State Land" though it was said some "Foster Boys" had claimed it once for pasture purposes. They paid no taxes, had no sheep there, and had moved West. One of our very early boarders at Christmas Cove, a man named Dockray, from Jamaica Plain, paid fifty dollars for a tax title to the island. There was some legal proceduse and a large amount of village gossip and I remember some unintelligible talk about "quit claim deeds" and "warrantee" deeds, but with the result that Dockray sold Heron Island to some Greenfield people for twenty-five hundred dollars. With so many protected coves along the coast it seemed odd to choose a rocky wooded island with no protection from the sea, but in the least exposed place on the north end, the new owners built a wooden wharf. That must have been 1888 or 1889. Our wise old natives at the Cove predicted that the wharf would not stand the winter seas, but it did. Then was built the hotel, The Madockawando, and many cottages.

With no cove or harbor, no sand beach, and no space for many of the outdoor games, we always felt that many places were far superior to Heron Island, but it is surely a restful place with fine sea air and surf. I have some photographs I took about 1904 that I'd like to show you. You must tell me if the Greenfield people still come to Heron Island. But to go further back I'd like to tell you of our first going to Christmas Cove, for you must remember that it was from our summer colony that your Heron Island was "colonized."

In 1882 our Roxbury neighbors, the Dennetts, asked their country cousins, the Achorns in Damariscotta, if they knew of a boarding house by the sea, or a house where a few of them could board. Will Achorn, a "drummer", driving about selling, knew of the Thorp at Christmas Cove, who kept the general store but who had not taken boarders or thought of such a thing. Cousin Will arranged with Eliphalet Thorp and his wife, Aunt Betty to take their first summer boarders, the Dennetts. This was the very beginning of the summer boarder business at Christmas Cove that began at a most fortunate time.

For many years Jonathan and his brother, Eliphalet Thorpe Thorpe had sent out their fleet of schooners to the Grand Banks for cod fishing and on had an enterprise that employed about all the men in the nearby community, but now, on account of Gloucester foreign-manned boats, these Maine fishermen were being crowded out of the business, They were hard hit. All the sons and neighbors of the Thorps sailed on their boats and I believe that the last trip to the Banks was made in the year that the Dennetts came to stay at Eliphalet Thorp's. All the schooners were sold, except one, the Twilight, which floated several years at the wharf, till, one day, her sails were brought out from storage, and were hoisted by strange men, perhaps from Gloucester, and she too sailed away.

From a small beginning, and fairly soon, every fisherman's house, or many of them, took boarders, and additions were built to the houses, boat shops were turned into dining rooms, fishermen became masons and carpenters and built cottages, and some took sailing parties in the summer in boats they had made in the winter. Women took in washing and learned to charge magnificently; men planted gardens, though their attempts as farmers were crude. In short the whole community of people were glad to take in the summer boarders and the money they spent. Christmas Cove was very popular. At one time a steamboat man told my father that Christmas Cove stood first in freight, baggage and passengers of all landings between Bath and Pemaquid. We had two steamers a day of the Bath Line and other steamers of Portland, and those smaller steamers about the Islands.

But it is of those very early days 1 want to tell you, in the early eighties. 1 have recently compared my remembrances with those of George K. Dennett, who was with his family on that first trip in 1882. He says that Will Achorn, his cousin gave him these intricate directions: They went from Boston to Bath by steamer, — it was the "Star of the East," then by smaller steamer, Wiwurna, or Samoset, probably, to Boothbay, a trip from 5 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. about, then by stage which they found was a Democrat wagon across the land to East Boothbay, which we knew then as, Hodgdon's Mills, or "The Mills". (So called from a tide mill, used in shipbuilding). There they took a ferry to South Bristol. This ferry, they found, was a small open sail boat, manned by "Eben," clad in pants that didn't meet his boots, vest that didn't meet the top of his pants, no coat, an old straw hat that we were to know for years, that allowed strands of hair to appear through the top.

It was foggy. In time the crowded boat drifted and beat across the river to South Bristol, whereupon Eben suggested sailing these new city people "around the pint into the Cove". No one knew what they were in for, but there was wind against tide, most of the city summer people were sick and disgusted when they arrived about noon at the Cove. But Eliphalet and Aunt Betty, their youngest son Bert, and Bert's wife, Emily were lovely people and from that moment there grew up a friendship of years.

They are all dead. Three years ago your Aunt Alice and I drive down from Wiscasset one afternoon, visiting the Cove for the first time in seventeen years. I went in to the Cemetery. There are the stones to Eliphalet and Elizabeth, to Albert C. and Emily, Loring, Lewis, Edward, Manly Brewer, and Miss Arlita Thorp who once knowingly told me "all of the nice girls didn't marry." She was then seventy-five or so.

The next summer my father took mother and four of us children down to Christmas Cove. He had been down the previous summer, on a trip alone, but was not on the first trip with the Dennetts. And what a trip it was from where we lived. Railroad from West Roxbury to Boston at Park Square, horse cars to the Bath boat on Atlantic Ave., an all night trip to Bath, that is to about 4 a.m. a call "Popham, Popham," woke us up. To adults it was beautiful to sail up the Kennebec at dawn. I know that myself from some of my later years, for I continued to go every summer to Christmas Cove, till I was about 30. But that year I was ten and I ought to have been asleep going up river. Two of us were younger than ten. Off the steamer we got about five and had to wait interminably, it seemed, for the smaller steamer to take us through the Islands. It was a few years later that the wait at Bath was even longer. On this first trip we took the early boat to Boothbay, as far as the boat went, whereas the 8.30 boat went into the Cove in later years when increasing traffic made it possible.

At Boothbay, that year 1883, Eben Otis met us in his little boat, mainsail and jib, and we found that he had sailed over the day before and curled up in his boat cuddy all night. In went the trunks, lowered by tackle from the deck of the Wiwurna and stood on end in the cockpit, the Seavers ranged around them on the seats. Tired, assuredly; cross, probably, and hungry. Did the wind hold good? Often it didn't and a long tedious sail it was around Ocean Point and Linnekins Neck to the Cove. If we arrived at noon we were lucky.

On looking back I really wonder that we should have gone more than once, but the charm of Christmas Cove certainly appealed to us: the Cove on one side, the open ocean on the other, the islands, Monhegan and Pemaquid Point, and the open pastures with berries, Varnum's Cove, and a well. I don't know when the Thorps came to settle there, but they told me that the Thorps were from Dedham, Mass. Jonathan was dead and Eliphalet his brother was very old when we first knew him. They were kindly people, nice to us all, and Eliphalet, as storekeeper, gave me quite a handful of rains for a cent. It was in that store that the smell of tobacco plugs, coffee and whatnot, placed it unmistakably as one of those New England general stores, and there the cracker barrel stood open to Eben Otis who used to dip in for his noonday lunch. Eliphalet would take up the big knife and without a word, slip Eben a piece of Cheese. Eben seemed old then, he looked old and wrinkled, but I doubt if he was forty, as he lived years after that, taking out sailing parties and as a summer business and at last living alone, in the village, in his little house.

I am probably right in saying the Heron Island cottagers first came as we did, but they had the added journey from the Cove out to Heron. The fame of this beautiful seashore spread fast and far, and not many years had gone by when the boat from Bath continued from Boothbay and Squirrel Island and stopped at Heron Island and Christmas Cove; and the Portland Steamer, the Enterprise, stopped at Heron Island and haughtily sailed by Christmas Cove, not stopping. It was a rolling old tub anyway and almost a punishment to sail on the Enterprise even on a pleasant day.

Mr. Dennett, who has been to the Cove for 51 years, has recently sold his cottage. My father built on about 1886, on the second piece of land to be sold by the Thorps from their open pasture land, Will Achorn bought the first piece. What was pasture is now all grown up to spruce woods and is divided by fences and walls. Automobiles and motorboats, — we called them naptha launches at first, — drove us out. My father, and most of the early cottagers sold their places about ten years ago, all but Mr. Dennett who built his cottage across the Cove. The summer life at the Cove changed a lot; we used to sail and row, everyone had a rowboat. Tennis came and swimming, and as the place swarmed with young people, one of the fish houses was made into a little theatre for amateur shows and dancing. That was before the Casino was built. Swimming was not so popular, except with men, but my sister was quite a famous person, and of course she swam in a bathing suit with sleeves, loose coat, or what do you call it, bloomers, knee skirt, stockings and shoes. She could dive too. But I suppose gasoline spoiled sailing and rowing, though I am glad swimming has come to stay.

And so I am glad to send this story to you at Heron Island. Did you got up at four a.m. and end your journey in a sail boat? No? Well, enjoy if you will reading about those old times, as I have enjoyed writing this to you.

Yours very truly
HENRY M. SEAVER