BLINK BONNIE GOLF LINKS - PART 1

BLINK BONNIE GOLF LINKS - PART 1

In 2016 the Sorrento VIA celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Blink Bonnie Golf Links.  At the time, I told my brother Stephen that the deed records I had located did not exactly line up to confirm 1916 as the year the course was first open.  When I eventually went back to take another look I found some other surprising things, including other indications that another golf course existed in Sorrento prior to Blink Bonnie being built.

The period when Blink Bonnie was envisioned was monumental not only for Sorrento but the world at large.  Within a year the United States would be at war in Europe and in 1918 a pandemic, like the one we are experiencing today, engulfed the country.  In Sorrento, the ownership of much of the resort property, previously owned by Frank Jones of Portsmouth, NH, had been liquidated by his estate ten years earlier and purchased by new owners.  These new owners had tried to reinvigorate land sales and market the resort's amenities, including attracting visitors to two smaller hotels after the large hotel located at the harbor burned to the ground in 1906.

The families that had vacationed in Sorrento during the prior thirty years were not involved in this new real estate venture.  In 1915 a group of Sorrento Summer families established the Village Improvement Association (VIA) to manage several assets, including the library that was later donated by the Jones heirs in 1918.

There are indications that the Sorrento resort at one point included a small links golf course somewhere closer to the harbor.  Below is an article from the winter of 1916 describing that golf course among the many recreational facilities offered by the new Sorrento Estates Incorporated.  I speculate that this original golf course passed to the new real estate firm along with the other Jones properties.   It is possible that the Sorrento Summer families, believing they might lose access to that course, took it upon themselves to build a new and better course that the VIA and its members could enjoy.

But where would that course be located and when would it be built?  In the clubhouse is a copy of a hand-written note that accompanies a letter dated October 3, 1917, from Dr. James Gamble to Francis Chafee.  The explanatory note indicates that the 1917 letter regards "...the purchase of the farm that was to become Blink Bonnie Golf Course..." by Anna Cochran Ewing for $1,000.00 and presented to the VIA in the Summer of 1918.

Both the note and letter tend to support my idea that the 1916 date on the entrance sign at the course seems incorrect.  While there may well have been a committee established to build a new golf course in 1916, the land was not purchased until a year later.  What is more interesting about the letter is that Dr. Gamble writes to Mr. Chafee to congratulate him on "...the result of your negotiations for the purchase of the Dike property," and that he is "...quite delighted that the future of the golf course is now thoroughly secured."   The land that Anna Ewing purchased, however, was not the Dike property but rather the Bragdon family farm property.

I am fairly certain the property Dr. Gamble references is other acreages further East on the peninsula that belonged to Camden Dike.  Dike was a woolen manufacturer and was involved in politics in Brooklyn, NY.  He was also one of the early directors of the Frenchman's Bay Land and Mt. Desert Land & Water Company.  While a director of the Sorrento land company, he and his family stayed at the Sorrento Hotel and he made several other large land purchases along Flander's Bay for himself.  Camden Dike died in 1894 and ownership of his properties passed to his son, Hon. Norman Dike a Kings County Supreme Court Justice.  This is possibly who Mr. Chafee was negotiating with during the Fall of 1917.  Norman Dike and Chafee shared common ties through Brown University where Dike was an active alumnus.  

What remains a mystery to me is why Dr. Gamble referred to the land in his letter as the Dike property and not the Bragdon farm? Was there another parcel originally considered for the course?  Or did the Dike's have some sort of financial interest in the Bragdon farm while the family kept control of the ownership?  Norman Dike would later sell one of his family's properties in 1919 and the other in 1925 (see deeds Book 546 / Page125 & Book 596 / Page 562), but not to anyone associated with the golf course.  

Regardless, the Hancock County deed records and the letter both confirm was that ownership of the land where the Blink Bonnie golf course is located was deeded to Anna Ewing in October of 1917.

In Part 2 I will provide other details about the Ewing land purchase, the history of Blink Bonnie, and golf in Sorrento.

Continue to Blink Bonnie History - Part 2 - Click Here

UPDATE (January 2022) - A bit more research led me to learn more about the original golf links in Sorrento and who was invited to design them - Click Here