THE ELIOTS AND CALF ISLAND

THE ELIOTS AND CALF ISLAND

Calf Island lies opposite Mt. Desert Island off the coast of Waukeag Neck in Frenchman's Bay.  It was originally visited by Native Americans where they made Summer encampments.  In 1913, noted archeologist, Warren K. Morehead, traveled the area around Sullivan Maine to conduct excavations of shell heaps including those on Calf Island.

Calf Island was included in the survey of islands in Frenchman's Bay in 1789.  At the time it was identified as Bragdon's Island having been sold to Joseph Bragdon in 1786.  By the late 1800s, the island had been renamed Calf Island and been sold to the Nathaniel Stover who, like many farmers in the area, used the island for grazing livestock.

Between 1871 and 1877, Charles W. Eliot – the president of Harvard – spent the summers camping on Calf Island with his family, including his sons Charles & Samuel and brother-in-law Henry Wilder Foote.  A professor of chemistry at Harvard, Eliot's first wife Ellen had died of tuberculosis in March of 1869, and in October of that year, he was named president of the university.  These camping trips with his sons would establish the family's ties to the area and draw them back to Maine for generations.

Their trips to the coast of Maine have been well documented in several places, but one good starting point is this 1998 article by Jaylene B. Roths from the MDI Historical Society

The coast of Maine had become popular in the mid-1800s with painters such as Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, and Fitz Henry Lane.  Their paintings attracted other early visitors captivated by their landscapes.  These early "Rusticators" were drawn largely to the Mt. Desert Island to experience nature and established small Summer settlements there.

Frederic Church's 1850 Schoodic Peninsula from Mount Desert, Sunrise

In the wake of his wife's death, Eliot decided to spend the Summer of 1871 exploring the waters, around Mt. Desert on a chartered sailboat.  His party established a camp on Calf Island where they would return during subsequent Summers between 1872 and 1878 on a larger sloop Eliot commissioned.

His son Charles first accompanied his father on these trips starting when he was 12.  Charles would become a noted landscape architect and following his graduation from Harvard he apprenticed with Frederick Law Olmsted and Company. Young Charles Eliot drew this sketch of their Calf Island "Camp Sunshine" in 1875 when he was 16 and comes from his 1902 biography.

In a letter to his grandmother, young Charles describes the Calf Island camp during that first Summer. These trips became pivotal to the family and Eliot, and as the children got older they expanded the adventures in their boat as far south as Cape Cod and Long Island Sound, and north to the Canadian border, spending the Summer of 1873 camping on Nonamesset Island in Buzzard's Bay.

In his 1960 book "The Story of Mount Desert Island," Samuel Eliot Morison, retells the family tale that his uncle tried to buy the Calf Island but the owner at the time, hearing Eliot was a chemist, feared he had discovered gold and wanted the island for a mine.  Eliot instead took his son's advice in and turned his attention to land in Northeast Harbor where he purchased 120 acres in the 1880s.

A slightly different version of the Eliot's family tale of a possible land purchase was retold in a 1948 interview.  James Gamble and Hank Sharpe discussed the topic with Charles W. Eliot's surviving son, Rev. Samuel Eliot, a copy of which is in the collection of the SSHS.  In this interview, Rev. Eliot, who was also on these trips to Calf Island, indicates that his father did not want to purchase Calf Island, but instead land on Waukeag Neck.  Eliot tells the story that his father tried to negotiate with widow Bean to buy her farm on Bean Point but again was rebuffed because the Beans suspected that Eliot must have discovered silver in the area.

Eliot, no doubt tried to buy land in the area in the middle of the Sullivan mining boom, before Sorrento was established. Whether he attempted to buy either Bean Point or Calf Island, or perhaps both, will never be known.  But there is, however, one puzzle in Rev. Eliot's story about his father's negotiations with Widow Bean.  Widow Bean is buried in the Doane's Point Cemetery and she died in 1869, two years before the Eliots ever came to Calf Island.  Melatiah and Joseph Bean had acquired the point from his father John Bean in 1834.  John was one of the original settlers and had acquired the point in the 1803 land grant (see Book 162 / page 357). The heirs of Melitiah Bean would eventually sell the Bean farmstead, but not until several years after the Eliots bought land in Northeast Harbor.  One possibility is that the widow Rev. Eliot references in the story was actually Lydia Stover, the widow of John Stover the owner of Calf Island.  This widow was indeed very much alive at the time and probably still held title to Calf Island until her death in 1886.

In addition to being turned down in his attempts to buy land, Eliot's life also changed after 1877.  That Fall he remarried and so in the Summer of 1880 he took his new wife Grace on a tour of Europe instead.

Since his father would not be using the boat that Summer, his son Charles Eliot decided to explore the coast of Maine with a group of his Harvard classmates.  The Harvard undergraduates named their expedition the Champlain Society and spent the Summer camping on Mt. Desert Island and sailing the waters of Frenchman's Bay.  A fantastic article on the Eliots Maine trips was written by Catherine Schmitt for Maine Boats magazine.

The boys used the Eliot family sloop, The Sunshine.  They also hired Orrin Donnell of Sullivan to help run the boat.

This photo of the yacht was taken July 20, 1881 by Marshall P. Slade, a member of the group. Photographs courtesy Mount Desert Island Historical Society

In a detailed log kept by the group, they describe a sail taken in August of 1880 to Frenchman's Bay, where they visited the mines and the Waukeag House in Sullivan Harbor.  Interestingly, the describe the smoke in the air which no doubt came from the coal engines at the mining operations.

August 17th - Remarks. After 12 m. flocks of cumuli from the mainland came trooping over Mt. Desert & over Schoodic Point, but over Frenchman’s bay the sky remained clear. At 9 the yacht was under way, with all hands except W. Breyant on board. With gentle S. wind got to Bar Harbor at 2 p.m., having dinner off Sa[?]l’s cliff. C. Eliot, Wakefeld, & deWindt landed and stayed 2 hours. E.L. Rand went ashore for the night. Ran to Sullivan with a free wind, and arrived at 6 p.m. After supper took a walk ashore, visited the Waukeag House and got aboard at 10.30. Townsend did some dredging. A glorious moonlight on the water, and the air too seemed to be full of it, probably owing to the smoke which was very thick during the afternoon.

August 18th - Remarks. The smoke, which was very thick yesterday, was in much less quantity today. The sky was partly cloudy and had a threatening look at sunset. After a 7.30 breakfast all hands walked to the mines. Visited the shaft-houses of the Ashley, Milton & Sullivan companies, also the new reduction works of the Sullivan. Started off in “Sunshine” at 11.30 and beat down to the Ovens where landed for a few minutes at 1 p.m. Took a long tack to Calf Is. and then could fetch Bar Harbor, where we stopped for E.L. Rand at 3.15 p.m. Continued beating down the bay. Outside Egg Rock light wind &, later, calm. C. Eliot & Orrin on deck until 3.20 a.m., when we anchored under Sutton’s Island. At 5.45 got under way again and reached camp to breakfast on the morning of Aug. 19.

The following Summer of 1881, the Champlain Society returned to Somes Sound and again took day trips around the area on the Sunshine.  A logbook entry details another trip to Frenchman's Bay and a visit to Waukeag Neck where they encountered Captain Doane that August.

Tuesday: Aug 16th

A day that began much like Monday. By noon the sky was thoroughly overcast, but later the clouds cleared away and the late afternoon was very lovely. Lane, Worcester, and C. Eliot walked up Newport Mt. in the morning, returning to dinner on board at 1.45 p.m. The walk was very enjoyable, and several new specimens were found by the botanists. The afternoon was spent in sailing in Frenchman’s Bay. There was a good N.E. breeze and the yacht tacked across the Bay pretty quickly, and anchored off Capt. Doanes’ beach on Waukeag neck at 5.30 o’clock. C. Eliot made a call at the house and got milk for supper. Immediately after supper all the cabin party rowed over to Calf Island where they landed and enjoyed the view from the hill. The evening light on Mt. Desert and on the Gouldsboro hills was very lovely indeed.

After returning to the yacht there was much reading and writing and at bed-time a good deal of discussion. This time it was about the “Ruskin theory.” C. Eliot tried to put in a word after he was about three quarters asleep, and his lamentable failure to complete the sentence he had begun caused a tremendous burst of laughter from those gentlemen who imagined themselves to be less sleepy than he was. Finally certain gentlemen narrated certain stories about Mesmerists etc., and Worcester, who had been endeavoring to get to sleep for some time, was compelled to exhort his friends

to “let up.” S. Eliot added strong language to Worcester’s mild appeal and quiet at length reigned the cabin.

Wednesday. Aug 17.

At about 6 a.m., when most of the cabin party were enjoying balmy sleep, C. Eliot was awakened by a boat coming alongside. Before he was fully awake he heard Worcester, who was on the floor, remark “Goodmorning” in rather an astonished tone, and the tone was only too well accounted for when C. Eliot opened his eyes and saw a stout pair of boots with correspondingly bulky legs coming down the companion way. In a moment Capt. Doane’s jovial face followed his lower limbs, and, sitting on the ladder, he proceeded to divulge his errand. In a few minutes it was arranged that the yacht should carry a lady guest of the Doanes over to Bar Harbor, and that C. Eliot would call at the house when the yacht was ready to sail. Accordingly the lady, a Mrs. Sawyer of Portland, was brought on board and the yacht got under way at about 9 o’clock. The run across the Bay was performed quickly, the wind being a good breeze from the N.E. and the weather...

The history of Waukeag Neck and Mt. Desert Island might have been entirely different if Eliot had convinced either the Beans or the owner of Calf Island to sell him land before 1880.  Instead, Eliot took his son's advice and made a large purchase on Somes Sound from A. C. Savage.  The Eliots would of course later lead the movement with George Dorr to preserve the lands on Mt. Desert that today are Acadia National Park.  It would be left to another group of investors to convince the families of Waukeag Neck to sell their farms for a new resort.