1887 –ISAAC AND LEE GWYNN LAWRENCE – “GRASSMERE”

 

1887 –ISAAC AND LEE GWYNN LAWRENCE “GRASSMERE”

Note: February 2024 - I recently did a presentation for the Sullivan-Sorrento Historical Society (SSHS) about the history of "Grassmere" cottage and the connections their first owners had to the first wedding held at the Church of the Redeemer in Sorrento in 1891.  A link to a video of this presentation can be found here - CLICK HERE.

In addition, I have posted a longer story you may want to read about the events surrounding this wedding as well - CLICK HERE.

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Catherine O’Clair Herson’s 1995 book “Sorrento: A Well-Kept Secret” contains the descriptions of two cottages that once stood side-by-side on the road leading down to the boatyard.  She labeled the first cottage “Rock End” and the other “Lookout Cottage.”

As a side note, in one of the first years my family came to Sorrento and the building was still owned by the town, our father rented the uppermost room in the tower, with its expansive views back across Frenchman’s Bay, where he brought his typewriter each day to work on a book he was writing.

"Rock End," she tells us was built by Frank Jones for his mistress Delana Curtis, and later used by the YWCA and given to the town by Dr. Averill for use as a Community House.  As I will explain, the much-repeated story of the cottage originally being built by Frank Jones as a gift for his mistress is not true, although that scandal is indeed a part of its history. 

In 1998, the current owners purchased the cottage from Doris Parr and in recent years have carried out extensive restorations.  Mrs. Parr acquired the house in the spring of 1965 (Hancock Co. Deeds Book 980 / page 13) from the town of Sorrento after a vote taken at the March 1965 town meeting.  While Herson indicates Dr. George Averill bought the house and donated it to the town, the county deed records indicate the family of Northeast Harbor businessman Merritt Ober sold the property directly to the inhabitants of Sorrento in 1941(Hancock Co. Deeds Book 679 / pages 595, 596,597).  At the time of his death in 1935, Ober held the mortgage on large holdings in Sorrento formerly owned by Frank Jones.  Instead, it is more likely that the generous Dr. Averill, whose "KroKrest" cottage was next door, may have donated the funds needed to buy the parcels for the town.

 

Catherine O’Clair Herson describes the second cottage built on the top of the hill -- "Lookout Cottage" -- as owned by Isaac Lawrence and that it was later torn down.  The histories of both houses are a bit more complicated and both have connections to Isaac Lawrence and his wife Lee Gwynn Lawrence.  That connection extends to the hill where the cottages were built, which as Herson tells us, was at one time called Lawrence Hill.

One of the more colorful stories that connects Jones's mistress to the house appeared in Ray Brighton's 1976 biography of Jones entitled "King of the Alemakers."  In it, he interviewed Sorrento native John Nash who told him his tale of the Frank Jones mistress.  According to Nash, it was on Lawrence Hill where he witnessed Mrs. Jones, who was driving past in her carriage, confront her husband and his mistress on the porch where they had emerged wearing only their bathrobes. While that story may or may not be true, Nash did correctly relate to Brighton that the house was not originally built by Frank Jones for his mistress but instead for another couple. 

Before I try to unravel the complicated connection between Delana Curtis and the cottage, I need to first tell the story of the original owners -- Isaac and Lee Gwynn Lawrence.

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In 1887, Charles H. Lewis oversaw the construction of several cottages at his new resort marketed by his company, the Frenchman's Bay and Mt. Desert Land and Water Company. He hoped these new houses would help entice potential investors to buy land in his new venture he had named Sorrento. In addition to selling lots of land, Lewis successfully sold several of these new houses within the first year, including two conceived and financed by Frank Hill Smith. These two cottages of similar design were later named "Tassletop" and "Blueberry Lodge" by their new owners.

Another cottage Lewis built during that first year of operation was located at the top of the hill leading into town and overlooked the cove where the boatyard is located today.  The modest three-bedroom cottage was topped by a three-story tower with a balcony on all sides.  No records exist to tell us if the design was conceived by a particular architect or if it was based on one taken from a book of standards plans.  The photo below shows the distinctive rock outcropping in the front yard and excavations for the new street running down the steep hill.

In October of 1887, the land company sold this cottage to Isaac Lawrence and Lee Gwynn Lawrence of New York City (see Hancock County deeds Book 218 page 479).  The Lawrences financed the purchase of their new cottage with a mortgage from the land company for $4,773.76 (see Hancock County Deeds Book 222 page 54).  An early promotional photo book, seen above, published by the land company labels the cottage as Isaac Lawrence's Cottage.

Isaac Lawrence, a Harvard-educated lawyer from New York City, was 60 years old at the time of the purchase. Born in 1828, he was the son of one-time Democratic Gov. William Beach Lawrence of Rhode Island.  His father, William Beach Lawrence had served as a diplomat for the United States in Britain and was later the law partner of Hamilton Fish in New York City.  Before relocating to Rhode Island, William Beach Lawrence owned a townhouse on West 9th Street in Manhattan where his son Isaac had lived as a child after the family returned from London.

Portrait from Litchfield Historical Society

Isaac Lawrence descended from the prominent New York City family of merchant/bankers John and Isaac Lawrence.  During colonial times, the brothers ran a banking house, were involved in the East India trade, and owned real estate in the city.  This first Isaac Lawrence was later the president of the Bank of America chartered in 1812.

See The Old Merchants of New York: Vol. 2

Isaac Lawrence's mother Esther Rogers Gracie Lawrence, descended from another distinguished New York City family.  Her father was Archibald Gracie, a prominent businessman in New York.  The house he built on the East River, and where Isaac's mother lived for a time as a child, is now the official residence of the Mayor of New York City, Gracie Mansion.

In 1850 William Beach Lawrence left New York City and moved his family to Rhode Island where he was elected Lt. Governor and eventually succeeded to governorship.  During his term, he successfully fought laws to abolish debtor imprisonment and perhaps most famously helped defeat the RI prohibition acts.  This last stand did not endear him with voters, and he was not re-elected. In the 1850s, William Beach Lawrence built a summer estate on OchrePoint in Newport named Orchard House.

Like his father, Isaac inherited an interest in politics and later ran for governor of Rhode Island in 1878.  However, Isaac's campaign as the state's Democratic Party's nominee was unsuccessful, and within a few years, he left Rhode Island and moved back to New York City to practice law. 

A few years after returning to New York City, Isaac Lawrence, then 55 years old, married 26-year-old Lee Gwynn in 1883.  Thirty years younger than her new husband, Lee was the daughter of the daughter of Nicholas Gwynn, a wealthy NY cotton broker of the firm Fielding and Gwynn.

Five years later, the January 21, 1888 morning edition of the Portland Press reported that five houses were being built at Sorrento and that “…business is quite lively, and the outlook for the place very promising.”  The article went on to say that two of the new cottages already had new owners, Eva Cochran of Yonkers, NY, (who bought one of the Frank Hill Smith designed cottages), and Isaac Lawrence of New York City.

In July of 1888, the Bar Harbor Record published a long article about the new town across the bay. It described the beauty of the new resort and many of the improvements happening there.  Also reported were the names of the people buying the new cottages being built, including one bought by the Lawrences.  The report describes the couple as enjoying "...the beauties of Sorrento and the pleasures of a rural life."

On the next page in the paper were the weekly cottage listings for Bar Harbor and vicinity, and the Lawrences were the first to list a Sorrento address at their newly named "Grassmere Cottage."

While the Lawrence cottage may have been rural, it was certainly not threadbare. A few days earlier the Kennebec Journal reported that “…nearly $10,000 worth of oil paintings of the choicest character...” had been installed in the new Lawrence residence at Sorrento.

The article also describes that stained glass finished “...in all the vivid colorings of the rainbow...” that Lawrence had installed in the tower at "Grassmere.”

As the floorplan below shows, “Grassmere” was not particularly large as originally designed.  There was only a dining room, sitting room, kitchen, and what was probably a servant's bedroom on the first floor.  On the second floor was the only bathroom as well as a large bedroom and two smaller chambers. Unfortunately, there is no floorplan page for the tower room. These plans come from a later promotional booklet after the land company changed the name of the house from “Grassmere” to “Lookout Cottage.”

Over the winter of 1889, the land company's new building subsidiary began construction on several more cottages in Sorrento, including one near the harbor for its president Frank Jones.  Also built that winter was a larger cottage on the hill next door to the Lawrence's Cottage.  In the spring of 1890, the Bar Harbor Record reported that Isaac Lawrence had purchased this second cottage near “Grassmere.”

That story about their new purchase in Sorrento was not the first article in 1890 to mention the Lawrences. Earlier that spring, the Ellsworth American reported that Lee Lawrence was listed as the defendant in a lawsuit brought by a woman named Rose Westpiser.  Rose, the maid who had worked for the Lawrences at "Grassmere" in Sorrento the previous summer, was suing Mrs. Lawrence for libel and seeking damages of $10,000.  

In the case brought by a New York attorney named Louis F. Post, Mrs. Lawrence's former maid alleged that Lee had libeled her in a conversation she happened to overhear at the home of her new employer in Bar Harbor.  Mrs. Lawence was said to have told  Mrs. Henry Sudley, "...How could you have such a thief in your house?"  Lee had accused her former maid of stealing silver and linens from their Sorrento house, while Rose claimed she had left the Lawrences because she had been “…asked to do work that was beneath her.” There is no record of who won the case or if Lee was ever ordered to pay Rose any damages. (Note: her maid's attorney Louis Post would later become noteworthy in American history when he battled J. Edgar Hoover to block deportations of suspected radicals during the Palmer Raids.)

As to the new cottage bought by Isaac Lawrence in 1890, unlike some of the other houses in Sorrento that were designed by architects, this new cottage was built using plan number 354 from “Shoppell’s Modern Houses.”

I am indebted to Brad Emerson, a Maine antique dealer and student of all things architectural, who first pointed out this and other Sorrento cottage plans on his Facebook page, blog, and on his #Downeastdilettante Instagram feed.  Below you will note the similarities when comparing the mail-order plans next to the ones published by the land company, although the Sorrento version had a 10-foot wide "piazza" while the original specified an 8-foot wide veranda.  With many more rooms than their first house, the Shoppell plans indicate that the complete cottage could be purchased for "...$6,000.00, complete, except mantels, kitchen range and heater."  I suspect the land company used local building materials and only utilized the mail-order plans as the basis for the final design.

 

After buying the second cottage, the Lawrences called their new compound “Grassmere.” On the facade of the foundation of their new house, the couple installed a granite marker. On this slab they had carved the Lawrence family crest, with its Raguly Cross and the Latin inscription ‘QUAERO INVENIO’ or “I FIND” in English. Directly beneath the crest are engraved the couple's initials and 1890, the year they purchased the cottage.

Ted VanWinkle's wonderful 1973 pictorial book Frenchman's Bay has an interesting theory about why Lawrence may have built a second house.  That story went that this resident had the house built for his wife "...whose company he apparently found uncongenial." We will never know if that was the real reason or whether the Lawrences simply needed more room.

Despite Lee Lawrence's possible marital issues and problems with her maid, she evidently preferred Sorrento to New York and spent a great deal of time there even in the winter months.  The Lawrences had two young children by this time, but it is not clear if they stayed with their mother in Maine later in the year or returned to New York City.

Lee Lawrence was an accomplished equestrian and athlete. This would explain Ted VanWinkle's reference to stories local residents told of her driving horse carriages "hell worse'n crooked" through town.  A report in 1893 also said she was among the champion tenpin bowlers in New York.

Given her interest in that sport, it is possible that she was one of the organizers of bowling at the Hotel Sorrento.

Bowling Alley Hotel Sorrento - Courtesy SSHS

During the week leading up to the Fourth of July in 1891, Lee Lawrence made plans to host a hastily called wedding in Sorrento. I've written a more detailed account of the couple involved in this marriage and their wedding in another blog posting found here - CLICK HERE. But briefly, Lee's widowed sister Elizabeth was to marry Ellington Dorr Jr. of Boston. From what I can tell, this was the very first wedding performed in the newly built Church of the Redeemer which had been consecrated at a mass in August the previous summer.

Following a simple ceremony -- which one paper described as "...an interesting wedding..." -- performed by an Episcopal priest brought in for the day from Bangor, the wedding party, guests, and a small orchestra were transported up Lawrence Hill to Grassmere for a breakfast reception.

Just one year later, Isaac and Lee Lawrence's vacations in Sorrento would end abruptly. In the fall of 1892, William H. Lawrence (no relation to Isaac) the manager of the resort reports in his notes that he wrote a letter to the Bar Harbor Bank and Trust Co. regarding a debt of $275.00.  Evidently, he had signed off on the loan and now was left holding the debt for the couple. He also wrote to Mrs. Lawrence to ask her to repay him the funds. We will probably never know whether it was some financial dispute with the company or some other more personal issue that drove the couple to suddenly abandon Sorrento. What seems clear is that the manager had had enough of Mrs. Lawrence, saying there is nothing she "...could do or say to injury me for the past 6 months that she has not done."

W.H. Lawrence letter book excerpt courtesy of SSHS

Abandoning both their houses and debts, the Lawrence family relocated across the bay to Mt. Desert Island for the summer of 1893.  Mrs. Lawrence is described as leaving a “…life of pastoral delight among her cows and chickens…” in Sorrento, to “…once more take part in Vanity Fair…” in Bar Harbor with her two children.  Identified by the reporter as only 24 years old, Lee was in actuality closer to 36 at the time.

Isaac and Lee Lawrence certainly were not destitute and seemingly had no reason to leave W.H. Lawrence with an unpaid note to the Bar Harbor bank. Both were from wealthy families and Lee had reportedly inherited over $1 million in 1891. While the country was beginning to feel the effects of a serious economic depression in 1893, there was one financial problem that may have been the cause to forced them to leave Sorrento. An inheritance Isaac Lawrence expected to receive after an uncle's death had been tied up in a lengthy court battle which had depleted the value of his inheritance.  But if financial difficulties had been a worry, the NY Times reported in 1893 that the estate had been settled leaving Isaac a "fine share," and Lee was again enjoying driving her horses in Bar Harbor.

The "fine share" that Isaac Lawrence eventually inherited was placed in a trust signed that July in Bar Harbor which made his wife Lee the primary trustee.  Included in the trust was their townhouse in Manhattan and a commercial property on Broadway.  Twenty years later, this agreement would be at the center of a lawsuit filed by Lee's son who charged his mother with financial improprieties.

Later that year, the NY Times provided further details about why Isaac Lawrence may have been experiencing a bit of a financial squeeze.  The estate of his late uncle, which was to provide him an inheritance, had been plundered by a prominent Brooklyn lawyer named Adrian Van Sinderen. In 1886, Lawrence noticed certain "irregularities" in the accounts of the estate and asked the Surrogates Court to remove Van Sinderen as the trustee.  When finally confronted in 1891 it was clear that the trustee had been embezzling money and the the court found that there was nothing left of the estate but "...the good intentions of the trustee." After being indicted, the lawyer faked his own death and fled the country in 1892.  Articles in November 1893 reported that Van Sinderen had been found alive in Germany and faced extradition back to New York for trial.

While Lawrence may have never recovered any of the money stolen by Van Sinderen, the family did have sufficient funds to return to Maine the following summer of 1894.  This time renting a cottage in Bar Harbor named "Rus in Urbe."  That also happened to be the first year that the golf links at Kebo were open for play.  Later a member of the Baltusrol Golf Club in NJ, it is possible Mrs. Lawrence played golf in Bar Harbor that summer at Kebo.

In the years after leaving Sorrento, when the couple seems to have regained their financial footing, Mrs. Lawrence was highlighted in an 1894 article about how to buy a horse and her expertise as “…one of the best judges of horseflesh among women.” She reportedly “…buys a new one almost as often as she buys a new hat,” and bridles three-horse abreast to drive her buckboard.

An 1898 feature, went into more detail about Lee describing her as “…clever in all games; she rides and drives and cycles; and is a through-going sportswoman.”  Her skills in driving horses are again detailed and her daughter is also described as showing promise in being as expert a horsewoman as her mother.

After Isaac and Lee Lawrence decamped for Bar Harbor, an 1895 article reported that their former properties in Sorrento had been purchased by Frank Jones.  I can find no deeds related to this purchase, although records do show that Jones later resold the property.

After Jones took control of the properties in 1895, he or the land company likely renamed the cottages “Rock End” and “Lookout Cottage.”  Remember too that it was in 1895 that Jones successfully pushed the Maine State Legislature to let Sorrento break away from the Town of Sullivan. It was at some point after Jones took ownership of the house that he installed his mistress and her family in "Rock End" cottage. While there is much more I still need to write about this part of the history, we do know that when his mistress Delana Curtis contested his will shortly after Jones died in October of 1902, she included the cottage in her lawsuit. Newspaper reports at the time seem to indicate that the house in Sorrento had been a gift from Jones. 

In her action against the estate in December of 1903, she asked the court to award her $400,000 for what she said was a thirty-year relationship.  The litigation sought compensation for her expenses and other “services” Delana claimed she was owed for “entertaining” his friends over many years.  Aurore Eaton, a historian in Manchester, NH did an in-depth series of articles on the affair several years ago for the Manchester Union Leader.

 

When the trustees of the Jones estate quietly settled the lawsuit with Delana Curtis in 1904 for $140,000, they included $35,000 as payment for the Sorrento cottage. Interestingly, in addition to cash, payment for the house, and lawyers fees, the settlement also included an extra $10,000 if she chose to sell the furnishings in the cottage to the Jones estate.

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The lives of Issac and Lee Lawrence took a few more interesting twists after the couple left Sorrento in 1892.  In 1898 Lee took part of her inheritance and made a sizable investment in what was then an unproven technology, the Holland Submarine.

In addition to labeling her as “clever” for her business acumen in backing Holland's submarine, the papers spent just as much time extolling her looks, describing Lee as “…a blond, with blue eyes and a fair skin.” With Mrs. Lawrence’s backing, the US Navy commissioned Holland to design the first modern submarine in October of 1900, ushering in a new era of warfare. Lee Lawrence's investment in Holland’s company would eventually evolve into the Electric Boat Company, the primary supplier of submarines for the US Navy and now part of General Dynamics.

In 1902 the Lawrence's purchased a townhouse in Manhattan on E. 90^th Street, but Lee’s life was soon marred by tragedy.  In July of 1905, their teenage daughter Gwynn died while attempting to swim in a river in Maryland while on vacation with friends. 

After his daughter's death, Isaac Lawrence threw himself into a cause he had been interested in for years, tariff reform.  He founded The Tariff Reform League to advocate for the reduction of tariffs on imported goods.  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran a full-page feature on Lawrence and his ideas to encourage free trade.

However, a 1916 article in The American Economist seemed to throw cold water on his organization, with a headline declaring it An Imaginary "League."   Describing Lawrence as a "very old gentleman" and the organization's only member, it warned that the league had many unpaid bills. It surmised that newspaper publishers would be well advised to toss his communication "...into the waste paper basket if they knew that he represents a practically fictitious organization."

Sadly, it appears that Lee was eventually unable to manage the couple's financial affairs as Isaac approached 90 years of age.  In 1917 their son William was forced to sue his mother in NYS Supreme Court, charging that the taxes had gone unpaid on their NYC townhouse as well as another commercial property at 498-500 Broadway.  William was required to go to court to secure his rights in the trust his parents had established for the family.  Although described as “…more than 75 years old…” by the NY Times, at the time Lee was just 60 years of age.

The article also mentions another scandal involving Lee, this one a probable romantic affair in Montana where Mrs. Rex Durand was suing her for “…alienating the affections…” of her husband Courtland.

In her son's lawsuit, William asked the court to remove his mother as the trustee and appoint a receiver to take charge of the Lawrence family’s NYC properties and account for the funds in the trust that he felt she had mismanaged over the previous decade.  As part of the lawsuit, William's lawyers also charged that Lee had abandoned the townhouse in NYC and left for Montana.

Nearly a decade later the final order on appeal issued in 1925 -- long after his father and sister had both died -- gave William his rightful one-third share in the income from the family trust due to his mother's financial neglect.  The court also awarded Lee two-thirds of the trust, for as long as she lived and on the condition that she remained unmarried.

Isaac Lawrence continued to live in New York City until he died in 1919 at the age of 90 before the appeals court ruled in his son's favor.  Lee would live another 27 years after Issac's death and never remarried.  She died in 1946 at the age of 88. The couple is buried alongside his ancestors in the Lawrence family cemetery in what is now Astoria in Queens, NY.

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As to the Sorrento “Rock End” cottage, after the Jones executors reached the confidential settlement with Delana Curtis the Jones family would also abandon Sorrento over the next few years.  Surprisingly, after the death of Frank Jones and before deciding to file her lawsuit, Delana Curtis seems to have spent the summer of 1903 in Sorrento.

However, a year after the settlement, a new family rented the cottage in 1905. It was reported that Zechariah Chafee and his family had stayed at “Rock End” cottage that summer.  This was a year before they closed on the land they purchased from the Jones estate in 1906 and renamed Weir Haven Farm.

Over the next few years, most of the other land and cottages in town formerly owned by Frank Jones were sold to new investors.  In 1906 the Hotel Sorrento on the harbor was bought by two Boston investors and promptly burned.  In 1908 George Grant of Ellsworth purchased other landholdings and several cottages from the Jones estate, including both “Rock End” and “Lookout Cottage.”

I suspect that it was around this time that Lookout Cottage was expanded. This renovation added an expanded second and third floor in addition to an annex on the rear.  The photo below shows the cottage with this new three-story gambrel roof extension. “Lookout Cottage” fell into disrepair at some point after 1925 and was demolished.

Attempts were made by these investors to market the two cottages on the hill as hotels, and Grant brought in new managers who formerly ran hotels in Castine to run the properties.

By the time the 1925 advertisement seen below from a Bangor was published, Grant had brought on the Charles A. Mann Realty Co. of New York to manage the property. The "Rock End" cottage had now been renamed the “Hotel Sorrento” and in the background “Lookout Cottage” can also be seen.

When the Charles A. Mann Realty holdings were auctioned two years later, this and other cottages were made part of the offering.  My article on the 1927 auction details how this undertaking was ultimately unsuccessful.  Mann Realty retained control of the property until Merritt Ober foreclosed on the mortgage shortly before he died in 1935 (See Hancock Co. Deeds Book 645 / page 1. 

During the mid-1930s, Ober leased the cottage to the Bangor YWCA for several summers where they operated "Camp Sorrento."  It seems that the agreement to lease the Sorrento property for a camp for girls ended after the 1936 season, the year following Merritt Ober's sudden death. 

Doris Parr acquired the cottage from the Town of Sorrento in 1965 (Hancock Co. Deeds Book 980/page 13).  According to her deed, it was a few years after Merritt Ober died that his heirs sold the cottage and a few more of his holdings to the Town in 1941 (see Hancock Co Deeds Book 679/ page 595). Although Herson’s book on Sorrento seems to indicate the house was gifted to the town by Dr. Averill, I have not found any deeds to document that he ever owned the property before the town took ownership. Although it is possible it was the doctor who provided the funds the town needed to acquire the cottage from the Ober family in 1941.