Catalog entry

Mount Desert was in the Frenchman's Bay Customs District, and in 1850 the district ranked 4th, at 11.2%, among Maine's 13 customs districts, for its investment in the cod fisheries. The thick, old-growth forest provided ample opportunity for sawmills and the export of pine lumber and timber, as well as shipbuilding, which went hand-in-hand with fishing vessels for the cod fisheries.The coasters of the island found ample freight in the shipment of lumber from the sawmills of the Union River at Ellsworth. The rugged interior of the island limited settlements to the coastal fringe, creating a number of independent, isolated communities. Mount Desert's small fishing and farming communities, in the early 1850s, were set like small diamonds in an incredible crown of natural beauty. These small, isolated villages, clinging to a jagged coastline which stood resolute against the breaking sea, would have reminded artists like Lane of an America untouched by the progress of time. This was New England as it had once been, and there were few places in coastal New England where this claim could still be made.

Mount Desert, as it is colloquially known, has been known by many names throughout its history. The Etchemin called it Pem-etn-ic, "a range of mountains," as seen from the sea, "where the hills rise in a long saw-toothed range," Champlain called the island, notable for its granite mountains, of which one rises 1530 feet , "Isle des Monts Deserts," "barren mountains Island," and Sieur de la Mothe de Cadillac, who was granted a large tract at the head of Frenchman Bay in 1687, called Douaquet. Cadillac is one of a number of Frenchman whose presence in history is denoted by Frenchman's Bay.

At the beginning of recorded history Asticou was an Etchemin Sakom who lived seasonally on Mount Desert with his band. His larger homeland, Ketakamigwa, "the big land on the seacoast," was "an ecologically diverse coastal woodland environment, combining a saltwater archipelago with a 1000 mi.² freshwater hinterland broken by hills, swamps, lakes and ponds, and drained by a few major rivers in numerous smaller streams." The highly mobile Wabenaki families, ethnically identified as Etchemins, inhabited Penobscot Bay, making full use of the abundance of natural resources, including the building of a fish weir, K'chi-siti-mokan'gan, "The Great Fish Weir," between Little and Big Deer Isle, from which Eggemoggin Reach is derived), and shaping the natural environment to suit their needs.

Asticou, or members of his band, were on hand to greet Champlain in 1604, and he was at Manchester Point in 1613 when Father Baird and three Jesuit priests dropped anchor on their way to establish a Catholic mission on the Penobscot River. Asticou invited them to stay, the invitation was accepted, and the mission of St. Sauveur at Fernald Point began to be built. The work had barely begun when the mission was destroyed by Capt. Samuel Argall, an English privateer from Jamestown.

Champlain named Mount Desert but left its sentinel rock, 26 miles off shore, unidentified. The island was given the name of Mount Desert Dry Rock in the 18th century, and shortened somewhat after this. The island served as a navigational aid, not a hazard, for coastal seamen. The US government purchased this pile of rocks from the State of Maine in 1829, there surely must have been a few laughs over this transaction, and the government authorized $5000 to build a light station, which began operation in 1830.

– Mark Honey

References:

Conkling, Philip W, "Islands in Time," A Natural and Cultural History of the Islands of the Gulf of Maine, Island Institute, Rockland, and Downeast Books, Camden.

Eckstorm, Fannie Hardy, "Indian Place-Names of the Penobscot Valley and the Maine Coast," University of Maine Studies, 2nd Series, #55, November 1941, reprinted 1960 by the University of Maine Press.  Frank G Speck's "Penobscot Man," University of Pennsylvania Press, 1940.

Duncan, Roger F, "Coastal Maine, A Maritime History," WW Norton & Company, New York, 1992.

 Prins, Harald E L, and McBride, Bunny, "Asticou's Island Domain: Wabenaki Peoples at Mount Desert Island," 1500-2000, Acadia National Park, Ethnographic Overview and Assessment, Volume 1, repaired under cooperative agreement with The Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, Maine, Northeast Regional Ethnography Program, National Park Service, Boston, Massachusetts, September, 2007.

Rowe, William Hutchinson, "The Maritime History of Maine," Harpswell Press, 1996.

Mount Desert "displays several U-shaped valleys, almost perfectly parallel and trending a bit east of south; Somes Sound, nearly dividing the island in two, is of particular interest because it is a fjord, a valley cut much deeper than sea level by a glacier that extended an unknown distance out to sea. The Valley was later filled by the sea when the meltwater from the wasting ice raised sea level to its present elevation."              

Abraham Somes is alleged to have made seasonal fishing trips to Somes Sound as early as 1755, though he did not begin the process of settlement until 1761. He removed his family through the Head of the Sound in 1762 and erected a sawmill. The Sound and the village bear his name. Through extended family kinships, the Somes family would be connected to the sawmill families of Flye of Union River and the Herrick's of Mount Desert, Sedgwick, and Penobscot.

– Mark Honey

References:

Honey, Mark E, "King Pine, Queen Spruce, Jack Tar," An Intimate History of Lumbering on the Union River, Volumes 1-5.

Kendall, David L, "Glaciers & Granite," A Guide to Maine's Landscape and Geology, Downeast Books, Camden, 1987

Essay to come.

The colonial American shallop is the ancestor of many regional types of New England fishing craft found in Lane's paintings and drawings, including "New England Boats" (known as "boats"), and later descendents, such as "Chebacco Boats," "Dogbodies," and "Pinkies." (discussed elsewhere)

These boats were very common work boat types on Cape Ann throughout the 1800s. They were primarily used for inshore coastal fishing, which included lobstering, gill-netting, fish-trapping, hand-lining, and the like. They were usually sailed by one or two men, sometimes with a boy, and could be rowed as well as sailed. An ordinary catch would include rock cod, flounder, fluke, dabs, or other small flat fish. The catch would be eaten fresh, or salted and stored for later consumption, or used as bait fish. Gill-netting would catch herring and alewives when spawning. Wooden lobster traps were marked with buoys much as they are today, and hauled over the low sides of the boat, emptied of lobsters and any by-catch, re-baited and thrown back.

THE SHALLOP

Like other colonial vessel types, shallops were defined in many ways, including size, construction, and rig. Most commonly, they were open boats with square or sharp sterns, 20 to 30 feet in length, two-masted rigs, and heavy sawn­frame construction which in time became lighter. (1)

The smaller shallops developed into a type called the Hampton Boat early in the nineteenth century, becoming the earliest named regional variant of what is now collectively termed the New England Boat. Other variants were named for their regions of origin: Isles of Shoals Boat, Casco Bay Boat, No Mans Land Boat, to name a few. No regional name for a Cape Ann version has survived, and "boat," or "two­-masted boat" seems to have sufficed. (2)

Gloucester's New England Boats were mostly double-­enders (sharp sterns) ranging in length from 25 to 30 feet, with two masts and two sails (no bowsprit or jib). They were used in the shore fisheries: hand­lining, gill­netting, and gathering or trapping shellfish (see View from Kettle Cove, Manchester-by-the-Sea, 1847 (inv. 94), View of Gloucester Harbor, 1848 (inv. 97), and /entry: 240/). (3)

Larger, double­-ended shallops became decked and evolved in Ipswich (the part now called Essex) to become Chebacco Boats. (4) This variant retained the two­-mast, two-­sail rig, but evolved further, acquiring a bowsprit and jib and becoming known as a pinky (see Gloucester Harbor from Rocky Neck, 1844 (inv. 14), The Western Shore with Norman's Woe, 1862 (inv. 18), and The Old Fort and Ten Pound Island, Gloucester, 1850s (inv. 30)). The Chebacco Boat became a distinct type by the mid-eighteenth century giving rise to the pinky in the early ninetennth century; the latter, by the early 1900s. (5)

References:

1. William A. Baker, Sloops & Shallops (Barre, MA: Barre Publishing Co., 1966), 27–­33; and “Vessel Types of Colonial Massachusetts,” in Seafaring in Colonial Massachusetts (Boston: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1980), 13­–15, see figs. 10, 11.

2. Howard I. Chapelle, American Small Sailing Craft (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1951), 136­–45.

3. Ibid., 145, upper photo, fourth page of plates.

4. Baker, 82–91.

5. Chapelle, The American Fishing Schooners, 1825­–1935 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1973), 23­–54.

THE NEW ENGLAND BOAT

By the 1840s, the Gloucester version of the New England Boat had evolved into a distinct regional type. Referred to locally as “boats,” the most common version was a double-ender, i.e. having a pointed stern, unlike the less common version having a square stern.

Both variants had two masts, a foresail, a mainsail, but no bowsprit or jib. Lane depicted both in several paintings, beginning in the mid­-1840s (see View from Kettle Cove, Manchester-by-the-Sea, 1847 (inv. 94), View of Gloucester Harbor, 1848 (inv. 97), and /entry: 240/), all ranging 25 to 30 feet in length. In View of Gloucester Harbor, 1848 (inv. 97) and Gloucester Inner Harbor, 1850 (inv. 240), a double-­ender can be seen on the beach while a square-stern version lies at anchor in the harbor, just to the right of the former. (1)

Lane’s depictions of the double-­enders show lapstrake hull planking in View of Gloucester Harbor, 1848 (inv. 97) and Gloucester Inner Harbor, 1850 (inv. 240), and cuddies (short decking) inboard at the ends for shelter and stowage of fishing gear in View from Kettle Cove, Manchester-by-the-Sea, 1847 (inv. 94). The few square-­stern examples (see View of Gloucester Harbor, 1848 (inv. 97) and Gloucester Inner Harbor, 1850 (inv. 240)) suggest carvel (smooth) planking and paint finish, rather than oil and tar. The presence of an example of the latter variant in Boston Harbor, as noted in Boston Harbor, c.1850 (inv. 48), suggests a broader geographical range for this sub­type. (2)

The primary use of Cape Ann’s “boats” was fishing, making “day trips” to coastal grounds for cod, herring, mackerel, hake, flounder, and lobster, depending on the season. Fishing gear included hooks and lines, gill nets, and various traps made of wood and fish net.

Some boats worked out of Gloucester Harbor, but other communities on Cape Ann had larger fleets, such as Sandy Bay, Pigeon Cove, Folly Cove, Lanesville, Bay View, and Annisquam. Lane’s depictions of these places and their boats are rare to nonexistent. (3)

The double­-ended boat served Lane in marking the passage of time in Gloucester Harbor. In View from Kettle Cove, Manchester-by-the-Sea, 1847 (inv. 94), we see new boats setting out to fish, but in View of Gloucester Harbor, 1848 (inv. 97) and Gloucester Inner Harbor, 1850 (inv. 240), a boat of the same type is depicted in a progressively worn state. In Stage Fort across Gloucester Harbor, 1862 (inv. 237), the boat is a stove hulk on a beach, and in the same year, Lane depicted the type’s shattered bottom frame and planking lying on the shore at Norman’s Woe in Norman's Woe, Gloucester Harbor, 1862 (inv. 1).

Regional variants of the New England Boat appear in Lane’s paintings of Maine harbors, including one­ and two­-masted versions, collectively called Hampton Boats (see Bear Island, Northeast Harbor, 1855 (inv. 24), Ten Pound Island at Sunset, 1851 (inv. 25), Fishing Party, 1850 (inv. 50), Father's (Steven's) Old Boat, 1851 (inv. 190), and "General Gates" at Anchor off Our Encampment at Bar Island in Somes Sound, Mount Desert, Maine, 1850 (inv. 192)). Some distinctive regional types were given names, i.e. Casco Bay Boats ("General Gates" at Anchor off Our Encampment at Bar Island in Somes Sound, Mount Desert, Maine, 1850 (inv. 192) may be one), but many local type names, if they were coined, have been lost. (4)

References:

1. Howard I. Chapelle, American Small Sailing Craft (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1951), 141–42.

2. Ibid., 152­–55.

3. Sylvanus Smith, Fisheries of Cape Ann (Gloucester, MA: Press of the Gloucester Times, 1915), 96–­97, 102–05, 110­–13.

4. Chapelle, 152–55.

Samuel Adams, Jr. was a friend of Joseph L. Stevens, Jr. from Castine. He joined Stevens, Lane and Witherle on their excursions in the Penobscot Bay area in 1850 and 1852. (1)

Samuel Adams (1828-1861) married Mary Brewer Martin, daughter of Silas Martin and Margaret Crawford of Castine and Wilmington, North Carolina. He was the son of Deacon Samuel Adams, born in 1790, and Lucy Sewall Moulton. Deacon Adams was a merchant and shipbuilder, and in 1850 he was one of the wealthiest men in the community. Deacon Adams and his extended family were invested in the cod fisheries and the cotton trade with New Orleans, and financed the building of some of Castine's greatest ships. Samuel Adams's sister, Sarah F. Adams, was married to William H. Witherle.

-Mark Honey

References:

(1) Frederic Alan Sharf. "Fitz Hugh Lane: Visits to the Maine Coast, 1848–55." Essex Institute Historical Collections 98 (April 1962), 117.

Joseph Lowe Stevens, Jr. (1823–1908) was Lane's closest friend and traveling companion. He was also executor of Lane's estate, and a tireless promoter of Lane's work. He was a supporter of abolition and animal welfare, and an active member of the Gloucester Lyceum. It was the Stevens family who encouraged Lane to make a print of Castine and who published and promoted it there Castine, from Hospital Island, 1855 (inv. 448). Joseph first worked as a dry goods salesman and in later life “engaged in the wholesale dry-goods and woollen trade on Summer St. Boston, travelling daily to and fro” on the train. (1)

Joseph's father, Dr. Joseph Lowe Stevens, Sr., was born in Andover, Massachusetts, and raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He married Dorothy Little of Castine, Maine, where the couple settled, and where Joseph Jr. was born in 1823. In the spring of 1840, at the age of seventeen, Joseph, Jr. left Maine and moved to Gloucester to work in his uncle’s Samuel Stevens' dry goods store and to live with his grandfather, Zachariah Stevens. Seven years later, Joseph, Jr. married his second cousin, Caroline Stevens Foster. The couple eventually had five children, one of whom died very young.

Like most of the educated population of the town, Joseph joined the Gloucester Lyceum shortly after arriving in town; the signature of John J. Piper appears next in the membership book; and the next after him was Fitz Henry Lane. (2) Joseph remained involved with the Gloucester Lyceum and Library for most of his life, acting as director for many years, and was the superintendent at the time it became incorporated as the Gloucester Lyceum and Sawyer Free Library.

Joseph also helped his father work on a history of Castine, and he was sufficiently concerned about the welfare of animals to serve on the boards of three animal-aid societies. He became the secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the New England Humane Education Society, and treasurer of the Band of Mercy. (3) Joseph was committed to more than animal welfare; he involved himself in the Free Soil movement and the slavery debate, to the extent that he left Gloucester for Kansas in 1855 “to see for himself what was going on,” returning about two years later. (4)

Joseph L. Stevens, Jr. first became friends with Lane after the artist had returned from Boston and had set up a studio on Elm Stree. That same year, Joseph invited Lane to accompany him to Castine. It was the first of many such trips to the Maine coast, where Lane sketched and painted and visited with Joseph’s parents.

When Lane fell out with his brother-in-law, Joseph Stevens came to the rescue by purchasing the contested stone house from Lane and evicting the troublesome in-laws. He was also at Lane’s side when he died and was named as one of two executors in Lane’s will. In addition, he inherited two-thirds of the residual property of the estate.

Joseph’s wife Caroline died in 1886, and Joseph left Gloucester nine years later to marry Charlotte M. Todd of Milton. He remained there until his own death. He is buried in Oak Grove cemetery alongside Caroline and their infant son. Lane is also buried in their family plot.

– Stephanie Buck

(1) Joseph L. Stevens Jr., letter written as Superintendent of the Sawyer Free Library, for the 1876 Women’s Time Capsule. Gloucester Archives, CC195 and AS300.

(2) Gloucester Lyceum Records, vol. 1, 1830–1852.

(3) The New England Humane Education Society is not to be confused with the coastal lifesaving institution which was then known as the Massachusetts Humane Society. The Band of Mercy was associated with the Massachusetts SPCA.

(4) F. A. Sharf, "Fitz Hugh Lane: Visits to the Maine Coast, 1848–1855," Essex Institute Historical Collection 98, no. 2 (April 1962): 112.

George Tilden was a lifelong resident of Castine. According to William Witherle's diary, George accompanied Lane and Stevens on their 1852 boat trip. The inscriptions from the drawings from the 1850 excursion indicate that he was on that trip as well.

George Francis Tilden, 1825-1883, was the son of Capt. Charles K. Tilden and Mary Reed of Castine. George was in partnership with his father at Castine, and though the family was a minor player in the cod fisheries, they still ranked 5th in terms of relative wealth in 1850. Capt. Charles K Tilden supplied lumber to the shipyards of Belfast and Castine, and had business interests as far afield as Vinalhaven. George had his own enterprise and invested in sawmills and timberlands at Cherryfield. Charles William Tilden, 1832-1914, the youngest son, would later enter the family enterprise. Charles would rise to prominence as a Col. in the 16th Maine Regiment, during the Civil War, and would earn the brevet of Brig. Gen. The expedition in 1852 began at the wharf of Capt. Charles K Tilden at Castine.

-Mark Honey

References:

Doudiet, Ellenore W, "Majabigwaduce, A History of Castine, Penobscot, and Brooksville, Castine Scientific Society (Wilson Museum), Castine, Maine, 1978.

Honey, Mark E, "Abigail & Sarah Hawes of Castine," Navigators & Educators, with Lois Moore Cyr, 1996.

Honey, Mark E, "Before the Mast," Volume IV, articles 7-9, Holbrook Island and the Holbrook family, and in particular, Robert Applebee, "Vessels of the Penobscot Customs District," Stephan Phillips Memorial Library, Penobscot Marine Museum, Searsport, which source also has the diaries of Capt. Jonathan Holbrook and the genealogy of the Holbrook family in the Priscilla Jones collection. The "Before the Mass" series can be found in the collections of the Castine Historical Society and the Wilson Museum, both in Castine.

Wheeler, Dr. George Augustus, "Four Flags," A History of Castine, Penobscot, and Brooksville.