9/11: Sutton Beginning

Arrived on Sutton Island a day ago. It sits about three miles or so south of Mt. Desert Island and is served by ferries or mail boats from either Southwest or Northeast Harbor. We have traded a month's free rent and a neat pile of shekels to paint the summer home that belongs to the brother of our friends, Ted and Virginia. Although the island was once cleared and farmed, it is now nearly covered by thick stands of spruce and fir.

The house we’re working on and living in was built by a farmer named John Gilley, around 1850. Our trusty informant, Merrill Stanley (more about him later), says the house was among the first on the island to be built with a woodstove rather than a fireplace. Gilley built the house for himself and his first wife, Harriet Wilkinson, when he first came to Sutton Island from Baker Island where he had lived with his father and mother. I think, though, he might be hard pressed recognize it beneath the architectural insults it has suffered at the hands of its present owner.

John Gilley’s father, William, settled Baker Island, the outermost of the Cranberries, with his wife, Hannah Lurvey, in 1812, ten years before John was born. Among the families of the Cranberries, the Gilleys, Stanleys, Spurlings, Bunkers and Sandbeaches seem to have been most numerous, living together and intermarrying for generations.
The Gilleys and Stanley’s were among the original settlers on the Cranberry Isles (Great Cranberry, Islesford, Sutton, Bear and Baker) in the early 19th century. Baker has been uninhabited for many years, and, along with Bear, was incorporated into Acadia National Park when the part was created. Sutton and Bear host summer residents only while the other two islands each have small year-round populations. People there put together several seasonal occupations to make a living – fishing for lobster, boatbuilding and repair, carpentry, housecleaning, catering to summer people and their properties, “tipping” or tying Xmas wreaths.

Little Gilley House, Sutton Island

It’s a little difficult to make out the original outlines of the house in this picture. But if you mentally subtract the porch deck, the second-floor balcony and dormer expansion (not to mention the three-story asymmetrical tower, roof-mounted catwalk and widow’s watch not visible here) you can see the lines of John Gilley’s house, a modest Cape Cod where he lived until his death in 1896.
A modern woodstove has been installed in the house for chilly nights, downfall to be split for firewood is plentiful, and there is a an 18-foot diesel-powered launch named Cousin Elizabeth to use when we need to go over to the mainland for shopping, paint supplies, and mail.

Going Shopping

There are hundreds of lobster buoys in the waters surrounding the island and the constant deep, powerful grumble of lobster boats revving up and throttling down as fisherman work, moving along their strings of pots in a kind of daisy-chain pattern. Several times a day, usually beginning around 6:00 am, heavy barges groan past, bringing trucks and large pieces of machinery to and from the islands from the mainland. Once in while when we’re working, a small pleasure boat zips past. Jude looks up, unconsciously registering the high whine of the outboard engine, and says “That’s not right.”

Truck Barge Heading Out to Islesford from Manset

Yesterday, we dropped off Jeb Bush (from Blue Hill) in town and he took me over to meet Merrill Stanley who has sort of looked after the houses on the island for many years. It was impossible to get much past the front door as there was a large Newfoundland lying there completely filling the hallway. The smell of pipe tobacco was so strong it was like entering a smokehouse. He allowed as how he might drop by Sutton in a day or two for a cup of tea.
One of the nicest things about going back and forth to Southwest Harbor is the Cranberry Cove ferry which makes a circuit among the three main island several times a day. This is a good alternative to Cousin Elizabeth if the weather looks iffy, like it might blow up or fog.

There are mostly people making a daily commute work to or from one island to another now, not many day trippers this time of year. Although there is the occasional brave soul who boards in Southwest on a quiet sunny early afternoon, wearing a pair of shorts and light sweater, and returns an hour-and-half later in a wet 20 mile-an-hour breeze, soaked and chilled through. The mail boat from Northwest Harbor runs right through the winter, but the Southwest boat will wrap up its season the second week in October. The crews are local people from places like Ellsworth, Tremont and Gouldsboro. Since it’s off-season and paying customers few, there’s plenty of time to chew the fat – sports, politics, the precipitously falling price of lobster wholesale, $750,000 picnic boats that sit at their moorings all summer, unused except for a long weekend in July. And everyone is amused by the obscene scale of the proposed bank bailout that seems to be in the works. There is a state-wide referendum coming up in a couple weeks that will require a “Yes” vote if you disapprove, and a “No” vote if you don’t. And an out-of-state company that’s trying to sell the idea of casino in Oxford County -- its PR people are saying things like, “This is not about a casino; it’s about the people of Oxford County.” That gets a good laugh. All in all, it’s kind of like a floating barbershop.

George, Captain of the Sequin