9/18: Merrill, part the second

Today, I met Merrill in the ferry landing parking lot, walking the Newfoundland, Percy. Or maybe Percy was walking Merrill. In any event, he told me, among other things, that Stanleys had been in the area, Southwest Harbor and the Cranberry Isles, for hundreds of years. Some Stanleys had been among the original settlers on the islands. He said many of them had left the area in the 1850's, shortly after gold had been discovered in California and Colorado. Some of them had prospered, some hadn’t, but not many of them had had anything further to do with Southwest Harbor.
Jude walked over to Ralph Stanley’s boat shop and met his son, Richard. They are completely rebuilding a 40-foot 1902 Morse Friendship for a man in Massachusetts as well as working sporadically on his own 28-foot Friendship, nine years now and counting. She asked him whether he and Merrill are related.
-He’s a distant relative, but a very good friend, he said.

32-foot White Friendship Sloop built in Ralph Stanley’s shop.