Cousins Island

My internship at the Yarmouth Historical Society began with hours of scanning photographs with no specific project to speak of.  In late September, Amy came to me with a photo album found in a basement on Cousin's Island with an old Cousin's Island Post Office sign, now on display in the Yarmouth History Museum.  The album contains 250+ photographs of Cousins Island residents having fun.  They are clamming, picking blueberries, firing guns, hunting, fishing, playing on the beach, heading out for family walks, and playing with the camera itself.  Most of the photographs are accompanied by short captions, some of which are brief identifications of the people and places in the photographs, and some of which are short observations that may have been meaningful to the owner of the album.  My daunting task was to comb through these photographs, pick out clues, and try to identify the people, places, and activities and put them together in a meaningful manner.

Being "from away", I am often oblivious to the importance of the islands.  Until last year, I was unaware of Maine's expansive collection of islands, and the fact that many were populated at least through the summer if not year round.  I felt that, in order to get an appreciation for how these people interacted with the island, I had to see it for myself.  Taking advantage of a beautiful fall afternoon, we took the 35mm camera out to the island, hoping to get a better understanding for what island life may be like.

Our first observation of the island was that it was characterized by peace and quiet.  Even Joe and I, in our little teeny unobtrusive car, felt as though we were intruders in a very private, quiet, isolated community.  We drove down Cousins Road, the road that spans the Island from north to south, searching for the island I had seen in countless reviews of the album.  The island looks much different now, and many of its cottages have been torn down. Trees fill every open space, which used to hold horses and cows. But the one cottage the album focuses on, Camp Will-Octa, at 392 Cousins Road, still stands.

Camp Will-Octa, bottom center, still stands at 392 Cousins Road.

Through title-searches, interviews, and the small amounts of written history of Cousins and Littlejohn Islands, I have come to understand a nowhere-near-exhaustive history of the island. (The exhibit on Maine Memory that we plan to create is still very much a work in progress, and much more research needs to be done. I'll edit later with any new information).

The known history of Cousins and Littlejohn Islands dates back to 1645, when John Cousins bought the land from a councilor of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The islands, despite their distance from the mainland, were settled as early.  Their residents were part of mainland Yarmouth's institutions throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century; most were dedicated parishioners of Yarmouth's First Church, build in 1730, and traveled to the mainland every Sunday for service.  In the nineteenth century, a school and a chapel were built, marking a significant change in island living: the establishment of independent island institutions.  With independent institutions came the development of a network of island residents.  It is in this context that, in the first decades of the twentieth century, Connie Duran documented the ways in which her family and friends interacted with one another and the island itself.

Cousins Island, at the turn of the twentieth century, was owned by a handful of families.  The names that continue to surface in interviews, written histories, and oral histories are Talbot, Duran, Hamilton, Prescott, Bowker, and Penny.  Before the school was turned into a community center (whose construction is documented in the photo album), many of the children in these families attended. 

The community center (formerly Cousins Island School), top left, bottom left.

The photo album, aside from the community center's construction, does not focus on the day-to-day obligations of Cousins Island life.  Instead, it tells a story of summer recreation on the island.  Much of what is written about the island concerns the recreation of its residents; the appeal for many is the slow-paced day, interaction with nature, and isolation from mainland entertainment and technology.  An excerpt from "Two Maine Islands" illustrates this point.

"Late in the winter, when the last summer seems far in the future, when work becomes a burden, and life is just a monotonous round of dull routine, and nothing seems really worth while, my thoughts turn to our Maine Island. Often, in the midst of the hurry and the clatter of life, I close my eyes for a minute and see the blue ocean and the gray rocks.  I see the white birches, and the blue-green firs close down at the water's edge.  I see the wild roses by the shore.  I listen, and I hear the gulls.  I hear the wind blowing through the pines.  I hear the quiet sound of little waves breaking on our sheltered beach.  I smell the fragrance of sun-on-the-pines, and the soft, salt air.  I follow the path through the woods, follow it by every well-known turn till it comes out in the great daisy field looking off over the sea.  Then, I open my eyes, draw a deep breath, and go back to work again."
-Elizabeth Hallowell, "Lovely Things to Hold in my Memory", excerpt from Alice Jones and Katherine Tinker's "Two Maine Islands"