Category: History

New research is revealing the historical Skolfield family’s connections to slavery. As merchants, shipbuilders and sailors in the 1800s, the Skolfields profited from trading goods like cotton that were produced by enslaved people.

This story follows up on the poem “Sinnett’s Store” by Virginia Johnson, published in the March edition. We hope to provide more context to the times and explain the importance of both the store and the nearby Steamboat Wharf to the Bailey Island community through the first half of the 20th century.

Over the course of her career, Clara Louise Burnham wrote and published more than 26 novels. Reviews of her work appeared in such prominent publications as Dial and The Atlantic Monthly.

It’s easy to think of technology as cold and impersonal, but it can be capable of deeply moving feats such as bringing closure to a decades-old tragedy and reviving the memory of a lost loved one.

Almost everyone familiar with Bailey Island has, at one time or another, made their way to Land’s End and seen the statue of a lobsterman looking out over Jaquish Island and the waters of Casco Bay.

My mother, Virginia Johnson, lived in an 1850s home on Lowell’s Cove, Bailey Island, with my father, Linwood, from the 1930s to around 2000. There they raised five children from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Legendary mountaineer Ed Webster died suddenly on Nov. 22 of natural causes at his home on Harpswell Neck. He was 66.

For those of us who live on the Neck, the word Merriconeag is part of our vocabulary. We see it when we pass the Merriconeag Grange in North Harpswell.

My late father, a dedicated builder of wooden model ships, gifted me my favorite model, of the War of 1812 privateer Prince de Neufchatel.

Esther Sayles Root (right) with Marjorie Crocker in the author photo for “Over Periscope...

Michael Sinnett’s grave is in the cemetery behind the old meetinghouse in Harpswell Center....

Jim and Gayle Hays, of Bailey Island, at the mortuary cannon for Jim Hays’...

A view of Will’s Gut from Orr’s Island, looking toward Bailey Island and Water Cove....