Rich's Cove, also known as Douglas Cove, is on the eastern side of the island. The first person to settle at Rich's Cove was one Robert Douglas in 1802. Douglas' daughter married John Rich who purchased the property from Douglas in 1844 and was the first of many generations of the Rich family to make their home at the cove. In my time on the island, I often stayed at Rich's Cove, in the home that was built there by Robert Douglas in the early 19th century.

This photo was taken from a point about 50 yards to the right of that house. The island in the distance on the right side of the photo is York Island, which from the mid 1800s to the 1930s was home to a busy fishing community. As of the late sixties several of the buildings constructed by the former residents were still standing and there also remained a small herd of sheep, tended, I believe, by Dennis Eaton of Isle au Haut.

I had occasion to row across the York Narrows once or twice (more accurately, Ted Hoskins did the rowing; my pre-adolescent muscles were no match for the wind and current of the Narrows) to explore the island and standing inside the remarkably well-preserved buildings that remained, I was filled with a deep sense of the history of the place and wondered what it must have been like to live there in its heyday.

In the late sixties and early seventies when I spent summers on the island at Rich's Cove, I was well acquainted with various members of the Rich family and paid frequent visits to Ava (known as "Miss Ava") who lived at the cove at the time, just a hundred yards up the unpaved road from our house. Ava's sister, Elizabeth, was something of a fixture on the island. Born in 1893 at Rich's Cove, she attended the now long-defunct east side school along with Ava and her brother Llewellyn. Miss Lizzie lived on the island all her life and served the community from 1926 until the late 1980s as the island's postmistress, the post office being a corner of the living room in the house to which she eventually moved in town.

My earliest trips to the island the mid-sixties involved a trip over in the mailboat from Stonington. The mailboat was named The Isle au Haut and was piloted by Captain Stanley Dodge. That mailboat was eventually replaced with The Albatross, a large greenish-painted affair, if memory serves, whose Captain was a man named Buster. In recent years a new mailboat has been put into service and in a fitting tribute the new boat is named The Miss Lizzie.

This photo was taken at about 9:00 am EST, July 1997 by Jennifer Hughes

Next photo

Directory of photos

Home