#10-Buoyed in Boothbay Harbor
Finding financial stability and friendship on a Maine peninsula
Cathy Jewitt, Author & Editor
John T. Meader, Photo & Content Editor
Boothbay Harbor region, detail from “Come heres the Map,” by Luther and Gus Phillips, 1968, courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum.
Early one June morning in Boothbay Harbor, a town located on a peninsula in midcoast Maine, Gus Phillips finished his sausage and eggs, kissed his wife Mary good-bye, and headed to work. An empty bowl and spoon crusted with leftover oatmeal in the kitchen sink signified their son Don’s earlier pre-dawn departure. He’d already be out fishing with lobsterman Charlie York.^1 After Mary tidied up the kitchen, most likely she’d write to relatives “back home” farther up the coast.
Gus’s son Don with fisherman Charlie York,
photo courtesy of Cathy Jewitt.
Like many men drawn to the Boothbay area shipyards in the 1950s by the promise of a steady, year-round job, Gus had found employment and a house to rent in town. Mary and their son Don—the only one of their five children still living at home—had soon joined him in Boothbay. Striding down the narrow Atlantic Avenue sidewalk on his way to Sample’s Shipyard^2 at the head of the harbor, Gus relished the liveliness in this bustling town. Today, two thoughts jostled for attention in his mind. If Don and Charlie’s haul was a good one, then a few lobsters would probably find their way home later with his son. Thoughts of supper - Mary’s thick lobster stew served with hot, buttery biscuits - made his mouth water. At the same time, he kept repeating a quick two-word phrase out loud: Toy boats, toy boats, toy boats, toy boats . . . After days of practice, he felt ready to add this tongue twister to his repertoire. Today at lunchtime he planned to spring it on the crew.
Gus was grateful to be employed as a marine carpenter and proud of the vessels under contract at Sample’s. Two years before he had moved to Boothbay Harbor, Sample’s already had 300 workers on their payroll. “A year later, while finishing its work on minesweepers, the shipyard won a million dollar government contract for 12, sixty-three foot Navy crash boats.” ^3
Building minesweepers at Sample’s Shipyard during the 1950’s. The first two images are of the building of the minesweeper AMS-71 in 1952, the third image is of minesweepers AMS 70 and AMS 71 at the shipyard’s dock in 1953, courtesy of Photographs of U.S. and Foreign Naval Vessels, National Archives Identifier: 6933860, 6933861, 6933853; the fourth image is of the minesweeper USS Advance (MSO-510) launched in July 1956, photo courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command.
As Gus thought about his family’s life now, he realized that he, Mary, and Don, had all found happiness here. A teller of tales and tongue twisters, he had forged friendships with both locals and families from other parts of Maine who had also moved here for work.^4 Often they talked about something as simple as the weather and the tides, as many workers came by boat from their homes and rentals on neighboring peninsulas. Others from farther away, like himself, rented in town and walked to the shipyards. Gus walked because he and Mary had to cover their expenses here and also back home in Northeast Harbor, where they still had a house that needed maintenance and repairs.^5 Although they worried about keeping up with it all, Gus and Mary found Boothbay a welcoming community that made them feel at home.
Right now he was anticipating the reaction to his new tongue twister at lunchtime. And fingers crossed, he’d be eating lobster stew and biscuits for supper. This weekend he and Mary were going on a picnic with their good friends Maxwell and Margaret House, who lived on a neighboring peninsula in the town of South Bristol. He and Maxwell had met at the shipyard and become friends; soon he and Mary began to visit back and forth with them. Both couples had five children; the wives were excellent cooks. Gus knew Mary was already planning out what she’d bring to share.
So for now, the mid-1950s, Boothbay Harbor was home.
Sometimes in life we experience the theory of six degrees of separation^6 firsthand. When John and I gave a talk about Postcards from Gus for the South Bristol Historical Society in August of 2022, an audience member shared that her father had worked with Gus in the 1950s in Boothbay Harbor. She and her brother remembered Gus. A few months later we interviewed Priscilla House and her brother Ronnie House, who graciously shared their memories of Gus and Mary, and of growing up in Midcoast Maine. As Ronnie and Priscilla shared stories about Gus and Mary and the friendship shared with their parents, the past came alive for us, peopled by those who lived it.
Ronnie House, June 14, 2023, photo by John Meader.
Ronnie House:
In Gus’s time, as I remember, he and my father both worked at . . . Sample’s. . .So they worked together. There was a group of, I don’t know, I think like maybe three or four guys that my father was really friendly with, especially Gus. They would get together a lot, I guess wherever they were staying. Like I say, Gus and Mary used to come over to South Bristol a lot. And my father, and there were some others, that used to go over by boat from South Bristol over to East Boothbay, I don’t recall that Gus had a boat. I remember he (Gus) was a very friendly person. He was, ah, seemed older. Ah, very friendly to kids, those younger, you know, in high school and stuff like that, but he wasn’t kind of above that or anything, he was always friendly. He used to tell these tongue twisters, just over and over! I don’t know how many he knew, but he’d tell them, rattle them off, you know for a kid, even a high school kid, that was fascinating to listen to…and the tongue twisters stuck in my mind. . . And, that’s one of the things I remember about Gus.
But I do remember on one occasion, we went to a picnic, ah, myself, my sister, and my brother. I’m pretty sure we went over to Bremen. Now what we was doing in Bremen I have no idea. But for some reason we went to a field over there in Bremen, and we had a picnic. And Mary, your grandmother, she brought a lot of stuff. And, she had a, like a tossed salad or something like that - it was good - but it had MUSHROOMS in it. We grew up - mushrooms? - YUCK! Oh! God! So that was my first real introductions to mushrooms in an edible form, in a salad. But that was Mary, she was apparently a real good cook. She was a soft, I don’t know, to me, she was a very nice lady.
One of the things I remember, it seemed like at one point the trips up North, Moosehead and up, I know that my parents, Maxwell House and Margaret, went with Gus and Mary and went up North, he used to take slides.
My father was a carpenter, ship carpenter, house carpenter . . . I would classify him as definitely a people person. He made ah, made friends. After his later years he went ironworking, and, ah, he made some real good friends. I think back on my mother and I think ah, five kids, we used to, well, there was three of us, I guess, at the time - we had to walk about a mile to school - she’d get us up - kick us out of bed sometimes in the morning to get us going. The three of us would walk about a mile to school, after she’d fed us breakfast. We was fortunate enough that we didn’t have to take our lunch. So we’d walk home and she’d have lunch ready, so we’d have lunch and go back . . A big part of her thing was busy cooking for kids. On top of that, she and my aunt, in the summer time, pick a lot of crabmeat, was just another chore.
Priscilla House, June 14, 2023, photo by John Meader.
Priscilla House:
My parents took me up there (to visit in Northeast Harbor in 1963) and they were living there. I remember visiting at the house, but also taking me to see the gardens and the gate. What I remember is the big house. More vividly, I remember going to see the gardens and the gate and the wood work that he did.
Boothbay Harbor buoyed Gus, Mary, and Don for several years. But by late 1956, a confluence of events led to Gus’s decision to move his family back to Northeast Harbor. Don had graduated from Boothbay Region High School earlier that spring and was attending Aroostook State Teachers College in Presque Isle, Maine. Mary’s mother’s health was failing—Gus and Mary wanted to bring her to Maine, but it would have to be Northeast Harbor where there was more family to help out. Also, Luther, Gus’s brother, was having health issues, so Gus had been helping him out more and more with his Phillips map and postcard business. Gus found himself driving back and forth between Boothbay and Northeast Harbor more than was practical. The opportunity to move back home became feasible when his cousin Charles Savage offered him steady employment working to establish two new Mount Desert Island gardens: Asticou Azalea and Thuya.^7
Asticou Azalea Garden, left, and Thuya Garden, right, Northeast Harbor, Maine. Photos by John Meader.
After the move back the months and years flew by. Gus was working several jobs, each of which could have been full time. In 1960 Luther passed away on Christmas eve, leaving Gus to take ownership of the map and postcard business. He continued to publish Luther’s work, and he began updating several of his brother’s maps.^8
Luther’s postcard map of the Maine Coast, left, Gus’s first remake and colorization of the map, center,
and Gus’s final reworking with more color and continuing the coastline beyond Gouldsboro, right.
Courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum and Cathy Jewitt.
By this time he was also traveling the state—photographing scenic landscapes to create new postcards and to gain inspiration for new maps. In his travels he returned to Boothbay Harbor to visit friends and to capture both aerial and land views of landmarks, local businesses, and the many small towns that populate Vacationland.
A sampling of Gus’s postcards from the Boothbay region, left to right: East Boothbay #358, lobsterman tending his traps #360,
Ram Island Light #319, Boothbay Harbor with Brown Brothers #345, Burnt Island Light #320, Boothbay Harbor and Sprucewold #291, Cuckholds Light #324, and Boothbay Harbor from over Linekin Bay.
By 1966, Gus was filling repeat orders both for thousands of Boothbay region postcards and for his updated version of Luther’s map of the Boothbay Peninsula. The pictorial “Come heres the Map” of the Boothbay region had been drawn by his brother in 1940; Gus attributes it to him and underneath it pens Revised - A.D. Phillips - 1966.^9
Luther and Gus Phillips’s “Come heres the Map” of the Boothbay region, courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum.
Gus made most of his deliveries for postcards and maps in person; this allowed him the time to visit with old friends and make new ones. For example, in June 1966 Gus delivered postcards to the Boothbay region. Among the many orders we find: Jane Watts at the Smiling Cow bought 4,500 postcards; Harold Jordan at Jordan’s Restaurant bought 1,000 postcards; and Kenneth Brown at Brown Brothers took 4,500 postcards and 50 maps.^10
While Gus was selling postcards in the Boothbay region, John’s family began regularly visiting the area, staying at a family friend’s cottage in nearby Ocean Point. John was seven years old in 1966, and his memories of Ocean Point and Boothbay Harbor are from a child’s point of view:
The Simmons cottage at Ocean Point, 1967. Photo courtesy of John Meader.
In the summer of 1965 my mother had just given birth to my little sister Tammy. Soon after, Mom and Dad piled us in the car, and we met family friends Thelma and Ed Simmons at Ocean Point where the Simmons’s had rented a cottage. I remember the bedrooms were rustic and dark, but I could hear a distant foghorn and the constant roll of the waves upon the cobble beach nearby. As a six-year-old, it frightened me a bit, but it intrigued me more. We were there to visit another cottage that was up for sale. The cabin had been closed up for a long time, brambles surrounded it, and to my young mind, it felt like it must have been haunted. I remember being scared to go inside. It was right on the shore with a fine view of Ram Island Light, just a mile across the water. Inside it was musty and dark, it had a big smoke-blackened stone fireplace, a staircase with railings made of varnished driftwood, and a “dutch-door” on the porch, but the clincher for me was a six-foot long taxidermized rattlesnake skin stretched out and hanging above the fireplace. It scared me nearly to death but intrigued me even more than the place we were renting that weekend.
Ed and Thelma bought that cabin. They cut back the brambles, replaced the dark drapery, aired out the musty odors, made numerous repairs, and soon the dark spooky cabin in the bushes became a bright and cheery cottage by the sea. For the next several years we visited Thelma and Ed and spent many weekends with them at their cottage on Ocean Point.
Photo courtesy of John Meader.
The rocks and ledges at the shore became my playground. I learned about the rhythm of the tides, hunted for crabs, starfish, periwinkles and the occasional larger welks. I searched for the perfectly shaped rocks to glue together to make stone sea-turtles which delighted the grown-ups. We collected seashells and sea glass. When I found broken pieces of porcelain with designs on them, I envisioned them as being pieces of broken plates from a captain’s table while his ship foundered amidst a stormy sea. I remember finding such a piece of china with the word England printed on it, so I knew it had traveled a long way only to be lost and broken in a shipwreck with the pieces washing ashore at Ocean Point. Had the captain gone down with his ship? The rocky shore was a never-ending source of wonder, curiosity, and creativity for me.
My dad bought a classic wooden lapstrake Chris-Craft powerboat with a 40 horsepower Evinrude engine which he kept at a mooring by the Ocean Point Inn. Dad, Ed, and I regularly went out trolling for mackerel in Linekin Bay. When we hit a school of mackerel, we all caught fish at the same time—a flurry of excitement. One day my dad caught a dogfish shark, which to my young eyes was huge. We pulled it into the Chris-Craft. As it was flopping about, it started giving birth to baby sharks! Much to my chagrin, they were all released back to sea.
Gus’s postcards of the schooners Adventure #472, Mercantile #418, Mary Day #106, courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum.
My favorite time to be at Ocean Point was during Windjammer Days when the schooners sailed into Boothbay Harbor. One year we went out in dad’s boat to be closer to the large sailing vessels. They caught my imagination, I had no idea where they came from—I had assumed they had sailed across the sea to be here—little did I know they came from Camden and Rockland, just 40 miles up the coast. I wanted to sail on one of them so badly—a seed was sown during those days that would eventually grow to a reality. When I was in college, I sailed for four summers on Schooner Timberwind out of Rockport. I guess dreams do come true.
Postcard of the schooners Hesper and Luther Little by Don Sieburg, published by Eastern Illustrating Co., New London, N.H. circa 1965.
John’s first Matchbox® car, the Ford Corsair, series #45, photo by John Meader.
Boothbay Harbor was the nearby town, and my visits there were mostly with my mom and Thelma. My favorite store was The Smiling Cow because they had postcards and Matchbox® cars. I collected postcards—my favorites were those of boats, especially schooners. I loved seeing the hulking wrecks of the Hesper and Luther Little, two abandoned four-masted schooners along the shore in Wiscasset which we passed every time we drove to Ocean Point. I remember buying a postcard of the two boats; now I wonder if that might have been one of Gus’s postcards? My first Matchbox® car was a pale-yellow sedan with a small green boat that attached to the roof. I had to have the car with the boat. Little did I know, but my visits to the Smiling Cow started my journey collecting both postcards and Matchbox® cars. And perhaps even more importantly, both collections reflected the fact that I was falling in love with boats.
I loved Ocean Point. Thelma knew everyone in the neighboring cottages. There was the parsonage tucked up-behind the Simmon’s cottage for the visiting ministers who preached in the stone chapel during the summers. The owners of another cottage had made a swimming pool between the ledges in front of their place. Another cottage had a full-sized cannon on the porch. And there was the little gift shop whose owner had a monkey, I loved to go in there!
At night, I remember lying in my bed, listening to the gong of the bell buoy, the rhythm of the foghorn of Ram Island Light, and the crashing of the waves on the ledges along the shore. I could look out the window and see the lights of three lighthouses—Ram Island was the closest with its red light, then about three or four miles away was the white light of The Cuckolds Lighthouse, and about twice as far away was Seguin Island Light. I remember lying there watching them blink with the stars shining overhead and the seas rolling below. It was about as magical a place as this eight-year-old could ever imagine, and it was all mine.
Cathy, too, over many years has played, worked, rented, and marked life-changing events in the Boothbay Region. The annual day trips that she and her young children made to Boothbay Harbor in the 1980s are some of her favorite memories.
Artistic interpretation of Boothbay Harbor’s colorful shops by John Meader.
Boothbay Harbor offered a kaleidoscope for the senses in the late 1980s. On a good-weather day, I’d hand the kids their spending money ($5 each), and we’d get on the road. If we left early enough, then we could slip into a parking spot right downtown. Swept up by vibrantly painted buildings lining the streets, enticing signs and decorative flags snapping in the sea breeze, we sauntered along Boothbay Harbor’s narrow sidewalks. Gone were the greens, tans, and grays of forests and sandy and rocky beaches of prior days’ adventures. Here were colors galore. Grinning, we stepped into small shops filled from top to bottom with trinkets and must-haves. In my eyes, only Perry’s Nut House in Belfast and The Indian Store in Greenville could rival these Boothbay Harbor shops.
On Townsend Avenue there was a drug store soda fountain where I sipped my coffee milkshake while the kids licked and dripped their chocolate and vanilla ice cream cones. The taffy machine at the candy shop mesmerized us yearly, stretching and turning its sugary ribbons. And fudge samples, please, then a small box of our favorites to take with us.
Salt air, sparkling water, sailboats and buoys bobbing in the harbor, sightseeing boats and tourists swaying on gangways and docks. . . we stepped into more shops—decisions to make—T-shirt or a hat? Book, magazine or baseball cards? Sea glass or precious gems? And bowling if the day turned rainy.
We wandered up and down and around the town until our legs ached, our stomachs and eyes and ears were full, and our money was gone. On our way back home, one might find, scattered among Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures on the car’s back seat: a red leaping lobster (made animate thanks to a small tube attached to a bladder easily pressed), or a fortune telling fish (for the palm of one’s hand), striped candy sticks (cotton candy, banana, and green apple always popular), Nerds, small velvet bags of precious gems, a comic book, maybe a seagull stuffie, baseball cards, and often a pirate patch. The real treasures we left with, though, were intangible, likely to appear years later at times as yet unknown.
When exploring Boothbay Harbor for this, our 10th Postcards from Gus entry, John and I initially focused on places relevant to my grandfather’s time spent living there in the 1950s and his postcards from the 1960s. Soon, though, we were swapping our own Boothbay tales. A few months later we listened to Ronnie and Priscilla House share memories of Gus and Mary, and the four of us chatted about a variety of topics, including how accents and jargon can be so different in small-town coastal communities not many miles apart. Places and people will always have stories to tell and memories to share. As a listener, I find that keeps me afloat.
Notes from the photographer John Meader: On November 29, 2022 Cathy and I visited the Boothbay region to retrace Gus’s time there. Many of these photographs were taken that day.
Sources, Explanatory Notes, and Further reading
1. Regarding Charlie York:
Harold B. Clifford, Charlie York, Maine Coast Fisherman, (Camden, Maine: International Marine Publishing Company, 1974).
2. Regarding Boatbuilding in the Boothbay Region in the 1950s:
Davis-Hand Collection, “Boat Design Archives of William Hand and Richard O. Davis,” MIT Museum, accessed January 6, 2024.
Barbara Rumsey, Boothbay Region Historical Society, “Minesweeper Days,1950s, Part I,” Boothbay Register 3/20/2014, accessed December 7, 2023.
Laurie Schreiber, “Boothbay: the boatbuilding town,” The Working Waterfront, Island Institute, accessed November 20, 2023.
3. Regarding Sample’s history and contracts:
Bruce Tindal, “Maxine Edith Carleton Tourtillotte Tribute: Recipient of the 2016 Lifetime Service Award Presented by the Boothbay Harbor Rotary Club,” accessed November 12, 2023.
4. Rumsey, “Minesweeper Days,1950s, Part I.”
5. Regarding Gus and Mary’s houses both in Boothbay Harbor and in Northeast Harbor, Maine, and a prior move to make ends meet:
Gus had temporarily moved his family away from their permanent home in Northeast Harbor once before, when jobs were scarce on Mount Desert Island, Maine. In several of the small villages on the island, the local population-Gus and his relatives included-had been welcoming paying summer visitors since the mid-1800s. He and Mary worked hard for several months during “the season.” Their labors brought in almost enough money to keep their growing family clothed and fed. All seven family members pitched in to tend the truck garden and the cow. The older boys delivered vegetables, butter, and milk to their neighbors and other Island customers.
Gus and Mary’s most lucrative source of yearly income came from renting out their winter home for the summer season. Each spring Gus and Mary moved the family from their large house into their smaller house. The “Big House”, known by their summer residents as the Phillips Cottage, was perched on a slope across from the Asticou Inn at the head of Northeast Harbor. The “Little House,” located at the end of a long dirt driveway behind and out of sight of the Big House, was tiny and simple. After making several trips in their old pickup truck piled with bedding, clothing, and everything they’d need for the next few months, they’d settle in for the weeks of work ahead.
Between the late 1920s and the late 1940s, a series of historical events deterred visitors from renting island homes. The 1929 stock market crash, the Great Depression of the 1930’s, World War II, and the devastating 1947 Maine wildfire on Mount Desert Island (see “Fire of ‘47”) curtailed extended visits by many summer residents. Gus and Mary, and many other islanders, lost both rental income and service jobs. Because of these changes Gus found a job in South Portland at the Todd Bath Shipyards when he moved his family away from Northeast Harbor the first time. During the 1940’s his family of seven went about their daily lives in South Portland. By the early 1950’s Gus and Mary had moved back to Northeast Harbor, but the onset of the Korean War and the Cold War created a greater need for ships. With his skills as a marine carpenter, Gus once again grabbed the opportunity for a steady, year-round income working in the shipyards at Boothbay Harbor.
—Cathy Jewitt
6. Regarding six degrees of separation:
The theory of six degrees of separation contends that, because we are all linked by chains of acquaintance, you are just six introductions away from any other person on the planet. “Proof! Just six degrees of separation between us,” The Guardian, accessed January 15, 2024.
7. Regarding Asticou Azalea Garden and Thuya Garden:
Cathy Jewitt and John Meader, #7 “Thuya: Carving Cedar: Gus sends a timeless greeting from a Maine garden,” accessed December 8, 2023.
Regina Cole, Globe Correspondent, “How dedicated horticulturalists rescued the plantings of a legendary landscape to create two public gardens,” Boston.com, accessed January 20, 2024.
8. Regarding versions of Phillips brothers maps:
Luther and Augustus Phillips map postcards courtesy of the Phillips family.
9. Regarding the Phillips brothers “Come Here’s the Map”:
The pictorial map titled “Come Here’s the Map” was originally drawn by Luther Phillips in 1940; Gus revised the original in 1966, attributing it to Luther and adding his name beneath.
10. Augustus Phillips, 1966 Phillips sales accounting notebook, collection of the author.
Special thanks:
The Penobscot Marine Museum and Photo Archivist Kevin Johnson for image use, preserving the Phillips Collection, and continued support; both Ronnie House and Priscilla House for sharing their memories of Gus and Mary Phillips and Boothbay Harbor in the 1950s; Rhumb Line Maps for technical support and hosting; John Meader for photography, and the late Mary Jane Phillips Smith, Gus’s daughter, for years of protecting and sharing Gus’s legacy.
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