A Brief History of a Family Home

A Brief History of a Family Home by Jonathan Sibley

Much of what is known of our family’s summer house was first learned while growing up in the 50s and 60s as kids. The Sibley family was suburban Boston, middle class - mother, father, one brother and three sisters who had inherited a house and property on the coast Maine from our mother’s mother. For twenty four years we would grow up, go to college, pursue careers, and marry - in short, change, while the summer house, known as Deep Cove, after a local nautical reference, would not.

Only now, long after our grandparents generation had passed away and our father and mother had recently died do we begin to review how this house has evolved over the years. Along with the help of hundreds of photos taken by family and friends and recently unearthed letters we begin the process of farming our memories into a sequence of events that would bring that history of the house into finer focus.

The history of our family’s relationship with the house on Glenmere Road, in the Maine town of St. George begins with its purchase by my grandfather, Dr. Walter D. Hall in 1907. Family lore, which will govern much of what passes for house history, has it that our grandfather and his father, Dr. Walter L. Hall, were sailing the coast of Maine and spied the large New England cape sitting atop a hill overlooking Muscongus Bay at the mouth of the St. George River. From the look of old photos, the house would have had a commanding view down over pasture fields leading to the waters of the bay, the many islands and the two peninsulas of Cushing and Pemaquid to the southwest. Presumably, they moored and climbed the fields leading up to the house. What they found was an empty house. Again, according to family lore, it had been empty for 25 years. Grandpa tracked down the heirs to what was known as the John Malony property and purchased the house with its land, the land on the water side of Glenmere Road, and 16 acres of land known as the “Widows Woodlot” further behind the house. A large barn behind the house rounded out the total purchase.

What brought Dr. Hall to the coast in the first place was his need for a summer home to escape the heat of Mexico. He, his father, and his father-law, John D. Street, all of Medford, MA had invested in a Mexican coffee plantation in the town of Achatol, in the state of Vera Cruz, Mexico. Since 1906 grandpa had moved there with his wife Adelaide and two-year-old son, Langdon, to become one of the hoards of Yankees to seek their fortunes off the Mexican land.

What is known from letters from Mexico from Grandpa to his sister Daisy is that she was given the task of going to Maine from Medford to oversee the rehabilitation of the house. We know that the windows were replaced and the house was probably painted yellow. Water from a well 50 yards from the house may have had a pump added to supply water to a large tank in the attic where gravity fed water to a second floor tub, sink and toilet and a kitchen sink. What else was done is, as yet, unknown.

The Halls may have travelled back to Maine for several summers before, in 1911, they were driven off their Mexican property for good by the Mexican Revolution that swept the country and drove President Diaz from office. For, whatever reason, they chose to move to Maine to pick up their lives there rather then return to Massachusetts, where both Dr. Hall and Grandma Hall had family.

During this time Dr. Hall was not practicing medicine but was involved in local business. He and Franklin Trussel co-owned the cold storage, a fish purchasing and shipping agency at the end of Route 131 in village of Port Clyde. It wasn’t until that business failed that he went back to practicing medicine for the local population. He set up his office in one of the front rooms of the house, and made house calls, on snowshoes where necessary. He must have been somewhat successful since a boat house was built at the shore as well as a dock from which he sailed his friendship sloop, the Black Duck. The most important addition to the house, and probably the first, was the porch which ran the length of the cape on the northwest side. It would be on this porch that future generations would come to define what it meant to summer at Deep Cove.

In 1913, Dr. Hall purchased land adjoining the Deep Cove property and had built a house for his sister Daisy and her husband, Charles Grant of Medford, MA. Their house would be named Sprucewood and remains an integral part of the family’s life to this day.

It was in the Deep Cove house that our aunt Adelaide was born Feb. 13, 1915 and, later, our mother Jacqueline on Sept. 28, 1919. The family of five would live in the house together until 1924 or ‘25 when Langdon left to go to the Boston area to live with his uncle, John B. Street. It was while he was living and working there that he was killed at the age of 21 while driving to work on his motorcycle.

The time between our Uncle Langdon’s death and when we became aware of the house and our grandparent’s relationship spanned 25 years or so. During that time our grandparents separated and finally divorced. After several years of living on her own in the house and raising the girls, Grandma Hall returned to Medford, MA. Grandpa Hall had moved his medical practice to Rockland, ME and had bought a house on Senebec Lake between Union and Appleton. The depression would take its toll on family and house. During this time the barn would fall down as well as the boat house and the dock was washed away in a storm.

Auntie Ad would marry John Ricker, a Medford High School teacher and have our cousins Patty in 1939 and Peter in 1946. Mother would marry Robert Sibley in 1945 and settled in Winchester to raise the four children and pursue a career in local theater. Our grandmother died in 1955, long before she could or would tell us what happened to the house during the preceding years.

The first memories of Deep Cove for our generation began in the early 50s. Shortly after school ended the whole family would make the tedious six or more hour drive up from our home in Massachusetts. Our car was a 1950 Willy’s Jeep that would barely carry the six family members, an Irish setter named Buff, a cat named Pussy Willow and all the clothes and linens necessary to survive the summer. Mother would stay on after Dad’s two week long vacation was up. He would join other southbound husbands at the Thomaston Greyhound station to head back home. On the occasion that another family had joined us during Dad’s vacation, he was able to get a ride back to Winchester with the other father. This was a time when few families had two cars.

The trip up to Deep Cove never changed very much. There was packing the car the night before. The 4 AM wake up. The bundling of the cat to make sure she got to and remained in the car. And the quiet departure through the darkened streets of Winchester, heading for Route 128, Route 1, and two hours later, the Maine Turnpike until we picked up Route 1 again north of Portland. Sometime after breakfast we would turn off Route 1 just north of Thomaston at the Knox mansion and head south down Route 131 towards Port Clyde and Deep Cove. Clearly, this last leg of the trip was the most exciting. One now wonders whether the dog and the cat sensed that their tortured ride would soon end. The final leg of the trip was the mile down Glenmere Road. Thick stands of spruce trees filled the land on either side of the road. There was no hint that the bay lay just 300 yards off to our left. The fields of our grandparents early years at Deep Cove had long since filled in with trees.

We approached the house from the right. We turned into the front yard with tall unmown grass. The house looked big. It was big by local standards. The main body was a two and a half story cape with an “L” addition extending straight back from the main body of the house. A small enclosed porch protected the entrance towards the end of the “L” leading to the kitchen. Perpendicular to the end the “L” was the shed which extended across half the back of the front yard. By this time of the year a large wisteria vine had engulfed the end of the shed and was fully leafed out.

The house still had remnants of the yellow paint that had not been touched since it was first applied in 1907 or ‘08. Now, most of the paint was gone. Only the white trim looked substantial, testimony to the permanency of lead based paint. Of the three chimneys poking out of the roofs, one of the two on the main part of the house was collapsed almost to the roof line as was the chimney at the kitchen end of the “L”.

It would be a good arrival if we did not find windows broken or the house broken into. The windows that had been broken in the past had allowed damage to be done to both house and furniture nearest the broken window. Part of the family lore is the sad tale of valuable antiques stolen from the house over the many years it remained unlived-in during the fall, winter and spring. Despite the honored opinion the locals had of my grandfather, the doctor, it did not protect the house that his wife and daughters had moved away from long ago to live in Massachusetts.

Until 1972 the house remained as it was from the ‘30s. Gone was the barn behind the house with only the foundation blocks left. Gone was the boat house down by the water. Gone was the dock. In the house the rooms were dark and musty with old furniture and books. Water would now be walked the 50 yards from the well in buckets as the pump and piping was long gone. Rooms were still lit with kerosene lamps at night as only the kitchen had one outlet for the two-burner hot plate used for all the cooking. Ice was bought twice a week to chill the food in the wooden ice box in the shed. The outhouse attached to the back of the shed was slowly falling away starting where its roof peak met the shed. This would be the Deep Cove house that our parents took us to until were old enough to drive there ourselves with friends. Slowly, ever so relentlessly, time, abuse, weather, limited home maintenance skills and money all took their toll on the house. By the early 1970s, as we passed into adulthood, what had been seen as rustic-ness now looked like sheer neglect.

While there may not have been a premium on house maintenance that did not stop the family from thoroughly enjoying ourselves year after year. During these summer years of growing up, the porch was the center of social activity. The porch guests always included the following: our Auntie Ad and Uncle John and cousins Peter and Patty Ricker coming over from Sprucewood, Aunt Gertrude, Uncle Jack and cousin John Street from Tenants Harbor; from Winchester there were the Thoms, Benson, Valley, Thayer, Foskett, Blair, or Magnuson families, or mother’s friends from high school, the Strawbridge or Martis families. Local friends were the Schellens, the Herricks and the Mitchell families. Night after night the porch was the scene of good conversation and games of charades with ample amounts of 50s and 60s style drinking (for the adults it was G&Ts, Manhattans or wine but never beer). No child, however young, missed these events that lasted well into the night.

It was in 1972 that the process of “saving” the house began. It started with our Dad losing his job of 31 years with United Shoe Machinery. A family meeting was held to assess options and ideas. Without much hesitation we urged the sale of the Winchester house in favor of restoring Deep Cove. In hindsight, this was done with little consideration of our Dad’s job prospects in Maine’s mid-coast area in what, at the time, was a nationwide recession. In what seemed like short order, the house in Winchester was sold, the furniture packed, the neighbors bid farewell, and Mom and Dad headed to a new life as permanent residents of the house for the first time in over 40 years.

Assigned the task of modernizing the house was the old family friend Dana Herrick. He was a skilled contractor who would oversee the overall project, doing much of the work himself. During the day he was master carpenter, master mason, master sheet rocker, and master cabinetmaker. The electrification and plumbing where left to local contractors. With the sale of two acres of land at the far end of the water side property to Grace and Paul Machemer there would be enough money for all the plumbing and electrical work, all the structural work and much of the prep work on the first floor rooms. Decorating these rooms and prep work on the second floor would wait for more money.

Each time we would return to the house new modern elements had been added. The rooms became lighter and brighter with repaired or replaced plaster. Doors were removed to create more wall space. A bathroom was added to the first floor in the room that was jokingly called the sewing room since no one sewed. Windows were added to the kitchen and the back hall and the enclosure wall on the back porch was removed. As each room was prepped some member or members of the family would step up to paint or wallpaper. Mother decorated the den; Pam and husband Roy wallpapered the music room. Penny’s husband Mike, a fine carpenter and cabinetmaker, redid the library, adding new bookshelves. He and Penny would live in the house for a while as their own house was being built down the road. They would redo one of the bedrooms on the second floor for their first son Nick. Jon sheetrocked and prepped a guest bedroom that Jennifer wallpapered and decorated.

The woods around the house and across the road had their own history of changes. As was noted, the pasture fields that had once surrounded the house were now thick with spruce, balsam and birch. During the early 50s a walk to the shore was a walk through deep dark woods with moss and spruce needle covering ledge and ground. After a series of hurricanes in the late 50s that took down many trees on the water side of the road, mother and father arranged to have the woods lumbered off for pulp. The summers of '57 and '58 were spent watching a view of the water materialize as the forest was leveled and hauled away to be made into paper. While the view was not as expansive as the ones shown in old photos for 1910 or ‘11, the mouth of the St. George River and the peninsula of Cushing were now part of the porch view. More importantly, the sun set directly over the water and land throughout the summer; moving ever so slowly from right to left with each passing day.

The woods still filled in the northeast side of the house and porch and behind the house they were thicker still. Many of the trees were well over fifty years old. They effectively prohibited any inspection of where the old barn had once stood. All that could be seen were large granite blocks set foundation-like running through the woods and underbrush. To the southwest of the house there was the front yard and a large lilac bush and beyond that the family badminton court. There was the path to the well through more woods and beyond that a wall separating the Deep Cove property from the Sprucewood property.

Behind the house was a path that led back across neighbor’s property to the strip of land in the back woods that was the Widow’s Woodlot. About 100 yards back there was an open space of exposed ledge and blueberry bushes.

Our parents spent several years either living at the house or returning to Boston to live there where Father had a better chance of earning a living. Penny and Mike lived in the house for a while before they moved into their own house down the road in what had always been known as the old field. During the '70s and '80s the house continued to have minor improvements where possible and major repairs where necessary. The house went through at least two new roofs and two paint jobs. The shed was cleaned out and became the family’s first attempt at a business - Deep Cove Gallery - for the purpose of exhibiting mother’s watercolors. Sadly mother’s artwork was better then our family’s business sense and the gallery lasted but one summer. The shed quickly returned to its wild state of cluttered stuff and remains so to this day.

Over those 20 years, marriages were performed at a makeshift open chapel on the shore, first for Jon and Marilyn, then Pam and Roy, and finally Jennifer and Steve. For each reception that followed at the house there were improvements made.

During the years that mother and father lived in Boston, the family took turns sharing part of each summer in the house. There were always holidays - Christmas and the 4th of July - when everyone would make the effort to bring the whole family together. By 1985 there were eight great grandchildren and step grandchildren that would begin to create their own Deep Cove experiences.

In the early 1980s the process began to turn the property into a legitimate family business. After several years of hit or miss attempts it was decided that all the land save for two acres on the water would be put into a Chapter S Corporation under the previously existing corporate name of Deep Cove Gallery Inc. Mother and father would retain the two acres to sell, if needed, to help fund their retirement and/or provide future funding for the maintenance of the house and property. As they neared retirement the land was put up for sale and sold quickly, assuring them adequate funds for the future.

By 1990 father and mother finally retired to Deep Cove knowing there would be enough money to cover the costs of living at the house. By agreement within the corporation, they would have lifetime residency in the house as long as they were able to take care of the house and desired to live there.

In 1991 Jon and second wife Sue joined Penny and Mike down the road to build their own summer home. If there was no longer a barn and boathouse on the old family land there was now two new homes that represented contributions by the third generation of the family.

Sometime during the 1990s Cliff Sherman approached the family with concerns about property lines that ran along the northeast and southeast sides of the land that the house sat on. Over the next six years or so, the efforts of Cliff and Jon resolved the differences and new lines of ownership were established, and for the first time since 1907 the Sibley family had a very good idea of where and how much property they owned on the house side of the road. What was left of the Widow’s Woodlot was now connected to the house lot. If nothing else, the third generation had left the fourth generation with clear title and surveyed property lines that would survive the test of time.

The last effort to help ease the financial pain of maintaining the house and property came in the early 2000s. The biggest yearly expense was the property taxes that reflected assessment of highest value of land along the 800 or so feet of shoreline. The taxes on the whole of Deep Cove were upwards of $10,000 with no hope of becoming less unless shoreline property was sold. A chance reading in Down East magazine prompted Jon to look into using Maine’s Tree Growth Program as a way of holding down tax assessments. After a summer of investigation and consultation with a forester, a plan was developed, submitted to the state, accepted and forwarded to the town office. After some clarification the plan was accepted by the town. The result of this year-long effort was that the new tax bill was something just over $2000.

In December 2003 Dad died after a year of increasing medical difficulties. He had retired at 70 and had spent 13 years in a place that had meant the most to him. His only regret was that his legs were not up to the physical demands of the house and property. Beyond a few complaints about his health he spent his last years in a home that was once on the cusp of collapsing into its own basement but was now closer to its best condition ever. His ashes were the first to be interned in the family cemetery. What had once been a horse paddock was chosen to become the cemetery as it was surrounded on three sides by walls and did not take up much space. A memorial service was held for him in the summer of 2004. It brought together many of the family and friends that had been guests at the house over the last 50 years. Many of them spoke of their fond memories of time spent there.

Jon and Sue retire in January 2005 and returned to the house to finish prepping the dining room. It was one of the few rooms that had not been completely finished. Once prepped, Jennifer and friends spent a week completing the job.

Pam spent all of last summer in residence. She tackled the job of cleaning out the various drawers and closets. She and Jon redid the second floor hallway and bookcase and redid the first floor bathroom ceiling after new pipes were installed in the second floor bathroom.

Now, as we are about to celebrate the family’s 100th anniversary of Deep Cove ownership it will be without the Grand Dame of the house. Mother died, surrounded by her family, in Jennifer’s home in October 2006. She had left Deep Cove after father’s memorial knowing she could no longer stay in the house by herself. Again the house would return to its vacation home status. With two generations of family members to lend a hand, there is hope for the future of the house and its inevitable repair needs.

It is interesting to note that an old photo of the house was discovered by Jon while volunteering at the light house museum. The photo predates Dr. Hall’s purchase by about 30 years. It was taken from the fields beyond the barn looking at the barn and the back of the house. What is revealed by the picture is that the barn had a small building attached to it. Perhaps it was a milking shed. Also startling is that the picture shows an addition built at right angle to the back of the shed. Since the stones of a foundation still exist in the ground, their reason for being is now known.

As we spent the next year or so cleaning the house, more clues will emerge about its history and the history of the people who lived there. As yet we do not know when the house was built. As we go into the summer-long celebration of the 100th anniversary and the life of Jacqueline Sibley we hope to uncover this important fact.