I found a box in my attic full of Star Island ephemera. Two of the vintage items are combined here. The map appeared in 1927. Scroll down to read the full text of the first annual message from the Star Island Corporation that bought the island in 1916.
Notice the wonderful details in this map; all of its sights are still open to conferees, short stay visitors, and day-trippers today. Other than the name of the ferry, here “The Sightseer,” this illustration hits all the highlights. The Capt. John Smith, John Tucke, and Beebe Family memorials are still standing, just a short walk from the 1875 Oceanic Hotel and the 1800 Gosport Chapel. We see a fishing schooner under sail, the restored wooden turnstile, and Miss Underhill’s Chair, from where Celia Thaxter’s tutor was reportedly washed into the sea. I don’t believe that Betty Moody smothered her infant son during an 18th-century Indian raid. A similar story is told on other colonized New England Islands. Here, the incident implies a planned massacre by Natives that clearly never happened, but was still part of the Christian island lore of the era. And I’m certain that the pirate Blackbeard did not abandon his 14th wife here to guard his buried treasure. That is pure myth. But the legends remain and entertain. The map also shows visitors arriving at the dock, playing tennis, and carrying lanterns to the chapel exactly as they do today. The talented artist is identified only as “ES.” In 1927. when the map appeared, Uncle Oscar was still ferrying young ladies around the island.
Below, as a bonus. is the full text of the first annual report from the Star Island Corporation, issued a decade earlier in 1917. For nonShoalers, here’s a quick summary.
After 250 years as an island fishing village, the Star Island population moved off the Isles of Shoals in the 1870s. That’s when Boston investor John Poor bought all but a couple of the properties and opened a luxury hotel in 1873. The Oceanic Hotel burned two years later. It was replaced by a new hotel, visible today, that cobbled together existing structures, including the Atlantic House, the Caswell House, and the Gosport House.
Oscar and Cedric Laighton, whose family owned the Appledore Hotel nearby, purchased Star Island and the Oceanic in 1876. The brothers ran both islands, but their success faded with the death of their famous sister Celia Thaxter in 1894. By 1897, when hundreds of Unitarians held their first annual conferences in the Oceanic, the Laighton brothers were in financial freefall. Cedric died in 1899 and the bank foreclosed on Oscar’s mortgage. After years of summer conferences, Boston-based Unitarians and Congregationalists formed the Star Island Corporation in 1916 to prevent the bank from selling off the property to a commercial resort company.
Over a century later, the nonprofit Star Island Corporation continues to manage what is now a rare “vintage” hotel on an island that is hauntingly similar to the way it appeared in the 1870s. Conferees and daytrippers still arrive by ferry and sailboats still anchor in Gosport Harbor as if forgotten by time. The island, on the New Hampshire side of the Isles of Shoals, is part of the mainland town of Rye.
Here is a transcript of the first Star Island annual report, covering the details of the first season in 1916, and looking forward to the future. Today, guests rock in wooden chairs on the piazza and gather for communal meals to the ringing of a bell. Each evening, islanders still walk up the unpaved path from the hotel to the highest rocky point of the island. They walk slowly and silently, each carrying a lantern, and then they disappear inside the old stone walls of the Gosport Chapel. It is the closest the region can offer to a trip through time. The Oceanic Hotel is open seasonally and the nonprofit group operates year-round from an historic building in downtown Portsmouth, NH. – JDR
A Message to Star Island Lovers and Contributors:
April 2017
The first year of our control of Star Island has been marked by gratifying success. We are directly indebted to you whose liberal subscriptions and attendance at the meetings made this success possible.
With an enthusiasm overcoming great difficulties, the sum of $45,462.15 was raised for the purchase and equipment of the property. We paid $16,000.00 for the island, spent $6,777.80 on repairs and improvements, invested $12,793.75 in interest-bearing bonds, and bought shares in the stock of the Star Island Steamboat Co. to the value of $7,250.00, thus making the new boat, “The Sightseer,” available for transportation.
The year’s business during the two months in which the hotel was open in the Summer of 1916 showed a gratifying gain over that of the year before. Thus the daily average number of guests at the Oceanic Hotel increased in July from 117 to 184, and from 50 to 95 in August, the gross attendance for the two months showing a gain in 1916 over 1915 of 70%.
The important gain that came from this increased attendance was that a larger number of persons received the physical exhilaration and the intellectual and spiritual uplift that are always found at our Star Island gatherings.
There were marked gains also in the number of conventions held. The Unitarian meetings were extended from two weeks to three weeks.
The Congregational Conference maintained its usual high standard. Three new groups held their first meetings: the Religious Education Association, the Free Religious Association, and a Sociological Confer-ence. These three, together with the Congregational Conference, filled the month of August with attractive programs.
During the summer of 1917, the programs offered will be still more extended. The season will begin on the last day in June with a gathering of Unitarian young people, holding over the Fourth of July. Then will follow the Unitarian Summer meetings, July 7 to 25, and the Unitarian Sunday School Institute, July 26 to August 1. The Congregational Conference will be held August 3 to 13. After this will come the three new assemblies already mentioned. It is now expected that these gatherings will extend over Labor Day.
Visitors to Star Island this year will note several improvements. Every carpet in the hotel and cottages has been taken up and discarded, all old wallpaper has been removed, and floors and walls have been painted. A contract has been signed providing for new plumbing and sanitation, the work being done by experts highly recommended.
An artesian well is being contracted for, with the hope that fresh water may be found in sufficient quantity to supply all needs.
Mr. Harry G. Marvin has been employed as manager of the hotel, his many years of successful experience in the management of The Appledore and The Oceanic giving assurance that everything will be done to insure the comfort of our guests.
To you, our loyal friends who have made all these things possible, the Star Island Corporation extends grateful thanks. Your generous gifts have been amply justified by the enlarged possibilities of Star Island, its dedication to high purposes, and the renewed and intensified loyalty its purchase has brought. The trust your gifts placed in our hands has, we believe, been carefully carried out, with most gratifying results.
Splendid as is the work so far accomplished, this is only the begin-ning of larger things.
In the near future an auditorium, cottages and unit-buildings should be put up. These with the water supply, arrangements for pasteurizing milk, a refrigeration plant that will insure pure ice, and a new laundry, await the generosity of Shoals lovers. One gentleman has already shown the way by renovating Cottage B, where he was born, as a memorial. Eminent landscape architects have formulated a plan for the future development of the island, so that such memorials may be offered with the assurance that they will fit into a permanent scheme. We hope for many such offerings.
The immediate and pressing need is for money to complete payments for the steamboat that carries us to the island. This tax upon our resources was unforeseen, but it was necessary; we could not hire a boat, and were compelled to buy one. We do not propose to make a public appeal at present for these needs, but think it best to mention them to you, believing that your interest will ensure your coöperation.
We enclose a pledge card for any who may feel inclined to contribute.
Star Island is already surpassingly dear to us all. It will grow more beloved as it grows more beautiful with our service and our gifts.
For the Corporation,-
William I. Lawrance, President.
Isaac Sprague, Treasurer.
Carl B. Wetherell, Clerk.
Recycling Old Portsmouth Tree Tales