New England artists, musicians, and writers flocked to the Isles of Shoals to mingle at Celia Thaxter’s Appledore Island salon. But back on the mainland at Kittery Point in Maine, a secret society of men was drinking rum, hanging out, and talking trash And some of these guys were famous.
For males of the Victorian “in” crowd, the coolest place to chill in summer was the seaside workshop of woodcarver John Haley Bellamy. The man who created the iconic “Bellamy eagle,” now highly collectible, loved to surround himself with the rich, the fun, and the famous while he worked.
Painters James McNeill Whistler and Winslow Homer, and writers William Dean Howells and Mark Twain were among Bellamy’s guests. Besides local fishermen or his working-class friends from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, one might bump into former Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, Harvard President Charles Eliot, or actor Edwin Booth (unhappily, the brother of assassin John Wilkes Booth).
Endlessly busy, master carver Bellamy had perfected the craft of rapidly turning out decorative carvings that were enormously popular with a new wave of tourists that “discovered” the seacoast region beginning in the 1870s. But only those visitors whom Bellamy found entertaining were welcomed into his crowded two-story workshop overlooking the sailing boats docked in Pepperrell Cove.
“It was an exclusive club,” Bellamy’s nephew and biographer later wrote. “Visitors were courteously received, but they never caused him [Bellamy] to stop working entirely and lay aside anything he was doing.”
The legendary bachelor and enthusiastic drinker worked at a fascinating address. His shop was located behind the Sir William Pepperrell House, which once belonged to the only native New Englander to be knighted by the British king. The ancient Pepperrell House (dating to 1682) still stands across from the village post office and next to Frisbee’s Store at Kittery Point.
SEE MORE: JH Bellamy was a chi off the old block
As America hurtled toward the fast-paced twentieth century, the relaxed atmosphere of Pepperrell Cove was a healing place. William Dean Howells, an author and editor of the prestigious Atlantic Monthly magazine, purchased his own summer estate a little further up Pepperrell Road. Although he had traveled the world, Howells once wrote to a friend, “The Great Lakes are great, but Kittery Harbor is big enough for me.”
Maritime painter George Savary Wasson moved here in 1889 with his wife Amelia. Wasson set up his own studio overlooking the water. Although 20 years his junior, Wasson quickly fell in with Bellamy and his elite men’s club.
Howells convinced Wasson to write about the fading culture of Kittery fishermen. Wasson’s first of three books of seafaring anecdotes was called Captain Simeon’s Store. Mark Twain praised one of Wasson’s tales as “the funniest story I ever read.” And Wasson’s books about Kittery Point have been called “the most authentic Maine stories ever written.”
Kittery Point lobsterman David Kaselauskas is a fan of both Bellamy and Wasson. Their work has inspired Kaselauskas to do a little wood carving of his own. It was probably Howells, Kaselauskas says, who recommended that English novelist Henry James visit author/painter Wasson when he was traveling in New England. Legend says that when the popular British writer arrived at Wasson’s home, he was down at the water working on his boat. Amelia Wasson called down to her husband, “Mr. James is here!” She was shocked and embarrassed when her husband shouted back, “Well, send him down.”
“That’s the kind of man Wasson was,” says Kaselauskas, who lives within view of the late painter’s studio. “He wasn’t one to kowtow to anyone.”
Members of the Bellamy men’s club returned summer after summer to rusticate in the craftsman’s studio. In his declining years, William Dean Howells wrote: “Even the days of declining years linger a little here where there is nothing to hurry them, and where it is pleasant to loiter, and muse beside the sea and shore, which are so netted together at Kittery Point that they hardly know themselves apart.”
© J. Dennis Robinson, 2014, updated 2026.
Carver John Haley Bellamy was a Chip Off the Old Block