The Mineral Spring

The Mineral Spring of Northport and the Islesboro Islands of Seal, Flat, Ram and Warren

One and 2/10 miles from RT 1 along the Priest Road on the right and a short distance off the road and down a wide trail is an unimposing flow of water coming out of the ground amid some rocks. You would drive right by it unless you happened to see the old road, granite marker and then, along the path, the small hand-lettered sign. This is the Mineral Spring. These days it is not used as a water source and its basin has become partially filled with leaves and the water is covered with a scum. But, it was not always this way and it still stands ready for use at any time.

Oral history says that the Spring was a gathering ground for Native Americans. I have not been able to find a recorded source for this information but since Native American camped on the shores of Lincolnville and Northport it stands to reason that they would congregate around a secure water source. And, it is a secure clear water source, flowing from an aquifer in a nearby bog and thus never going dry. This was its value in the first recorded record we have of it.

The first deed record finds it embedded without any recognition in a 30 acre parcel of land that Jesse Priest purchased from David Alden in 1863. However, in 1890. Jesse Priest and his son, Jesse T. Priest sold, for $200.00, a 5 acre and 2/5 of a rod piece of land to Warren A. Reed which was subsequently known as the Mineral Spring lot. After a description of the boundaries, the deed ends with, “the right of way to lay a pipe or pipes from the Mineral Spring over the land or lands of sd Priests.” The next information is in 1893. On Feb 5, 1893, Warren Reed, an investment broker from Philadelphia, made an indenture, for $100.00 with Frazier P Bilyen (from Philadelphia) for a third share of the Mineral Spring land and right to lay pipes and on Feb 25, 1893, Reed made the exact same indenture for a third share with William H Folwell,(from Philadelphia) also for $100.00.

There was a lot included in these indentures; in addition to the land and pipes, they had the rights to all singular improvements including ways, streets, alleys, passages of water and water courses, rights, liberties, privileges, hereditaments and appurtenances whatsoever under the granted premises. All the appurtenances, reversions, remainders, issues and profits thereof and all the estates right, title, interest, and property claimed and demand whatsoever the grantor shall use with equity and only for the proper use by the grantor and his heirs.

So, what was this all about? I wondered if the spring water was believed to have medicinal properties but, no, it was important as potable water for the Islesboro islands, Seal, Ram and Flat. (More on the history of these islands later.)

At some point, Warren Reed apparently sold out to William H. Folwell. Frazier Bilyen must have done the same but I can find his name no where else other than his indenture. there are no recorded deeds for the sell-out. Pipes apparently were never laid but Folwell, who became, as we shall see, the main owner of islands, had a team of local oxen come to the spring to pick up water and take it to Saturday Cove where it was taken to the islands by boat. it is unclear if the basin was made bigger or how this operation was achieved.

In his will, William Folwell left the Mineral Spring lot as well as Saturday Cove land to his daughter, Edith Grace, married to Thomas Charlton Hudson. She left it to her two sons, Thomas Charlton Jr and Ben Hall Hudson. Thomas Jr. deeded the lot and spring to his brother Ben who owned it until his death and it is now owned by his widow who lives in Georgia but spends summers at the Saturday Cove property. According to Mrs Hudson, the spring stands ready to serve anyone in need of water. In the drought on 1947, the year Maine burned, people from Islesboro came to get water from the Spring and the offer is still open. In local memory Northport residents have come to the spring for fresh water. Mr Fred Harriman, who lives almost across the road from the spring has been its caretaker for years.

The Islands—Seal (originally called Spruce), Ram and Flat

The first documented deed I could find for these islands, Flat, Spruce and Ram, islands between Saturday Cove and Seal Harbor, is from Samuel Keller who mortgaged them for $150.00 to Lewis A. Knowlton on 4 August, 1877. In the deed it states that these are the same islands he purchased from Mrs. Frank Russ some 20 years earlier but I can find no deed to record this. The mortgage was paid off on 4 October , 1887. On 1 September 1880, Keller sold the 3 islands to Elizabeth Knowlton for $1.00 and she took over the mortgage. On 4 October 1887, it was paid off and on the same day, Elizabeth sold the island to her husband, Lewis A. Knowlton for $600.00. These islands may have been used for grazing sheep and cattle by the early settlers.

Flat Island

On 5 December 1887 Lewis Knowlton sold Flat Island to Warren A. Reed, for $175.00. When he got out there he must have found that there was no potable water. It is unclear if there were any buildings when he purchased it but it appears that he must have built a cottage or some sort of structure and purchased the Mineral Spring as a source of water to supply it. It was not until William Folwell purchased his island that the ox team went to work. But, Folwell and Reed were best friends so it is assumed they worked together on this. Before buying Flat island Reed had purchased land with a significant cottage in Saturday Cove where he spent summers. His friend, William Folwell, followed him there.

In 1896, Reed mortgaged Flat Island to William Browning, John Scott Browning, Edward W. Dewey and Henry W. King, trading as Browning, King and Co. for $500.00 with 6% interest per annum to be paid within two years. In the indenture, as it was called, the island was mortgaged “together with all the tenements, hereditaments and appurtenances there unto belonging….etc” so it appears that there was some sort of structure on the island at this time.

In 1899, Reed lost the island when he defaulted on the mortgage and was foreclosed on.

Browning, King and Co. operated out of New York and made clothing. Time Magazine authored an article on them on 21 May 1934 when they were going into receivership and had the following information: “To Harvard, Yale and Princeton men, Browning, King & Co. means college clothes. To railroad conductors, bell hops and steamship officers, Browning, King means uniforms. The 112-year-old clothing firm virtually outfitted the gold rush of '49. John Hazard Browning, descendant of a Rhode Island settler who bought a "dwelling house and two lots of acres . . . for £3 in wampum" had been in the clothing business 27 years when news of gold at Suiter's Mill burst upon New York. He packed clipper ships with pants and coats as fast as they could sail.” Items of their clothing are still being sold to collectors and are exhibited in museums.

In 1902, Browning, King and Co. deeded the island to Howard Lum but in 1925, Howard and Charlotte Lum deeded it back to Browning, King and Co. As mentioned, when Browning, King and Co were going into receivership in 1934, William Browning, president of the Company, sold Flat Island to Edward Krock of Islesboro for $275.00. (KIng had died in 1899.)

On 8 February 1963, Krock deeded the island to Jesse Rolerson who deeded it to Chester C. Pendleton on 6 March 1963. He deeded it to Frederick C. Moseley on 27 December 1963. In his will Moseley left the island to his wife, Virginia Conner Moseley on 20 June 1972 and on 19 October 1979 she donated it to the State of Maine to be maintained in its natural state as a wildlife management area and breeding ground for birds. It remains as such today under the auspices of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and is, in particular, an important breeding ground for the Common Eider Duck. It is now a tangle of raspberry bushes and small shrubs, not inviting to human visitors which pleases the birds. There is no sign of any kind of a shelter visible and the only signs of an earlier habitation or visit are initials and a date carved into a ledge rock. (I have not yet seen a photo of these.) There are only a couple of quaking aspens on the Northern end of the island where eagles take their fish to eat; it is described as a treeless island. There is a sandbar where boat landing is possible on the east side but basically this island has probably returned to the state it was found in when Lewis Knowlton bought it and then sold it to Warren Reed and he brought over water from the Mineral Spring in Northport.

Seal Island

This island has also been known as Spruce Island (its early name), Isola Belle (named by William Folwell), Folwell’s Island and Fowl’s island (a local corruption of Folwell’s island) . Since 1880 it has been identified on maps as Seal Island.

Learning its history is difficult. Like Flat and Ram Islands it was part of the mortgage deed from Samuel Keller to Lewis A. Knowlton and then the sale to Elizabeth Knowlton from Keller and to Lewis A. Knowlton from Elizabeth Knowlton in 1887. Family history says that William A. Folwell bought the island from Warren. A. Reed but there is no deed record of this. The deed record which appears and is referred to in following deeds in the sale of Spruce Island, between Saturday Cove and Islesboro, North of Flat Island and South of Ram by Lewis A. Knowlton to Mary Roberts Piersol Folwell for $500.00 on 22 August 1890. Mary R. Folwell was the wife of William H. Folwell. Folwell owned a very prosperous woolen mill in Philadephia, part of Folwell Brothers Woolen mills, which made wool and worsted material for sale around the world. (One wonders if they sold their material to Browning, King and Co for their clothing and if that had anything to do with Browning, King and Co. buying Flat Island.)

However it came to pass, William H. Folwell became the owner of Seal Island and went to work building an impressive summer home. He named the island Isola Bella after one of the Borromean Islands in Lago Maggoire off Braveno, Italy. He had visited there and had admired the chateau and terraced gardens it was famous for. The name never caught on with the locals but the island was referred to as Folwell’s Island. The cottage was placed in the center of the island looking back toward the Camden Hills. Photographs of it still exist: it is very impressive. There was a porch which ran across the entire front. The dining room and kitchen were separated from the rest of the house, connected by a breezeway and there were six bedrooms in each building for family and guests. Three cottages were built, one for each of his daughters were built along a trail from the house. There was also a large laundry room and workshop. Moored to the docks were a variety of boats, including three sailboats, a steam launch, a copper bottomed rowboat and various other sea worthy craft. Eventually a swimming pool was built because the bay water was considered too chilly, as well as tennis courts, board walks with non-skid surfaces, a music room where well-known visiting artists performed and authors read from their works. Eventually a power plant was installed. Cisterns were built to catch water for bathing and other uses. The only thing missing was potable water which was brought from the Mineral Spring in Northport. Folwell also used land in Saturday Cove as a farm and hired people to raise produce and livestock to feed the Seal Island compound. In 1901, William Folwell of a heart attack at age 60. He left Isola Bella to his wife.

Upon her death, 25 November 1907, Mary R. Folwell left the Island to her son, William H. Folwell, Jr. On 12 July 1926, William Jr deeded the land to his wife, Miriam N. Folwell who sold it to Horace A. Hildreth, Jr. in 1955. Islesboro put a lien on it for unpaid taxes from 1955-1960 and on 20 July 1961 he paid them and sold the island to Patricia H. Smith. She, in turn, sold the island to Frederick Moseley III on 4 October 1971, who deeded it to his children on 3 January 1984. On 10 October 2007, they sold it to David and Alexia Leuschen who currently own it.

Ram Island

Ram, sometimes known as Hog Island, was also one of the islands mortgaged by Samuel Keller to Lewis A. Knowlton in 1877 (purchased some 20 years before that from Mrs. Frank Russ), then sold to Elizabeth Knowlton in 1880 who then sold it to Lewis A. Knowlton on 4 October 1887. Lewis sold it to Joseph A. Heald on the same day for $100.00 and on 21 October Joseph A. and Rose Heald sold it to Emily Whitney Reed, wife of Frederick P. Reed , brother of Warren Reed, for $100.00. On 3 December 1909, Emily and Frederick Reed sold the Island to Frederick Reed Hoisington, their nephew who was married to May Falwell Hosington, daughter of William H. and Mary R. Falwell.

On 24 December 1909, Frederick Reed Hoisington sold the island to his wife, May Folwell Hoisington. They, in turn sold it to their children, Elizabeth H. Barton, Edith Natalia Hoisington and Theodore Hoisington on 6 June 1936. On 6 June 1960, it was deeded to Allen Barton. The island still remains in the family under the Ram Island Trust, formed in 2001, with Julie Barton as the current Trustee.

With Seal and Ram (called by the Hoisingtons “Sunset”) Islands geographically close together there was a great deal of back and forth between the families, especially the children who joined together for play as youngsters and escapades as teenagers. The Hoisingtons built several rustic cabins on the island, nothing to compare with the Seal Island cottage but they did try to outdo the Folwells in one aspect. They drilled a well and installed a pump. Unfortunately the well did not yield potable water and it is more than likely that the Mineral Spring supplied that island with water as well. The pump is apparently still on the island and it “works” but does not produce potable water. Visitors to the island try it and are quite disappointed in the results. There is one cabin left on the island and it is reported that the family pays periodic visits to it. The Hoisington’s made Islesboro their summer residence and owned several cottages on the northern end.

Warren Island

Warren island is very different from the other three islands but is connected to them in that it was also owned by William H. Folwell. It has a long and important history of habitation long before William Folwell purchased it in 1899 from Joshua and Benjamin Adams of Camden. It was inhabited before the Revolutionary War, probably by Nathaniel Pendleton who had a single homestead near the center of the island in 1795. At this time it was designated as “Nat’s Island”. Even before that it seems to have been called Marshall Island as well as William Pendleton’s island, when it was included by petitioners in 1789 requesting to incorporate Islesboro. By 1803, George Warren, for whom the island is currently named, was living there. In the 1840’s the Warren family was well ensconced on the island but in 1861, George Warren, by then an old man, sold all but one acre of the island to Mansfield Clark of Islesboro for $600.00. In the 1880s and 1890s there were a number of other “year around” families, including the McKinneys, Dyers and Harwoods . Elijah Dyer, a year ‘round resident in 1884, was probably the last, moving to Minot Island in the 1890’s. In 1880, he had 20 acres of improved land, 55 in pasture, and 20 sheep. In 1884, he had a 75 acre farm valued at $600.00, livestock, including sheep and and horses valued at $127, a boat valued at $50.00,

on 21 April 1899, William H. Folwell purchased Warren Island from Joshua and Benjamin C. Adams of Camden for $2.000.00. They had bought 76 acres from John P. Farrow for $417.80 16 November,1878 and one acre from Charlotte Rooney (the same one acre sold by George Warren to George Williams on 30 April 1856) for $75.00 on 15 October 1894, puttign the iland under one owner. Folwell immediately named the island “Mon Reve,” “My Dream” and set to work to build a huge cottage for customers of his woolen mill. He did not live to see his cottage finished as it was not completed until 1902 and he died in 1901 but it was an amazing construction. It had 27 “sleeping rooms” and cost $75,000 to build. According to an article in the Island Journal, it had a frame construction with unpeeled slabs for siding on the ground floor while the upper part had clapboard. There was an enormous ball room which the children were said to keep polished by sliding on it with waxed rags on their feet! There was a fire place with a mantle 12’ long. There was an annual Masquerade Ball in the summer. Photographs of the cottage still exist.

In his will, Wiliam Folwell left the island with its cottage to his son, Nathan. Although the family gathered there regularly for a number of years, Nathan and his wife were more connected to Philadelphia than to an island in Maine. Soon, there were fewer family members coming and confusion as to who was to pay the taxes; family members or the mill, and the taxes were not paid. With no one in attendance, the cottage was vandalized and in 1919 it was burned to the ground. In 1936, taxes of $225.00 were assessed against Nathan Folwell but never paid and the Town of Islesboro acquired it. For payment of Taxes, Frank Swift acquired the island in 1946, , paying the taxes through that date. In 1948, he sold it to Gladys Owen reserving a spit of land at high tide to be used for picnicking and landing. Starting in 1951, Gladys Owen had yearly tax liens against her and Islesboro took over the Island again in 1957. At an Islesboro Town Meeting on 2 March 1959 the Town voted to give Warren Island to the State where it now exists as a State Park which can never be developed and which is reachable only by boat. It is now, under State supervision, used for camping and picnicking, and is a popular spot for Scout gatherings. It is a very lovely place.

Warren Island has a significant difference and asset from the other three islands, it has a deep water well with excellent, sweet drinking water; the current well is 110 feet deep. Even in its early days the year around inhabitants were able to have dug wells to provide potable water for themselves and their livestock. No need for Mineral Spring water here.

Flat, Seal, Ram and Warren Islands all speak to a time when Maine Islands were fashionable and almost a “must” for wealthy business men from other parts of the country. Islands always have a connection to the mainland and a certain dependency, sometimes an interdependency. However, that connection is not always tangible over a hundred years later as it is in this case with the Mineral Spring of Northport, Maine. It is worth visiting this little spring to know that it is still available to us ,should we ever need it, thanks to the continued generosity of the Folwell/Hudson family.

Many thanks to the following people for information they provided to me:

Mrs. Ben Hudson (Iva) , widow of Ben Hudson, who supplied the original information which set me on the path to this study and gave me details I could not have found else where, answering many questions.

Fred Harriman for showing me the Mineral Spring.

Brad Allen of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife who set me on the trail of Flat Island ownership and the search for the inscription on the rock and for information on the history of the bird populations on Flat Island and who answered many, many questions.

Tom Groening who was able to locate Vol VI of the Island Journal from 1989.

Bibliography

McLane, Charles B, McLane, Carol Evarts, “Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast: Penobscot Bay, Vol. I”, Revised Edition, Tilbury House, Publishers, Gardiner, Maine and The Island Institute, Rockland, Maine, May 1997, p. 208-210, 211.

Island Journal, The Annual Publication of the Island Institute, Volume 6, 1989, p.17-19.

Corelyn Senn

Lincolnville, Maine

catspjs@tidewater.net

February, 2019