Maine Memory Network

"[We] didn't have any ferry. When I was first growing up, they had rowboats at the shores. Everybody had rowboats.

There was a Post Office, of course, down at the Center but it was easier for my father to row to Wiscasset to get his groceries and he had a post office box up in Wiscasset, and that’s where his mail came in. Sometimes if he was busy, my mother would row up and get the mail. She wouldn't be going there in the middle of winter."
Verlie Greenleaf, 1987

"I went to school when I was only three. See, I had a brother and sister older than I was and they were going to school, and Josie Fowle down here, down Fowle's Point…She was the teacher, and of course they done walk in those days… Every morning, I guess, she stopped to mama’s. She was pretty tired when she got up there and stopped in at mama's, and then she’d walk up with Ernest and my sister, Nettie.

Well, mama said I started crying. I wanted to go to school. I was only three but I wanted to go to school with them. I didn’t want to stay home. Mama said, 'She’ll just be a nuisance.' Well, at last, oh, I must have cried so hard every morning, Josie said, 'Let her go.' Mama said, 'If she isn't good, send her home.' But I didn’t. I don’t remember that first day of school but I went to school all the good weather until I was seven, and when I was seven, I went the whole school year."
Verlie Greenleaf, 1987

Westport Island was rich with berries in summer months like blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. In the 1920s and 1930s when market gardening was a source of income, Westport Islanders boated to neighboring islands with their bounty of berries and produce to supply summer residents.

"That’s my mother and I going blackberrying."
Verlie Greenleaf, 1987

"I saw the first automobile come on the island, and I wish I knew the day.
We had our first ferry when I was eight years old. It was a flat bottomed scow which took two cars and was pulled across the river by a wire cable. The cable was attached to iron posts on each side of the river. On the one side of the scow were wheels on rails called "gins" which the cable went through. First it was pulled by hand. Then they used a motor boat to push it across. They did not make regular trips.

The boat was kept on the Westport side – [the] ferryman lived there also. When you got to the landing you blew your horn. He would take you across. Blow your horn if you were on the Wiscasset side and he would come and get you. The ferry was established in 1899."
Verlie Greenleaf, 1987