My Island Home Occupations


Hay wagon at the barn, Westport Island, ca. 1910

Hay wagon at the barn, Westport Island, ca. 1910
Item 105223   info
Westport Island History Committee

Jonas Knight and his wife, Albertine Colby—known by islanders as "Aunt Teen"—ran a boarding house named the Rock Hill Inn on Westport Island. Aunt Teen was Verlie's biological aunt.

Jonas Knight used this hay wagon and team of oxen in the summer season for haying. In 1911, a local paper reported that guests from his boarding house were ferried by hay wagon to an ice cream social.

"…[Y]ears ago when there was nothing but oxen and there were two horses, the south end was just as far away as Boston would be for us… There was the north end and the south end. Everybody walked."
Verlie Greenleaf, 1987

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