The Great Brewster Island Adventure of 1891

"Ye Square Partie" on Great Brewster, 1891. Helen Augusta Whittier Album, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

My Dream is of an island-place
Which distant seas keep lonely,
A little island on whose face
The stars are watchers only
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "An Island"

The Merrie Trippers

On July 15, 1891, four women from Lowell, Massachusetts, sailed for Great Brewster Island in the outer Boston Harbor. Over two weeks, calling themselves the "Merrie Trippers," they kept a 58-page journal: "Ye log of Ye Square Partie at Ye Great Brewster in ye pleasant month of July 1891." It records every meal, with menus and recipes; photographs; watercolors of the islands; even the floor plan of their cottage. Apart from the books and poems they read, the outside world never enters its pages.

Two weeks away

• Departure: from Rowes Wharf, on a warm 90-degree day with a breeze. They didn't pack light, though groceries and household goods had been sent out days before.
• Cameras: a Kodak box camera — a new invention, introduced only three years earlier — and a Kodak No. 2.
• Pastimes: reading Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, painting and writing poetry. On July 17 they wrote:

In our eastern chamber casement,
Early peeps (or glares) the sun;
And our bird, a meadow lark,
Sings his sweet little song.

• Last day: on July 31 they woke to the mournful fog horn of Boston Light, cleaned the cottage, packed, and took a last look at their temporary escape. The journal kept the story alive.

A watercolor of Great Brewster from the journal. Helen Augusta Whittier Album, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Who were they?

The journal names its authors only by nicknames. Stephanie Schorow and researchers from the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands identified them:

They published their findings in July 2023 as A Boston Harbor Islands Adventure: The Great Brewster Journal of 1891.

Little is known of French, Adams and Coburn beyond schooling, marriages and club memberships. Whittier is better documented: she ran a mill business in Lowell — one of the only women of her time to do so — and was an accomplished painter, potter and photographer.

An escape

A lonely island in the outer harbor gave these women isolation from the mainland and a brief escape from the 1800s' expectations of women. For two weeks, they set aside their identities — figuratively and literally — and lived as independent, resourceful women. Much remains unknown about them, but their journal speaks to how many of us still see the Boston Harbor Islands as an escape, and still record our travels to remember them.

Sources

Based on "The Great Brewster Island Adventure," Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. It draws on the Album of Helen Augusta Whittier, 1891 (Schlesinger Library); the University of Massachusetts Lowell Library's Lowell Stories guide; and Stephanie Schorow and the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands, A Boston Harbor Islands Adventure (The History Press, 2023). The 1891 photograph and watercolor are in the public domain.