There was quite a thunderstorm last night, but I slept through most of it. I was just barely aware of brightly flashing lightning, booming thunder, howling wind, and lashing rain. Always did enjoy a good storm in Nantucket.
Got nearly twelve hours' sleep, and now I feel fine. Roy didn't get up until nine!
After breakfast, we paddled to Brant Point and pulled our Royaks up on the beach. Walked a few blocks to town. I phoned Jane Burt Kolb, and she invited us to her house at 2:15.
We went back to the Registry of Deeds and went through old records. Found out Olivia Elphinstone bought Aunty Margarethe's Monomoy property 8/12/59 for $50,000. We were amazed how much land Aunty Margarethe owned. Acres and acres. I knew she owned a lot, but I didn't realize how much. She must have owned nearly half of Monomoy. Her "guardian", the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Company, obtained permission from the Probate Court 3/12/59 to sell the property for her maintenance. In 1959, I was working as a bookkeeper for Garo Showcase and Fixture Company in Fresno for $100 a week. Even if I'd known the property was for sale, I couldn't have come up with a fraction of the down payment.
I was also surprised to learn that Aunty Margarethe bought the property in 1908, when she was 36. I had always assumed she had been going there since childhood and had inherited it from her parents. She purchased the property from James H. Gibbs and the Coleman Family. Charlotte Gibbs bought it from Emma Cook 3/2/99, and Charlotte left it to her husband James 10/11/1900. The handwritten records are all there. The land was surveyed by William F. Codd 1/5/1889. Aunty Margarethe kept adding to her property. She was still buying land in 1937 and 1941. I remember those two purchases. She owned the land in front of her houses to the high-water mark, but some con artist found out he could buy the land between the high-water mark and the low-water mark, so he did so and threatened to erect ugly structures on it if Aunty Margarethe didn't pay him an exorbitant amount for it. That was in 1937. In 1941, she purchased the old Prentice place. She was going to fix up the house and rent it out but never did so to my knowledge.
What a terrible mistake Aunty Margarethe made when she sent me to Antioch College! All through highschool, I had planned on attending Pembroke, which was the girls' college of Ivy-League Brown University in Providence. It was just a few blocks from where I lived. I would have lived at home and walked or ridden my bike to school. I wanted to major in French and minor in German. My cherished dream was to live on Nantucket Island and translate books from French and German into English. Aunty Margarethe wiped out all my plans and dreams when she shipped me off to Antioch, which didn't even have a Foreign Language Department. Looking back from the vantage point of old age, I realize I could have flatly refused to go to Antioch. I could probably have gotten a scholarship at Pembroke, or I could have worked my way through. Tuition then was only about $400 a year, and I had more than $1000 in the bank. I could have made it. But I'd been brought up to be obedient, so I obeyed. All I heard at home was: "You have to do what Aunty Margarethe says." Why? Why did I have to do what Aunty Margarethe said? She wasn't related to me, and as far as I know, she wasn't my legal guardian. My dying mother had asked her to look after me, but I don't think there was anything in writing. To the best of my knowledge, Daddy was my legal guardian, but he never recovered from my Mother's death and was scarcely able to function. He'd have probably killed himself if he hadn't had me to take care of.
When Aunty Margarethe sent me to Antioch, her intentions were the best. She loved me and wanted to do what was right for me. She really believed Antioch was the best college for me and wouldn't even listen to me when I told her I didn't want to go there. It's ironic that her good intentions ultimately resulted in the destruction of her beloved Nantucket cottages.
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these: It might have been."
Roy and I ate lunch at Congdon's Pharmacy and then walked over to Jane's house. She turned out to be a lot nicer than I had remembered her. We talked for a couple of hours. Then her husband came in from playing golf. He was very nice, too. They have to return to Illinois this weekend and had a lot of packing to do, so we left.
We paddled over to the creeks where I used to row my little boat, Bluebird. The configuration of the creeks changes every year, and a great many houses have been built around the edges of the creeks where there were no houses at all fifty years ago. I was disappointed to see how murky the water has become. When I was a kid, the water was so clear, I could count the pebbles on the bottom and watch blue-claw crabs running around. Once, I even caught one. Now I couldn't see more than two feet down.
We paddled around the creeks for a couple of hours. Returned to the boat just as the sun was setting.
No comments:
Post a Comment