The historical society is having an "old house" party at the Leaches' "Old Gray House" on Sawyer’s Island on September 13 (see write-up elsewhere in this issue). Though it's one of the very old structures in the region, the accompanying article by its occupants, the Leach girls, portrays a living, breathing home that has been adapted over the centuries and continues to move into the future. As expressed at the end, it is a place of "family and friends," not simply an antique frozen in time. 

The Old Gray House

We have been lucky to have known the old gray house on Sawyer’s Island as “our house” since we were born. Our grandfather, Harold Kay Merrow (aka HK) and his brother Ernest were exploring Boothbay by canoe when they first fell in love with the area. Ernest bought Thorpes Island in Back River. HK bought the house on Sawyers Island in 1918.

We aren’t sure HK had historic preservation on his mind. It is more likely that it fulfilled his dream of watching the sunset over the water and not wanting to stay with his mother, known as “Old Battle-axe,” who was living with his brother. He paid $900 for the property — which cleaned him out. The house was in complete disrepair — the plaster was hanging off the ceilings and the windows had been broken. The house came with a resident fisherman who had moved in without the benefit of ownership and was shortly invited to leave. We are sure the family considered the purchase HK’s folly, especially when he proudly showed off the house by striding across the front porch and immediately crashing through the rotted boards up to his hips.

Making do and patching up

The only things found in the house were three keys and a couple of old bottles tucked behind what was left of the ceiling plaster. Because our grandparents didn’t have any money left after the purchase, relatives and friends scoured their attics and sheds for castoffs to help them furnish the old house. As a result, most of the furniture was broken, chipped or in some degree of disrepair. The beautiful highboy in our living room was assembled from a friend’s front hall table that happened to match perfectly with a bureau found in their barn. Before its reincarnation, the bureau was filled with tools and painted with red milk paint.

The family slowly made renovations to the house — managing one major repair a year. Our grandmother insisted on immediate renovations to the kitchen, especially because she had three children under the age of two. When years later, the carpenters were finally done and were removing their workbench from the house, our grandmother stopped them and kept the workbench as the family’s dining room table.

This table became a symbol for gatherings in the home. The neighborhood kids always gathered at this table on rainy days and our grandmother engaged them in all sorts of games. She even encouraged them to carve their initials in the table! There was such a strong association with our next-door neighbors that a Schwebebahn, a German name for a suspension railway, was set up between the houses. It was actually a wire linking the second floor of the houses with some kind of a "car" to carry messages back and forth for the kids. This device was quickly disassembled when lightning hit the wire and almost burned both houses down.

Old tales

When we were growing up the house was full of places to explore and stories to be told. We had heard that there was a room behind the three downstairs fireplaces where families used to hide from the Indians. The other great mystery was a rumored tunnel from the shore into the basement of the house. Stories of the users of the tunnel varied between members of the household escaping from the Indians, rum runners, and the Underground Railroad. When you hear a loud echo when the waves crash the shore you can imagine that it is really there, although we’ve never been able to find it. Another often told tale was that during an Indian attack the house was not burned down because the daughter of the owner was pregnant by an Indian.

The traditions started years ago by our grandparents are very much alive today in the old gray house. We are careful to preserve the historic significance of the house while updating it to modern times, and we love filling the house with family and friends, and continuing to perpetuate the stories that, true or not, live on to this day.