This edition marks the fourth and final installment of our Perspectives in Conservation. To date we have been presented with examples of conservation as a means to create “forever farmland”, to preserve established (dog-friendly) trail systems, and to protect critical wildlife habitat. The properties in each of these cases could have been sold for private development, fetching a hefty price, but conserving the land (and working with Blue Hill Heritage Trust) has translated into green spaces, benefiting everyone in perpetuity.
Today we will look at conservation from the perspective of family; of stories passed down from one generation to the next, of memories made, and the hopes for many more to come. Like the others, this story could have ended before it even got started with a high priced sale. Instead Michael Rossney (co-owner of El El Frijoles with wife Michele) shares some of the choices that come with an extended family inheriting the “perfect [100+ year old] summer retreat.”
Off of Route 175 in Sargentville, down Ferry Landing Rd, sits a 15.3 acre parcel of land that includes 400’+ of shoreline. Edgehill, where to the west you can see the Deer Isle-Stonington Bridge. To the east, islands on the horizon. It’s here that Blue Hill Heritage Trust plans to build a boardwalk in 2025 that will make accessing the shoreline easier for people with mobility issues.
The planning of this project has been months in the making, and has included working with government agencies, weather/storm delays, and postponing work to accommodating a nest pair of osprey. All this pales in comparison to the amount of time, years in fact, that a local family- with over 100 years and several generations of memories at Edgehill- took to come to their decision to ultimately work with BHHT.
The following is Michael Rossney’s account of his family’s love of Edgehill, and the choices they made to keep the family home, while preserving the area’s character for the greater community. Blue Hill Heritage Trust is honored to work with individual land owners in this way, in addition to foundations and community donors, without whom conserving land, water, and wildlife habitat on the greater Blue Hill Peninsula would not be possible.
Michael Rossney- Winter 2024
In 1905, Horace Eaton was on a mission. He’d traveled to mid-coast Maine to find the perfect summer retreat for his new wife and what hopefully would be their big family. In a letter home to his beloved, he lamented the lack of suitable locations along the coast for such an endeavor. He found Rockland and Camden “too industrial”, crowded and full of stink and bustling with commercial activity. Not a place for a family to while away the summer. He’d heard tales about Rusticators finding suitable summer havens way up the coast, towards Bar Harbor, and while it seemed hopelessly
remote, there was a steamship that called on several wharves along the coast. A Familyʼs Journey Towards Conservation
When he got off the ship at Sargentville, and walked up the hill into the village, he found what had been a small hotel being run as a boarding house. It was a bit ramshackled, but seemed to have good bones, there was nice mill pond out back, and a lovely view down to Eggemoggin Reach. He wrote his bride, full of enthusiasm, and told her heʼd finally found “the” place for them. It was called Edgehill.
Since that day in 1905, my ancestors have come to Sargentville. At first, it was Horace and his family, as they grew, his son Horace (!?) started bringing his young family along as well, and then the grandchildren and so on and so on. These people all found Downeast Maine to be their “special” place, they all formed a bond with Edgehill and Sargentville, and they returned year after year. My mother and her siblings spent their summers here. My parents chose the Sargentville Chapel as a venue when the time came for them to be married, and a big fete was had in the Edgehill barn afterwords. Decades later I found myself standing, in my wedding tux, sweating on the dais in that hot little chapel, then Michele and I threw a celebratory party in the old barn down the road at Edgehill. As early as 1970, our people began to stay. Family members would come for the summer, and maybe decide to stick it out, see what winter was like. My mother joined her sister and her family here full-time in the late 80ʼs, an economic refugee from California’s recession economy. Nowadays, our family gatherings include around 20-25 people, all living here year-round.
As a summer house, Edgehill was pretty perfect. The adults could sit on the broad porch, watch the schooners sail up and down on the Reach while the kids would hoot and holler out in the barn. There were endless beams to climb, a stage on which to perform and always a hoop to throw basketballs at. The capacity of the house, at 7 or 8 bedrooms (plus a few sleeping porches) meant there was always space, and always a mix of cousins, friends from home and visitors from near and far ensconced at the house. The dining room table can fit upwards of 20 and has been full most of my life.
Running down the path to the Mill Pond and jumping into the deeply sepia- toned water (the result of being surrounded by dense cedar forest) is always a leap of faith. Warm on the top and freezing a foot or so down means you learn to swim pretty quickly; the unmentionable consistency of the bottom ensures no-one ever stands up. But it is the best place to cool off in the silky soft water, and the best option to clean-up too, as the house only recently has had either a well or a shower. And beyond the mill pond is what seems like miles of deep, dark Maine woods.
But the focal point of Edgehill has always been the porch. Generations of musicians, artists, academics, craftspeople and all sorts of hangers-on have set on the porch for a sundowner or 3. The conversation on that porch has been flowing freely for 8 or 9 generations (so far), sure it gets heated on occasion, sometimes there is yelling, often there are tears but mostly there is lots of raucous laughter and enough good ideas to right all of mankind s wrongs. The sounds of cellos, ukuleles and guitars often echo late into the night.
Sitting on the porch and gazing down towards The Reach and across to Deer Isle is a view for the ages. In the nearby field, just below the road, Horace’s apple orchard remains, the results of his hobbyist agricultural tendencies revealed by multiple strains of apples growing from the same tree. These trees are well over 100 years old now, and gnarled and fallow, but they still yield a random crop of disparate fruit every year. Below the orchard is an old stone wall, which borders a line of cedar trees I’ve been told were originally planted to be available when new shingles were needed for the barn. Long passed any usefulness, they stand in a gnarled twisted stand that further down gives way to more mixed hardwoods and the fir and white pine and ferns and berries so common on the Maine coast. If you can follow the old path, after a time you’ll emerge on the shore of Eggemogin Reach. The setting here is breathtaking. Straight across is the causeway between Little Deer Isle and Deer Isle, with the hump of Carney Island in the background. Off to the left, you can follow the shore (at mid to low tide) all the way down to Carter Point, where the Benjamin River meets the reach. And to your right, the majesty of The Reach framed by the Deer Isle Bridge to the West. Iʼm told my Grandmother Becky swam across The Reach here, all the way to Deer Isle. She was quite a woman, but it looks like a long way to me. I do know from personal experience there have been generations of beach cookouts here, with great pots of lobsters and many, many of those pink hot dogs consumed.
In 1905, Horace had somehow generated the means needed to buy a summer home on the coast of Maine. Since then, we have all been fortunate to have this place in our lives. It has
been a very long time since anyone in my family has been in the economic bracket where buying a place like this was even a remote possibility. Edgehill is a gift from our ancestors, and it is our responsibility to maintain it. For most of my life, the family community surrounding Edgehill has been vibrant, engaged, altruistic and strapped for cash. Having money, or time, or the skills needed to put what was needed back into the house and the property was pretty far down the list of needs for everyone involved. Like a lot of big, old family homes, Edgehill became a bit of an albatross. For years, the property was owned by my mom and her siblings and cousins as 7 Tenants-in-common. An ownership scenario that practically guaranteed failure. With no way to make decisions, no way to generate any capital and nobody to take on the monumental task of managing and maintaining the place, it continued to degrade. Some salvation was found in renting the house out in the summer, which generated enough cash to keep it mostly painted, and to replace things that broke or rotted off, and maybe have the lawn mowed during the season, but the whole place was headed in the same direction as the acres and acres of woods around the property- back to the land. But the real urgency was shaping up to be the property tax liability. With not all the owners willing or able to pay their share of an ever-increasing tax bill, we could see clearly the property would be lost or sold to the highest bidder within the decade unless we came up with a plan.
The obvious solution was to sell it. Someone From Away would pay big bucks for this place- just the waterfront piece alone, being one of the largest un- developed parcels anywhere along The Reach, this would make a perfect place for a custom home, a mansion, or a family compound. The big old house was a teardown. Sure, we had ideas to build a campground, to subdivide, to build a spec house. Nothing felt quite right, there was no way everyone would agree to anything, we were all threatened by change, this situation was becoming untenable.
The second most important day in Edgehillʼs history, was when we met Jerry. As a land-use consultant, here was guy who not only could understand what we were going through, he had successfully navigated families through similar situations dozens of times. He’d actually solved these problems before! Jerry convened all-family meetings, sent us questionnaires, he had us writing plans, wish lists, generating documents, finalizing probates and clarifying ownership shares. Jerry led us down the path towards what-ifs. What did we all want for Edgehill? What were our values, how can we solve some of these problems? Face these issues?
The genius idea came when he started talking about Conservation. Sure, we’d thought about various schemes before- tree growth was a popular way to reduce tax liability, but required a plan, and also some follow through. We’d talked with the Blue Hill Heritage Trust years ago, but at the time they were not in a place to be adding properties to their portfolio. But Jerry thought maybe now things might be different. He laid out a plan where we might be able to sell the shore parcel of our land to the Blue Hill Heritage Trust (BHHT). We’d gain a fair amount of capital that would enable us to fix up the house and the barn, to keep it from falling into the ground. We’d reduce the amount of property taxes we were paying as well; by eliminating the huge piece of shore frontage, our taxes would actually be something we could afford to pay. Best of all, this magical piece of property would be preserved for all, saved for future generations to enjoy, safe from development, no fences, gates, mansions, lawns or driveways. Sure, we’d make a lot more dough if we sold it off to the highest bidder, or built timeshares or something, but is that what Horace would have wanted?
To make any of this happen, we’d have to get our ducks in a row. We’d be forced to finally form some sort of entity that would enable us to make decisions, to form consensus, to sign legal documents, to somehow plan for a future. With a lot of help, we were able to come together and form an LLC, with 11 committed, interested siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles as its founding members. With our legal entity solidified, as owners, we were ready to move ahead. Our first item, sort of as a test, was to hire a group to do a woodland harvest on our back parcel. We all came together, we agreed, we all signed a contract, and in the end, it even generated a little capital with which we could start to pay off some of our bills. Next, we started working with BHHT on moving the sale of the shore parcel forward. As it turns out, this is a long and extremely involved process. Shepherded by Jerry, the staff and leadership of BHHT worked their way through a long list of State and Federal agencies and organizations that all had something to say about our plans to conserve this piece of land. The shape and scope of this transaction was fluid, undergoing many changes and shifts and bumps along the way. Eventually after years of work, finally, we ended up with new neighbors to the south!
So, 120 years in, Edgehill remains a fixture in our family. We immediately reinvested the proceeds of the sale of our shore property into rescuing the old house and the barn. As it happens, we were not a moment too soon to this task, as the craftspeople tasked with trying to save these buildings found out as they excavated, reinforced, rebuilt and renovated. Attempting to reverse a century of deferred maintenance takes quite a lot of work, and honestly, we could have used another giant pile of capital and kept going, but the old house is stable now, the underpinnings are solid, and the porch is better than new.
With the land all the way down to the Reach safely protected forever, the community has their own piece of Edgehill now. The beach, the shore bluffs, the marshy bits, all the cedars and the hardwood and the berries are there for everyone to discover. Now there are plans for an increased accessibility path for people to explore, and from the beach, maybe even take a relaxing swim across
the Reach to Deer Isle!
Back up at the house, the porch at Edgehill is ready for new generations of family and friends to take up their places. Collectively, we’re carrying on as we have for all these decades past. Still arguing and making music and talking and laughing late into the night while the next generation of kids climb, scream and shoot hoops out in the barn.