Admiral Robert Peary, whose wife, Josephine, was on Eagle Island in Casco Bay when she learned in 1909 that he and Matthew Henson had reached the North Pole, first saw the island when he was 17. He fell in love with it immediately. The passion he felt for it, which his family shared during their many summers there, was never diminished. To all of them, Eagle Island was home, says Edward Stafford, Peary’s grandson, in his essay, “Peary and His Promised Land.”
Four years after he graduated from Bowdoin College in 1887, the senior Peary scraped together enough money to buy Eagle Island. The initial cottage and caretaker’s dwelling were built in 1904. During subsequent years of his life, Peary constantly remodeled and added on to the home, which is designed to look like the bridge of a ship, with the rocky cliffs of the island’s northeastern promontory as its bow. When Peary died in 1920, Stafford writes, “His head was filled with plans for still more improvements, some concerned with mere niceties, others of truly epic proportions.”
After his death, Peary’s family continued their summer residence on the island and his son, Robert Peary, Jr., and his wife, Inez, even tried living there year-round during 1946-47, raising angora rabbits to make a living. By the 1960s, the Peary family found upkeep was becoming prohibitively expensive. They donated Eagle Island and nearby Flag Island to the Maine State Park Commission as a historic landmark, with the provision that the state would restore and maintain the property, which had been damaged by vandals, and make it available to the public during the summer.
The state lacked funds at the time to take on major restoration work, and the home’s condition continued to decline until the mid-1990s. Then, thanks to funding from the loon conservation license plate, the Department of Conservation’s Bureau of Parks and Lands began restoration in earnest. Through the bureau’s efforts, and fundraising and work by the Friends of Peary’s Eagle Island, formed in 1992, much of the home and property have been restored.
Initial projects included totally replacing the home’s roof, rebuilding all the windows and screens, resealing the outer decks, constructing a pier and replacing the cedar shingles. The Bureau also obtained a grant from National Geographic to restore Admiral Peary’s unusual circular-shaped library, which is built of stone on the outside and thanks to the Friends, has newly installed Southern pine on the floor, walls and ceiling.
During the past two years, the Friends have raised money to construct a state-of-the-art solar-powered composting toilet and install a fire suppression/intrusion alarm system for the main house. Volunteer Friends have helped with numerous other projects, including studies of island birds and marine life and cataloging books and artifacts. The Friends presently are funding work to replace the ceilings on the inner decks, which is being done by Peary Stafford, Admiral Peary’s great-grandson. They also provide educational outreach to local schools.
Jeanie Dorrington, the island’s present caretaker, who shares the Peary family’s passion for this special place, has worked there for 12 years, first as a receptionist, then as assistant caretaker with David Chapin, and since his death in 1999, as caretaker.
Dorrington greets tour boats and other visitors who make their own way to the island, whether by kayak, sail or motor boat, and gives weekend tours whenever other duties don’t interfere. She ferries employees and volunteers, and during her April through October tenure on the island, has scraped, painted, sorted, arranged, kept beaches clean and done a million other jobs to contribute to the restoration and maintenance of the property.
For the past two years, the Friends have arranged tours of the home guided by Adm. Peary’s grandson, Cmdr. Edward P. Stafford, now 81, who began to visit the island when he was two weeks old. While in school, Stafford wrote “Peary and His Promised Land,” which Dorrington unearthed while sorting through papers stored in the home’s basement.
The original essay is in the home’s living room along with others published by Josephine Peary, to earn money to support her husband’s Arctic explorations. There are also stories by their daughter, Marie, who was born in Greenland.
The Friends have established the Eagle Island Trading Post, which offers other books about Eagle Island, including the wonderful “Guide to Eagle Island Nature Trails,” and items like t-shirts and mugs, several bearing Adm. Peary’s motto: Inveniam viam aut faciam, “Find a way or make one.”
While Dorrington was sorting through other papers in the basement, she unearthed a June 15, 1912 invoice from E.J. Harmon nursery in Portland made out to Josephine Peary, listing numerous flowers for her garden. When Dorrington arrived on the island, the garden had long since been overgrown, but she learned its location from family members, and in 1993, restored it with many of the same plants, which included heliotrope, geranium, foxglove, peonies, rambler rose, Canterbury bells and hardy phlox. The next year, she restored Marie’s garden, and then, her daughter Inez’s. The garden project is supported by the Friends in memory of Dorrington’s mother, who passed away last winter.
Although the Pearys left most of the home’s furnishings intact when they donated the home, rooms became disorganized in the neglected period. Robert Peary, Jr., was alive during Dorrington’s first two years’ tenure on the island and helped her and Chapin restore rooms to their original arrangement. “He let me be his shadow while he was here,” says Dorrington, “and helped piece the museum back together, to make it the way it was when he lived here, with the couches in the right spots, the stuffed birds, everything he could remember.”
A visitor could spend an entire day in Peary’s beautiful library, where numerous articles, books and photos line the circular room, which has elegant diamond and oval shaped windows, some with amber glass. A huge bronze eagle, which Peary bought in Japan while on an around-the-world speaking tour in 1910, glares fiercely from its perch at one side of the room.
The home’s living room is dominated by a three-sided fireplace designed by Peary and built with different island stones for each side. Its double mantel displays many of the birds he stuffed while on the island, using a circular room built of stone on the southeastern side of the house. The attached Compass Porch (so-called because an accurate compass rose in painted on the floor), contains a bullhorn Dorrington says Peary used when he wanted to capture the attention of the Eskimo dogs he kept on Flag Island. “Sometimes they would howl in the night,” she says, “and he would yell at them in Inuit thru the horn.”
Many other articles and furniture used by the Pearys and artifacts brought back from travels are displayed in various rooms downstairs as well as the five bedrooms on the second floor. Each room has numerous photos, donated back by the Peary family.
Stafford writes in his essay that every fall, the Pearys deeply regretted leaving the island. Dorrington feels the same way. “I love it out here,” she says. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else. In October, it’s hard to go back and live in the real world.” She used to work for L.L. Bean during the winter, but now, she eases the transition to reality by jumping on her Sportster motorcycle to ride south in search of work. Although she’s found a niche in Florida that she enjoys, she, like the Pearys, is always eager to return to the island.
Eagle Island is open for day use only June 15 through Labor Day, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Limited moorings are available for private boats. For information about tour boats to the island, contact the Bureau of Parks and Lands Southern Region office at (207) 624-6080. To learn more about the Friends of Eagle Island, write to them at P.O. Box 70, Bailey Island, ME 04003, or visit their website, home.gwi.net/~eagle/friends.htm.