Trouants Island

Reflections on Splendid Massachusetts Summers by Jack Howard

Jack Howard (1875-1971) became acquainted with Trouants Island as a young man who travelled there from home in Medford, Massachusetts for goose hunting. Eventually he secured a summer cottage on the island where he and his family passed happy summers, documented in photographs dating from 1906 through 1928. They closed their “camp” on the island in the mid-1950s.

This small plot of high land back of Fourth Cliff Scituate, Massachusetts, on the land side of the North River, which puts it in Marshfield Hills, was made an island at high tide by the terrible November storm of ’98 the one known as the Portland storm where the Portland boat was wrecked with all on board. Say what you will, but this was probably one of the very worst storms ever in this part of New England. Like many other things “they had em good in those days.”

Arthur Eames¹ owned this piece of land built some cottages on it and leased them in the summer to families with kids—it was a great place for children. In the Fall duck hunters took over. In those days shore-bird shooting for plover, yellow legs and other birds was legal both Spring and Fall. Those were the days of the market hunter who made good money selling his take of shore-birds, ducks and geese. Mr Eames was told by many of the old timers that the cut made by the ‘98 storm was had deepened by the rush of tides through the opening, and that the island would gradually wash away; in fact that it was being made smaller each year, the shore line getting nearer and nearer each winter.

Fourth Cliff, Marshfield and a view over Trouants Island (Photos by Jack Howard)

I was one of the first to go down there with some of the hunters, even when I was in school. We went first to Bear Island on the Greenbush side of the North River; also to Hen Island nearer to Humarock and later to Trouants. When we heard that Mr Eames wanted to sell, some friends of mine, the Sawyers and the Macys,² talked to him and finally bought the Island.

There were about 10 cottages, camps or shacks at that time, plenty of good well water, but no lights except oil lamps and oil cook stoves. That is what it should be to go with that type of life and we all loved it. The Sawyer, Macy, and Howard families were there each summer with their kids and friends and it was a very fine place—good boating, fine clams, fish and lobsters, but the tide was very strong and a careful watch had to be kept on the children and some of the older ones.

Before the storm cut through between Third and Fourth Cliffs there was a life-saving station on the Humarock end of Fourth Cliff. Also a road from Third Cliff to Fourth Cliff. The men in the station patrolled from there to Scituate on one route and from the station to Humarock the other way. This shore was frequently the site of ship wrecks, ships in a storm picked up Minots Light and many times landed on the beach and rocks of the Cliffs on their way to Boston.

Fourth Cliff Life Saving Station, Summer Life (photos by Jack Howard)

The living on Trouants Island in those days was primitive, no light and running water. We did have open plumbing if you can call out houses by that name. That book by Chic Sale, The Specialist,³ was almost a bible down there, in fact it was read out loud each Labor day to all on the place. There was one kind of privy not in that book,  Mr. Emery had one on skids which could be moved to a new hole when necessary; outside of that everything in Mr Sale’s book was there.

Mr Hitchcock⁴ the station master at the Marshfield Humarock Railroad station and good old Tom Stackhouse,⁵ lived not far from the railroad at the bottom of the hills near the little pond. They were our good friends who brought ice, milk and food from ______ Country store ______ and helped out in many ways.⁶

The Curtis family from Jamaica Plain were there before our crowd. Old man [Charles H.] Curtis, the grandfather of my friend Herman, had a camp there many years before the break through in the North River, and a wonderful family they were. The grandfather was a real old timer and a real sportsman and I can remember when he sat on his camp porch and really cried when it came impossible for him to get out and sit in his blind on the marsh in the duck and goose shooting season. We finally bought the Curtis camp complete just as they left it.

The following was added at the end of the manuscript,
apparently an alternative beginning of the essay.

Trouants island is an island made by the 1898 hurricane which destroyed the old steamer Portland  with many lives. The North River in Marshfield used to be a slow going shallow stream on which they built many wooden ships which had to be helped by pontoons to get down river & onto the Atlantic ocean. Before the storm the salt hay on the many acres of meadows was cut and harvested by men and horses shod with large leather boots on their feet to act like snow shoes on the soft muddy shore land.

1.  This refers to John H. Eames, b. 1834.

2. Possibly William F. Macy, a resident of both Marshfield and Nantucket.

3. Charles “Chic” Sale’s book was first published in 1929. See the citation on WorldCat (https://search.worldcat.org/title/288998) and the listing on Amazon, which has an informative blurb (https://www.amazon.com/SPECIALIST-PRIVY-Charles-Sale/dp/B000VZGFZI).

4. The 1890 US Census identifies Edgar L Hitchcock, born September 1867, as a resident of Marshfield with occupation “Station agent RR.”

5. Thomas Stackhouse is identified in the 1920 U.S. Census as a resident of Summer Street, Marshfield, MA, age 70.

6. Jack Howard left blank space on the manuscript page before and after the words “Country store” as if he had the intention to complete the text once memory served him.