Wanderers in Wonder

A cottage…small simple house, often near a lake or beach.

The Bowdoin family’s ‘cottage’ in Bar Harbor, Maine. 

A ‘cottage’ of one of The Bowdoin’s neighbors.

Another neighbor’s cottage,

Another,

Another,

and another.

Bar Harbor, Maine was the summer retreat for the wealthy of the Gilded Age. From 1870 through the 1920’s this was a playground for the rich.They called their summer homes cottages. Most of these cottages had in excess of thirty rooms and several thousand or more square feet. The best the docents and historians at the Bowdoin Cottage, La Rochelle, now home to the Bar Harbor historic society could come up with as to why these people of extreme wealth decided on the term cottage, “well they were much smaller than their mansions on Park Avenue in NYC”.

The grandfather of the Bowdoin who built the Bowdoin Cottage in 1905 used some of his wealth to establish and endow Bowdoin College in Maine. We all owe Bowdoin College a thank you. Bowdoin College Professor of Rhetoric, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, saved the Union at Gettysburg. 

Chamberlain had taken a sabbatical so he could enlist in the Union Army. He was commissioned as an officer. By the time Gettysburg came around he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. On the second day of the battle for some unknown reason the Union had not occupied the Little Round Top. From these heights the Confederates would have been able to make mince meat of the Union line with their artillery. 

At the last minute the 20th Maine was ordered up Little Round Top.The 20th Maine would be at the far left of the Union line. The 20th’s orders were to hold the position at all cost…no retreat, no surrender. The 15th Alabama attacked over and over again. The 20th Maine bent but did not break. With his men almost out of ammunition Chamberlain, again a college professor by trade not a soldier, had his men fix bayonets and led a ‘textbook’ charge down the Round Top and into the heart of 15th Alabama. The Alabamians were so taken by the audacity of the tactic that those who did not turn and run were killed or captured. The 20th Maine held the Little Round Top and secured the Union left flank. Gettysburg would have had a much different outcome if it had not been for the 20th Maine and their Professor, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

Cottages…

My Grandparent’s summer cottage in Spring Lake, NJ. The cottage of my youth. Fresh water Lake Como was across the street. My grandfather had a rowboat for us to go fishing which he chained to a tree by the lake. The Atlantic Ocean, the beach, was three short blocks east. 

Some owners of the property after my grandparents dropped this monstrosity on top of their cottage. One foot of my grandparent’s cottage could be seen on the far right if the trees were not so thick.

Peace…Wanderers in Wonder.