Star Island - History

History

Star Island was first settled, as were all the Isles of Shoals, in the early 17th century by fishermen working the rich waters of the North Atlantic coast. Many were English, coming up from the colonies of the Virginia companies. Although there may have been shelters built on the island, none were permanent or year-round.

The first permanent settlement of Star Island began in 1677 when the Province of Maine, under Massachusetts rule, undertook to increase taxes on nearby Hog Island (now Appledore Island). That and the recent availability of housing on Star Island, which was in New Hampshire, caused a mass migration and in 1715, the township of Gosport, New Hampshire, was established on Star Island.

The town and the island flourished until the American Revolutionary War when the colonials ordered the Shoals evacuated, believing that having a group of questionable loyalty just off the coast posed a threat. Many shoalers abandoned their island homes shortly thereafter.

After the war, some moved back to Gosport, but it never achieved its former population. Thomas Laighton established a hotel on Smuttynose Island and eventually a much larger one, the Appledore Hotel, on Hog, which he renamed Appledore Island. They were so successful that in 1873 another entrepreneur, John Poor, built the Oceanic Hotel on Star Island, by joining a cluster of Caswell family buildings with a long wooden veranda. When the first Oceanic burned in 1875 soon after it was built, owner John Poore reconfigured the surviving buildings into a second Oceanic Hotel. The largest, the former Atlantic House, had been run by Lemuel Caswell. Another, the Gosport House, was once run by Lemuel's brother Origen Caswell.

It was a golden era for island hotels. Air conditioning had yet to be invented and the cool sea breezes were a perfect escape from the hot summers of Boston and New York. But the resorts in the mountains of New Hampshire and New York were growing and did not involve a potentially unpleasant sea voyage. By the 1890s the hotels were nearly empty.

Then, in 1896, Thomas Elliott and his wife Lilla arrived on Star Island. They immediately saw in the lightly occupied hotel a place where summer conferences could be held, to be sponsored by the Unitarian Church, of which he was a member. He made a deal with the manager to "fill the place to the ridge-poles" the following year, and then went back to the mainland to make good on his promise. He met with the Unitarians in Boston and then, just to make sure, he went across the street and made a deal with the Congregationalists. The following summer, he had so many at the conference that the staff was sleeping in the bathrooms.

The conferences continued and, in 1915, the Isles of Shoals Summer Meeting Association which Elliott had organized bought the hotel and the island, forming the Star Island Corporation.