Waitresses back in the day, or, how we used to walk to shack in the snow uphill both ways

I can’t be sure how much of this is accurate, but some of it is corroborated by other historical accounts.  I know Pelicans of our day have it easy, and I have heard many former Pelicans talk of the hardships they endured and the badges of honor they won for their dedication and service on Star.  But some of this sounds just plain ridiculous.  Please let me know if you have more solid evidence of the truth in these pages.

Frederick T. McGill, who was an island legend in his own right, was the historian for a number of years.  He started a notebook.  In these pages I found the following story recorded July 7, 1998:

Today Allison Brayton gave a talk to the All Star 2 conferees on her experiences working on Star during the 1930s.  Allison worked as a waitress from 1933 until 1937, and had many stories about how things were so different then.  For example, there were no room assignments.  The girls would live in the Shack and the boys in Gosport.  Which room one

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Beautiful Isles of Shoals Map- Gretchen Gudefin

Click the map to enlarge it.

This is a little map of Star Island that I designed for our 2012 Historic Star Conference. It served as the center piece for an interactive workshop I conducted loosely based on the sport of  “geo-caching” (also known as ‘letterboxing’). As our conference theme was “Mystery & Mayhem on the Isles of Shoals” this year, I was inspired

Happy Birthday Oscar Laighton!

Happy Birthday Oscar Laighton!

Oscar Laighton, the elder of Celia Thaxter’s two younger brothers, was born on June 30, 1839.  If he were alive today he would be 173 years old.

Oscar Laighton in his boat Twilight

Oscar came out to White Island when he was only 3 months old with his parents Thomas and Eliza Laighton and his older sister Celia.  He didn’t go back to the mainland until he was 16 years old, when he saw Portsmouth for the first time, a tall tree, the bustling of a mainland town.  He was so startled and disoriented he went back to the Isles of Shoals and did not leave again for a long time.