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FOUR OLD HOUSES AT CAMPOBELLO
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wore long trains and low corsages. Sometimes the mother wrapped herself in a certain gold and black scarf with such a courtly grace that its remembrance has never faded. Great was the jubilee among the domestics when a box arrived from England with fabulous dresses ready-made. Twice a year occurred house-cleaning, when a dress was given each busy worker and once each twelve months the maids and men had a ball, the ladies playing for them even all night. Nowhere on the coast of Maine has there been a more curious mingling of rank, with the investiture of ceremony, and of simple folk-life, of loyalty to the Queen and her representatives, and of the American spirit of personal independence.

After the death of the Admiral, in 1857, his daughter Mrs. Robinson Owen, and her children still lived in their Island home, helping, teaching, guiding all around them with kindliness and wisdom, until in 1881, the Island was purchased of the Owen heirs by a few New York and Boston gentlemen. The Admiral's house has now become a small part of a large modern hotel, though one end of it has been moved across the road for an office building. But his low rooms and small windows, easy stair case and glorious view are the same as ever, and will always make Owen Point beloved of the imagination, while the dwelling itself holds pre-eminence among the few old houses of Campobello.

Next in age, if not antedating the Admiral's house, is the old Wilson homestead, in a lane near the breakwater at Wilson's Beach, the northern end of the island,—a low frame house, built about 1790, which once had three ells. Here lived James Wilson, son of the Mr. Wilson who bought the settlement from a Mr. Kelly, the original squatter. The Wilsons came from New Brunswick and were an energetic race of men, who, early, made that part of the island so prosperous that they successfully withstood the Owen claim to its ownership. To this day it is in possession of their descendants and grantees.