Yesterday

A statue at the town’s waterfront is a tribute to Stonington’s granite workers of yesterday. STAFF PHOTO BY KATHERINE WILLIAMS A J.L. Goss granite crew poses at a Crotch Island quarry site. More than half of Stonington's adult men worked in granite in the industry's heyday, keeping the village vibrant.

DEER ISLAND-STONINGTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Stonington is one of the few descriptive town names we have in Hancock County that actually describes the nature of the community.

Resting on a granite ledge and, in places, some mighty thin soil, the community became a boom town when the granite industry set up shop.

Competing granite works, and the increasing demand for granite in America’s largest cities, created a modern town with an international flair, for many of the granite workers came from Europe.

As Green’s Landing, the area was first settled by a man named Sullivan Green and named after him. Other early settlers included Charles Eaton and David Colby, both building homes between 1825 and 1836. In 1881, Green’s Landing was a small fishing community, one of the many such small villages that the town of Deer Isle comprised.

The community had at least three stores, a post office, the steamboat wharf and Lewis’ lobster factory. More importantly, there was Barbour’s quarry on the mainland, near Moose Island; John Goss’ quarry on Crotch Island; Thurlow’s quarry on Russ Island; and another quarry on Green Island. Still other operations included Allen Brothers on Moose Island, plus a handful of others scattered about the community.

The 1881 atlas also reveals the “other side” of the economy at Green’s Landing.

W.B. Thurlow, S.B. Thurlow and W.S. Thurlow were shipping live lobsters to Boston. R.K. Knowlton sold fish retail and wholesale, along with shipping live lobsters. Thomas Knowlton Jr. ran a canning factory in addition to his lobster shipping.

A journey to the Grand Banks required a proper outfit, and a fishing schooner could be properly fitted up at Turner’s, on Isle au Haut, or at Witherly’s in Castine. There were also stores at Deer Isle and Oceanville where paint, tar, oakum, pitch and foul weather gear could be purchased.

The presence of the lobster fishery in 1881 was a relatively new enterprise for Deer Isle fishermen. In 1820, one-quarter of the island’s population was dependent on the sea fisheries. By 1860, when the fishing industry had reached its peak, more than 500 men were dependent on the sea fisheries. That figure represented 52 percent of the adult male workforce.

These fisheries were located on the Labrador, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Magdalene Islands and the Banks off Nova Scotia. The decline in these offshore fisheries was due in part to the loss of federal bounties. Changing economics demanded more capital investment than most could afford, and some of the best fishermen were now working out of Gloucester, Mass. The presence of modern canneries and the growing demand for lobster in the marketplace provided the community with new economic opportunities, which required only a modest initial investment.

The years between 1881 and 1896 were good ones, and the decision was made to separate Green’s Landing from Deer Isle by creating a new community. Stonington was incorporated in 1897. The settlement at Oceanville would be included in the new town, along with a number of islands offshore.

G.S. Goss is said to have established the first quarry at Green Head, circa 1870, and later developed the quarries on Crotch and Moose Islands. John L. Goss would carry the quarries into the 20th century.

One of his biggest projects was the huge fountain, or “Big Punch Bowl,” for the Tarrytown (N.Y.) estate of John D. Rockefeller in 1913-14. Weighing 60 tons when shipped, the “bowl” was loaded on board the three-master Susan N. Pickering and delivered to New York. The size of this project, and the skill with which it was created, is a testament to the men who created it.

Stonington granite was used in the construction of the cathedral of St. John the Divine and the Radio City complex in New York City. It was also used in the Verona-Prospect Bridge, the Triborough Bridge in New York City, the Manhattan Bridge and the Bank of Commerce at St. Louis, to name only a few.

After War War II, granite was cut for the art museums in Cleveland and Chicago, the Smithsonian and the St. Lawrence seaway. One of the last projects, in the 1960s, was the pink granite used at the gravesite of President John F. Kennedy at Arlington.