Rescuing “The Ruins” by MARILYN KEITH DALY South Berwick Site Manager
Tomorrow we are looking for some friends who mean to come down from town to look at the old house I have often told you about. …The old houses look at each other as if they said, “Good heavens! the things that we remember!”
—Sarah Orne Jewett in a letter to Sally Norton, April 1, 1898. From Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett, edited by Annie Fields, 1911. Transcription by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Above Emily Tyson and Sarah Orne Jewett in the doorway of Hamilton House in South Berwick, Maine. Tyson’s stepdaughter, Elizabeth “Elise” Tyson, took this photograph on June 30, 1895.
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beloved place in jeopardy; a mission to save it. Sarah Orne Jewett had loved Hamilton House since childhood. She had visited the house, located in her hometown of South Berwick, Maine, with her father, a country doctor. As an adult, the celebrated author found respite at Hamilton House, riding her horse, Sheila, across its fields, canoeing in its river, and walking in its woods. In 1881 Jewett wrote in a sketch titled “An October Ride” that serene Hamilton House had eluded “the destructive left hand of progress.” By 1898, however, Hamilton House had fallen into disrepair. Locals had begun calling it “The Ruins.” The owner put the property up for sale. In Hamilton House lore, Jewett, determined to find a buyer who would restore the place, approached Boston acquaintance Emily Tyson. Tyson, the widow of a financier, HistoricNewEngland.org
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