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Fisherman's Walk
North bank of the York River
York, Maine

Text by Sarah Orne Jewett
from a May 1884 letter to Annie Adams Fields
Photographs and description by Nancy Wetzel
January 2019



I let Mary* leave me at the Barrell girls 'lane"*
 and after a nice call upon old Miss Mary
I walked all the way down the harbour side to Norwoods* --




Map

Google Maps Image

We began our walk as Jewett did, 
passing down Barrell Lane (now the extension) 
to the York River 
with a white storehouse in view 
and a stop at Mary Barrell’s house 
on the right (now Sayward-Wheeler House).


one

Here is one of the traditional storehouses built out 
over the tidal riverway from a lane connecting to a larger roadway.

two





It is very pretty just at the edge of the river;
the bank is high and steep with a wall at its foot --
the lilacs hang over the wall
while higher up is a row of old houses -- overlooking the water --
The tide goes way out and leaves a fine broad pavement of little stones,
 and as I walk along I always fancy
that in the old days there was much parading of young men and maidens
by this river wall on a summer night -




Along the river are a wall and a walkway. On the steep bank
before a row of old houses grow long-lived lilacs.

three


A house lane or public pathway swoops down
 between houses to the river. 
It was grassy in Jewett’s day, fragrant with French pinks.

four




The house lanes come down steeply,
very green with grass and bedecked with French pinks --
and there are two broader lanes with storehouses --
 and battered boats and whole boats and lobster pots
 and iron kettles with holes in them:
very big iron kettles indeed which may have gone whaling
 in the south seas in their young days --




A cantilevered stone stairway
descends to a pavement of little stones that appears at low tide,
opening a temporary work space for fishermen,
or for a courtship parade as Jewett imagined.

five

Located at the wharf end of Varrell Lane, 
near a storehouse and boat-launching way, 
is this weathered building.  
Its sign faces the river and reads: “Fish House 1838." 

six




I never saw such a clutter of worn out boat and ship furniture
as lies about on the river bank where these lanes come down from the main road!
Yes, and the schooner John and Frank and the schooner Gal-nare!
sometimes are in port alongside these tottering wharves,
and make very picturesque appearance
 in the summer boarders' sketches --



Jewett saw an old working harbor
become a scenic destination
 for tourists in her day.

seven



View from Cliff Walk to York Harbor Beach, 
Stage Neck and the York River 
flowing out to the Atlantic.

eight



Notes

Mary:  Mary Rice Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

Barrell girls "lane": The Barrell sisters, spinster friends of the Jewett family. See Paula Blanchard, Sarah Orne Jewett, especially p. 223.  Mary (c. 1804 - June 6, 1889) and Elizabeth Barrell (c. 1799 - November 12, 1883) lived in what is now the Sayward-Wheeler House in York Harbor, ME. for much of the 19th century.  See also James Henry Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution.

Norwoods: There is now a Norwood's Farm Road on East Point in York, ME, but Jewett's walk seems not to be in that area, though she would walk toward it on her probable route.  She probably walks southeast from what is now the Sayward Wheeler House, along what is now called "Fisherman's Walk" on the north side of the York River.

Edited by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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