Introduction to Peary's Eagle Island
by Robert E. Peary, Jr. (Courtesy Friends of Peary's Eagle Island)

Eagle Island in Casco Bay, Maine was the well loved home of Robert Edwin Peary who was the first
and only man to lead a party of fellow men to the North Pole without the use of mechanical or electrical
devices.

Robert Peary was born in Cresson, Pennsylvania on May 6, 1856. He came from an old family of Maine
lumbermen and was of French and English heritage. He and his mother returned to Maine after his father
died. While in high school in Portland in the early 1870's, he discovered Eagle Island on one of his many
camping trips and fell in love with it. The love lasted and after he graduated from Bowdoin College in
1877, he bought the island with his own earnings from the Curtis Boys of Harpswell.

For many years the press of important work prevented him from enjoying his treasure so it was not until
the summer of 1904 that he brought his wife and ten year old daughter, and eight month old son to the
island; along with some workmen they camped on what is now the west lawn while the Little Cottage and
the nucleus of the Big House were built.

In Peary's eyes the rocky bluff was the prow of a great ship
heading northeasterly, and he placed his house as the pilot
house of a ship would have been located. The original house
rested directly on the bare ledge and comprised the front part
of the present building with the big front porch and the two
small back porches not enclosed. The house also contained
only two rooms downstairs separated by a small, commonplace
brick fireplace and one finished room upstairs with a single
dormer. There was no kitchen. For the first year or two, the
family members had their meals at the other cottage as the caretaker's house was called.

So many things happened while The
Commander was in the North that we can't
tell them all here. But the most momentous event occurred on the sixth of September, 1909. On a lovely
autumn day, nothing out of the ordinary until the afternoon, two boats were seen coming from South
Harpswell toward the island. The first one tied up to the mooring and a man tumbled into a skiff, came
ashore, and rushed up to the house waving a telegram. It was the Associated Press saying that Peary had
reached the North Pole. Mrs. Peary was not too excited because she had had too many false alarms
before. By this time the second boat had dropped anchor, and the short stout figure of Mr. Palmer, the
storekeeper and postmaster of South Harpswell, came puffing up the lawn. This time he brought a
telegram from Peary himself to his wife saying, Have made it at last.....
 

Soon, other representatives of the press had arrived and were
clustered around. "What do you have to say now, Mrs. Peary?" one said.

I say come on boys, let's have a drink.

After his triumph on April 6, 1909, it took Peary until 1911 to
show the world by incontrovertible proofs that he was the first
and only one to reach the North Pole. Congress, to express the
thanks of the nation, authorized on March 11, 1911 that Civil
Engineer Robert E. Peary U.S.N. be placed on the retired list
of the Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral. Now he could relax
and enjoy himself by fixing up Eagle Island as he had dreamed
about for so many years.

He brought a crew of men including masons, carpenters,
plumbers and others who cut the driftwood dining room and
kitchen from the house and moved it back into the woods as a
guest house; raised the house about four feet onto concrete
piers; built a new ell for a larger dining room, kitchen, maid's
room and bathroom (even as it is today); and raised the roof
with dormer windows to make five bedrooms upstairs. He
designed and had built by master masons the three-sided
fireplace, each side a different kind of stone, all found right on
the island. The crew glassed in the porches, built a 40,000
gallon cistern under the house, rocked up the present library
and its mate, the East Bastion (now a picturesque ruin) and all
the connecting walls to enhance the illusion of the prow of a
great ship.

Peary died in Washington, D.C. on the 20th of January 1920, of
pernicious anemia, which was incurable at the time. His widow,
daughter, son and grandsons carried on the Eagle Island
tradition and after Mrs. Peary's death in 1955, the family
decided unanimously to give the family treasure to the people
of Maine and the nation, so that all could enjoy its rich heritage and at the same time afford to keep in
check the deterioration of time. The State of Maine has done many things to preserve and enhance the
Island, but State funds are limited.

A 1964 Alumna's Trip to Eagle Island
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