[Ernest G. Stillman--home movies] Reel 015

Date1930

Can DescriptionsCan notes as follows; reel numbers are donor-assigned. Reel 15: Herring, Maine.

Viewing NotesFamily outdoors at construction site. Man fells a conifer away from the camera. Ocean in background. Wheelbarrows and people. Caterpillar tractor with block and tackle pulls felled trunk. View from moving boat of dock, Maine rocky shore, trees. On hillside could be house site? Another shot of shore from a distance. Men with pick axes. Caterpillar tractor approaches. Clearing ground, pile of brush. Boy's head in foreground. More footage of clearing ground, two men stabilize earth container behind tractor. Man with axe cutting down tree. Ocean in background. Tractor with block and tackle pulls up roots. Pan of worksite, tractor in foreground. Man wheels tractor around has rock in chain, loses rock. Next shot rock is secured. Moving another rock. Tractor moves over uneven ground, approaches third rock. The tractor has number 7 license plate under seat. CU man with jackhammer. Truck in distance. Worksite with many men (over a dozen) using pickaxes, shoveling. This may be the same site some days or weeks along. Crane helps move excavated dirt and rocks onto small dump truck. About fifteen Overview of worksite with ocean and trees in background. Line of men with pickaxes digging foundation. Crane arm lifts load of dirt. No one (of course) wears a helmet as load goes over them. Boy in shorts and white shirt walks through shot. Retaining wall in background. Roots lifted up and out of site. Very rocky site with framing going up. Man with jackhammer in background. Crane dirt load in center of frame with man attending it. Gravel being shoveled into excavation. Pile of rubble. Wooden walkway around one portion of excavation. Man with jackhammer and construction site behind him, looks up at camera. CU jackhammer with sneakers on either side. Jackhammer goes down into ground right to handle. View of harbor. Boy in field crouches down. View of stone pier and dock. View over harbor, pan right to left across islands. Workers with cement on walkway. Large two-wheeled wheelbarrow apparatus for moving cement. Two men stabilize it as third pours. Cement being poured into bucket, good CU. Bucket lifted by crane, passed along to other workers. Man in hat. Another view of cement mixer. Man in tie and man in white shirt with arms crossed in background. Little boy in argyle sweater (John Stillman) digs hole at worksite. Lunchtime, workers with lunchboxes and thermoses look at camera. CU one man speaking. Man in hat eats sandwich, pours from thermos. Inside, a man in tie and suspenders eats lunch. He is by a window. Bald, with glasses. Takes a piece of cake or bread. Backlit fuzzy shot with thermos. He holds something up. Outside again, various workers sit on beams and eat, look at camera. Man behind a tree. Granite with drill marks. Cement team at work. Filling two-handled square boxes with gravel to put in cement mixer. Pair of men load cement mixer. Man salutes camera CU. Load of Atlantic Cement in bags. Man wipes forehead in foreground, talks to worker. Pan of men. Cement bucket guided. Emptied. CU man in cap talks. Wipes forehead. Man on walkway with two wheeled cement carrier, then from a distance with trees in background. More cement views. END REEL

Anecdotal Comments & ReflectionsLiz McMullan July 2014, great granddaughter of Ernest Stillman and cousin of Whit Stillman. Her mother is Penelope Stillman Wolfe: ...building the summer home in Seal Harbor, a village that is part of the Town of Mount Desert. The place was called Berry Cliff, with 5 plus different edible berries on the property. I recall that Dr. Stillman bought the property from Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, in 1917. So the building would have been after that time. I will ask my mother if she knows. She may not have been born by then. My mother bought the house in the mid-1960s as we lived on the property next door and she wanted to buy the old family property back. It was sold to a family soon after Ernest's death. Because we already had a home and because the property tax valuations were largely based on the building value, we tore the house down about 1968. We still have pictures of the original house. It was a very plain design with 13 bedrooms upstairs. Basically a shingled rectangle with two stories. There was a magnificent stone-walled patio with big red tiles in front of the house, which we preserved. In 1984, my mother built a much smaller house on one end of the foundation with a small bridge to the patio. I bought the place in 1989 and sold it in 1999. Unfortunately, the new owners chose to demolish both the home and the gorgeous patio. My mother says that the summer home, Berry Cliff, was built in 1930, shortly after her birth.

Creator

• Ernest G. Stillman

• Ernest G. Stillman