 All right, so is this right? All right, so welcome to the 2020 annual meeting of Oceanside Conservation Trust. It says it's the 39th annual meeting. We were founded in June of 1981, so maybe we didn't have a meeting the first year. So next year will be our 40th, so it was no doubt we'll have a big blowout party if we're all still alive at that point. Anyway, I'm Roger Burley of Cliff Island, president of Oceanside Conservation Trust. I've been a member since a director since 1982. It's been a great ride, and we have had so many wonderful board members and had so much fun doing some pretty darn wonderful stuff around the Bay, and so my fun has been working with Oceanside directors and members, and I think I'm really only been president because I have a boat to get people to the various meetings and tasks, but I don't care if that's what it takes. I'm glad to have that excuse. So I'd like to, I never get this right, but I'm going to introduce all the board members that I can think of. David Hearth from Cliff Island, Michael Johnson from Long Island, Bill Stoffer from Little Diamond, John Lordy from Long Island. Whom am I missing? Is that it? We've got some former board members, got former directors, Harry Pringle, Priscilla Doucette, and since I don't want to forget later on in the workings of the meeting, I'd like Priscilla to come over here for a second. Priscilla has been a board member, a director of Oceanside, and she has also been the mother of a current director, Bill Needleman, and she's been an advisory trustee, and she has been absolutely essential to the production, design, creation, minding of our newsletter, which is fabulous, absolutely fabulous. Jane Laughlin and Hope McVane Trey from Cliff are now trying to replace Priscilla, but they can't. But we can show our appreciation for Priscilla. You have been absolutely elemental to the fun we have and the work we do. So thank you, and Michael has something for you. Thank you so much, Priscilla. Priscilla doesn't like my letters because I capitalized things that I think should be capitalized, and she is an English teacher, just like her husband, I think, and says, no, no, no, and I say yes, yes, yes. Anyway, we come to a middle ground most times. All right, so we are here to celebrate the great work of the Little Diamond Island Association, some really foresighted people, some incredibly generous people in this community. Again, Judith Hills is not here right now, she's not here. Okay, so many of you have contributed to this project. We raised three hundred thousand dollars. We, Oceanside put in, what about 9,000, so we're a player, Oceanside is, but the Little Diamond Island Association's membership and and the work that they did to raise 291,000 of that total is absolutely phenomenal. And Bill Stofer, with his assistant, Harry, certainly elemental, couldn't happen without all your work. It's just terrific, so we thank you, Oceanside thanks you, the whole of Little Diamond, I believe, thanks you and the whole bay because there's not gonna be a McMansion right here. And a little later on, our last piece of the agenda is a story that Harry will tell about the history of this property. So I am particularly looking forward to it. I heard a little preview from Jimmy Hackett a couple of years ago when we, when I first walked on this land. So I think I'm just about done, but again, thanks for coming. Thank you. Thank you for what you have created here, and we're gonna need stewards for this property, do we already have them? We do. Okay? So I would like, Bill, I'd like you to talk a little bit about this, and then I'd like you to give the Treasures report. Yeah. Well, I don't have much to say about the lot, except thank you to a lot of you. Judy Hill's not here. There were a lot of people that kept pushing me, Harry was pushing me. Judy Hill would call me every once in a while what's going on with those lots, and I think I needed that because it at times was a little tough. My first call to the late David Putnam didn't go very far, and by calling him directly and bypassing the real estate broker, I had to then go back and repair that relationship with the real estate broker that I damaged. But thank you so much to everybody's generosity. I quite honestly had many days where I did not think there was any chance we were gonna raise this much money, and it just shows that I think we all recognize what's important to our island life, and that includes some beautiful land that's left untouched, except for the birds and the trees and all those Latin-like words you use to describe things on the report. So, and thank you. 15 months, and every time we would get down to that part of the agenda. Yeah, I did, I did. Don't ask me that, Rod. Yeah, yeah, so anyway, thank you guys. You want me to... Okay, so I'm gonna read our financial report. Chris Stephenson's our treasurer. Yeah, I am substituting. Oceans High Conservation Trust financial position continues to be strong due to the generosity of its members, conservative budgeting, efficient operations, and good returns on investment return reserves. As we have stated in the past, OCT's strong financial position provides us the resources we need to maintain and defend its lands, acquire new lands, and support our conservation efforts. We ended 2019 with a modest financial surplus due primarily to the organization's expenditures coming in under budget. In addition, the organization has benefited from great returns on the investment of its reserve funds and a very generous and supportive membership. As are the most recent bank and investment statements, we have a healthy investment account, which is invested in a mixture of stocks and bonds. Of these investments, $90,000 is restricted for stewardship and defense of our lands, as well as property management. The balance is held unrestricted for future activities, including future easements and land acquisitions. OCT has an annual budget for 2020, just over $42,000. This year, OCT is right where we want to be from a financial standpoint. Thank you for your continued support for making all this possible. Thank you, Bill and Chris, Stevenson, by extension. And John, you want to talk a little bit about John Lordy, about what stewardship and defense is all about? Sure, well, stewardship is the easy part. We are charged with ensuring that these lands remain natural as possible, and some lands face more challenges than others. We're fortunate on this piece of property that there's very little invasive plants that are starting to take over the natural communities. Some of our other properties have a much more robust population and are going to require more management. But to kind of go through the life cycle of what is involved, we first do an inventory of the property, identify what's there. And as part of that, identify challenges that the property has, invasive species, maybe encroachment, maybe illegal dumping. And then we take action to fix those things or come up with a plan to take care of them. Invasive species management typically occurs over a long period of time. And sometimes it may occur long after none of us are here. And we do annual monitoring to make sure that occurs. And then we also encourage getting local stewards to help us with that. And typically, the people who live right near the property are the best stewards possible, and they help us out with that. The Defense Fund is set up so that if there are any issues or legal challenges regarding right title or interest, or for some reason we are sued, those monies are available to help us manage that situation. If we are sued, yes, we also have sued people on Long Island way back in the 1980s. There was some serious cutting of land that we held an easement on. We didn't own it. We held the easement on it. Overlooking the passage, the hussy between long and peaks. And so we were able to successfully sue the trespass. And so a conservation easement in its simplest form. First of all, it's a legal instrument, just like any other legal instrument. And it's held in registries of the local, the appropriate municipality. What it, the working part of it is a lot of boilerplate language, but the working part of it is a list of things that are permitted on a piece of property and the list of things that are prohibited on that property. And that's what Oceanside does. Usually every May we get out and about and see all of our, I think it's 16, 17 properties around the bay, a few of which we own, most of which we hold conservation easements on. And we walk around and look for good stuff, look for bad stuff, look for fallen trees, look for brush piles that shouldn't be on our land. And our first step is not to sue somebody, but to talk to them and just get them to understand. We're just another neighbor, whether by easement or by ownership. And so we're looking to have good neighborly relations, not antagonistic, litigious ones. So in 97.8% of the cases, that's the way it works. It works really well. So it's pretty simple. We've been doing this every year, like I said, for almost 40 years. And we hope to continue whoever the directors are in the future. It gets, in a way, it gets easier because we have better conservation easements. They get improved from time to time and it's pretty simple. And but the best thing we do is to make it plain to the community, including the butters, about who we are, what we expect, and what we what we're going to do about it. So anyway, so now we have some more business. So I would like John Lordy again to read the minutes of the 2019 annual meeting, which was on his Long Island. Oh, I don't have those. Oh, I do. Okay. I sent them to you. Oh, you did? What happened? Uh, there was a technical glitch. Okay. Oh, where else? That was Dave Hurth. Oh, my fault. You did the treasury. Dave, Mayor Culpa, Dave Hurth from Cliff Island. There's no reflection on Cliff Island. No, I guess I never did. Hang on, hang on. The women got a... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Okay. Let's see if I can project, compete well enough over the wind and hang on to the mic and read my notes here all at the same time. The first thing that happened a year ago was that three board members were reelected. They were Tom, Tom Berg, John Lordy, and Bill Needleman. Um, there were... We reelected our, uh, board officers who were Roger Burley, President, John Spencer, Vice President, Jane Loughlin, Secretary, and Chris Stevenson Treasurer. Chris presented the Treasurer's Report, and he said, kind of like what Bill just said, that the OCT remains in a substantially solid financial position with an appropriate balance of diversified equity and fixed income and cash balances, which are board reviewed on a quarterly schedule. You'll be happy to know, relieved to know. Roger gave the President's Report, in which he expressed great appreciation and acknowledged for the many years of dedicated and thoughtful service of retiring board members, Bob Bittenbender, Erno Bonebreaker, and, uh, and Jean Gulnick. Perspective board members, Tracy Ames from, from Shibig Island was introduced and voted into office. Tom Berg introduced our speaker, who was Heather McCargo of the Wild Seed Project, and OCT purchased and made available for distribution seed packets from the Wild Seed Project. And refreshments were served. Thank you for the Long Island Civic Association for their, for their housing for the meeting. And that's it. All right. So, uh, I'm not doing this in precisely legal order, but I am going to suggest that if there are no objections to the Treasurer's Report, that I can declare it accepted. You're here. Okay. And then, um, I would like to, uh, suggest that if there's no objections to the minutes of the 2019 annual meeting, I will consider it accepted. Done. Okay. So, uh, I will also mention that, uh, Bill Needleman, a little Diamond Islander, um, Priscilla's son, um, would have been here, but if any of you are following the, the waterfront news in the city of Portland, the fish exchange is in deep trouble. And, uh, he realized that he had to, uh, be on task on the waterfront. Bill has been incredible working on all waterfront issues for many, many, many years. And, uh, so he's on task today and wishes he were here instead, but he's there doing good work for the city of Portland. And I appreciate that completely. Um, so, and I also, I should have said at the beginning that while we're, um, getting in my boat or on the bail lines to do our monitoring work, we rotate, we go to all the islands, and also for our annual meetings, we rotate around the islands that have ocean side properties, whether again in, in fee ownership or by conservation easement. And so we get to be, uh, on all these islands on a regular basis. And I think it was three years ago, we were here at the casino, um, and, uh, last year, Long Island before that, Cliff Island. So it's great. Anyone who wants to come and join these meetings gets to see, A, get a boat ride and gets to see, uh, inside another island community, which I think is a great benefit. All right. So moving along, uh, towards Harry's talk, I will ask John Lourdy correctly this time, to do the nominations and run the election. Okay. So, uh, the current nominating committee report, there are, uh, no board members planning to retire this year. There are no prospective board members being nominated. However, there are a number of current board members who terms expire this year and are available for re-nomination. These include, uh, Bill Stofer, Heather McVane-Trey, Michael Johnson, Hope, yeah, sorry, Hope McVane, David Hurth, Jane Laughlin, and Roger. Um, I would like to make a motion to nominate all of these, uh, people for another term. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Okay. Unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Is there any other business that members or board members, uh, would like to bring up? Any questions, comments, um, now's the time. Yes. Yes. That is, what's the, what's the status of, uh, your start dumps over on the lower property? We are act, uh, you're talking about the toilets and do you own any of that, Paul? Actually, we're, uh, we are planning probably this spring to organize a crew to get that all out of there. Um, I think I've already talked to Nate on that a little bit, but yeah, we're, we are planning to get that. There's a few things up here too, but most of it's all down there. We just took another visit around there, actually, so. Good question. Yeah, we don't, that's right. That's right. Marty from the city. Any more trouble makers out there? Phil, you gotta, I didn't get your comment. Okay. Any other questions or comments, um, or other business? All right. Well, we're done with the, uh, painful part and now we're going to hear, um, Harry. Okay. So my job is to tell you guys a little story because not only is this an amazing piece of land to conserve, but there's also a little history associated with it. And the story is really, I think, a story of America and you'll see what I mean by the time I get to the end of it. So our story begins in 1818 when a young man by the name of Michael Healy emigrates to the United States either from Ireland or perhaps from Canada. It's not clear. He makes his way to Georgia and, uh, is very, very lucky because in Georgia he wins the land lottery and is given essentially free of charge almost 1500 acres of prime Georgia for. Now, the land lottery, of course, is a way of redistributing lands that belong to the Cherokee, but we'll move beyond that because in order to clear those lands he had to get some slaves. And one of the first slaves that he acquired was a young lady by the name of Mary, Mary Eliza. She was 15 when he bought her. She was a mulatto, meaning she was mixed race. It's not clear if she was born in Georgia or in fact was born in the Caribbean, but he bought her at the age of 15 and by the age of 16, she had borne him his first child. She would go on over the next 15 years and serve to bear him a total of 10 children. The first child was a young boy by the name of James, James Healy. And because James was born to a slave, James was a slave. Michael, the father, couldn't marry Mary, but she became his common law wife. All of his children under Georgia law were slaves and therefore could not be taught to read and write or be educated. Over time, Michael Healy, with his 1500 acres cleared by his at one point up to 50 or 60 slaves becomes a fairly wealthy landowner and one by one he decides that he needs to educate his children. Remember his children all being slaves but not be educated in Georgia or in the South. He sends our young man James up to a school in New York which was run by Quakers, very anti-slavery. He's educated there and then goes on to Holy Cross College where he graduates number one in his class. He was a very bright young man. Number one in the very first graduating class of Holy Cross would have been in 1849. So James graduates 1849, not surprisingly having spent four years at Holy Cross College, he decides he wants to become a Jesuit priest. To become a Jesuit priest at that point he would have had to go to a seminary in Maryland. Maryland was a slave state. He would have been arrested had he gone to Maryland. So instead he goes to a seminary in Montreal and ultimately to a seminary in Paris, France where he is ordained in the year 1855. By that time James was fluent in French which would serve him well because he comes back to the United States as a parish priest in Boston for a number of years and then in the year 1875 he is ordained as the second Catholic bishop of the Archdiocese of Maine. At that point the Archdiocese was much bigger than it is now and included all of Maine and all of New Hampshire or a good part of New Hampshire. And so James becomes the first African American to be ordained as a bishop in the Catholic Church and one of the first African American bishops in the country. Pretty historic. Remember that year 1875 because in 1875 a lot was going on in terms of immigration and growth in the state of Maine and all of New England. There were Irish immigrants coming in Irish Catholics immigrants coming in many French Canadian Catholics coming down to work in the mills and so over the 25 years that James is the Catholic Bishop of Portland he built listen to these numbers 60 churches 18 convents and 18 parochial schools an uncounted number of other ancillary societies. He is in my judgment and I I've read a lot about him by the way not a historian I'm just a lawyer so if I say anything that's wrong it's not my fault and if there's something I don't know there are people in the audience here I've only been on Little Diamond for 35 years people have been here all their lives much more than 35 years so they can answer questions you may have. But getting back to 1875 over the course of the next 25 years I think of Bishop Healy as being as much a real estate developer as a pastor to his flock because of all the things he does buying land and building churches seems to be among the most important. Now 1875 Little Diamond Island was owned by the milk and deering heirs they had owned the island for a long time it was essentially used for tenant farming some fish drying to supply markets in Portland and the deering heirs were starting to get tired of owning this island and having to deal with those problems so in that year 1875 they sold four acres of Little Diamond to the U.S. Lighthouse Service those four acres became the Rand property ultimately the Coast Guard property first part of Little Diamond to be sold in 1880 the heirs decided that they would have the entire island surveyed they cut it in half roughly 33 acres over here on the west side 33 acres here on the east side the 33 acres on the west side were sold to Elizabeth Smith and she proceeded to build a bunch of rental cottages 16 in fact on cottage row which if you came from the ferry you would have passed on the left and 15 of those cottages still survived although many of them have been moved all around the island in 1882 our friend Bishop Healy decides that this might be a good thing to get invested in and so he buys the entire eastern side of the island 33 acres now owned by the Bishop of Portland he proceeds to build a summer orphanage for the Sisters of Mercy between and if you go down the hill on your left towards the sandbar you'll see the buildings that still exist and that orphanage is run by the Sisters of Mercy up into the summer orphanage, summer camp it evolved into up into the 1980s but he chose the best piece of that 33 acres as the spot to build his cottage and that piece of land is right over there on the hill behind that tree and on that cottage it was at the time probably the nicest cottage on the island he spent most of his summers here between 1884 or so and 1900 when he passed away and that cottage was really in a way that's hard to imagine for us now the center of the Catholic community's summer activities in Portland because there was a huge bishops picnic that he would throw every year hundreds if not thousands of people on some occasions would come over in Little Diamond there'd be a huge feed on the road on the way to the sandbar Irish fiddlers, jigs just an amazing sort of exuberant kind of experience and all centered on that cottage that lasts until the early 1900s but in 1900 the bishop passes away and the house is still occupied by the successor bishop but a funny thing happens in the fall of 1923 it's the end of November and that cottage burns to the ground by the way I've only been able to find two pictures of that cottage one from the archives of the Catholic Diocese where I would have spent several days in February had it not been closed to visitors because of COVID so I'll get in there at some point the other picture actually is owned by Phil Lee and he has it here it's an amazing shot where you can just barely see the cottage but that cottage burns to the ground mysteriously and the rumor on the island has always been that it was burned to the ground by the KKK and that the Ku Klux Klan burned that cottage so is that true? I haven't been able to verify it but let me tell you what I know about the KKK in 1923 it's a really sad part of Maine's history but the KKK was really really resurgent in the 1920s it reached its height roughly between 20 and 1923 because there were so few blacks in Maine the KKK focused its hatred on Catholics primarily recent immigrant Catholics primarily Irish and also French Canadian the King Klegel which is to say the chief recruiter of the Klan in the 1920s was a gentleman by the name of Eugene Farnsworth Eugene had been a magician for a period of time he was a carnival barker for a period of time he was a very charismatic guy and his job was to increase the visibility of the Ku Klux Klan he did a bunch of statewide speaking tours he held a lot of rallies all across the state some of which attracted thousands of people and at those rallies you could join the Klan for only ten dollars of that ten dollars Eugene Farnsworth got a cut so he had a lot of reasons for increasing the influence of the Klan the Klan bought a large estate in Portland the Rollins estate between Forrest Avenue and Baxter Boulevard in 1923 established the headquarters there when it was opened the newspaper reports that there were over 3,000 Klansmen that gathered to celebrate the opening of the headquarters the Klan was also very, very active in politics and its arrival in Maine really split the Maine Republican Party in two the old guard of the Republican Party led by Governor Baxter detested the Klan was determined to show that it had a lot of power backed Governor Brewster as the governor in 1924 Eugene Farnsworth is reputed to have said the Klan will elect the next governor of the state of Maine and sure enough Governor Brewster was elected governor in 1924 by 1926 the KKK's influence was waning and the public began to turn against it Farnsworth himself died in 1926 so the point of this story about the Klan is to say that at its very height in Maine which is to say in 1923 and at the very time that the Klan was promising that it would elect the next governor of the state of Maine this cottage burned out maybe a coincidence maybe not I spent some time talking to Herb Adams historian about this many of you know Herb and we corresponded and Herb said yeah he'd heard the rumor too he didn't know if it was accurate or not but and I wish I could imitate Herb's sort of stentorian voice but what he left me with this thought he said Harry, legends do not grow in the dark he also added a post script to this talk which is pretty interesting so remember the Klan headquarters and the 3,000 people who celebrated its opening well that headquarters burned in the early 1930s and according to Herb the parallel legend is that when the call was put into the Portland fire department to put out the fire the fire department was exceedingly slow to respond and as a result it burned to the ground the Portland fire department of course at that time and actually to this day was largely Irish Catholic so that's my story if I find out more I'll let you know but for right now guys I'm sticking to my story oh hi Leslie I am President of Oceanside Conservation Trust and this is a wonderful event yet again Oceanside was incorporated in June of 1981 and it's now in 2020 so we're almost 40 years old what we do is we act to preserve conserve special properties in western Casco Bay and we're right now on Little Diamond Island where we have preserved properties before we actually own some properties on Little Diamond in fee but we also hold conservation easements on property that the Little Diamond Island Association or other individual landowners they still own them and we own what's called the development rights of those parcels which means that there's a legal deed called a conservation easement that lists the activities which are permitted and prohibited on these properties whether we own them or whether we hold an easement so today I am standing on the perimeter of what we call the Putnam lots which was one of the Putnam lots there are two that the Little Diamond Island Association was able to raise the money to purchase from the Putnam family or family trust and now the $300,000 including some of which Urshinside put in contributed to the purchase of these properties and we own them well I'm Priscilla Doucette I've lived on Little Diamond in the summers all my life and this lot and the abutting lots has been just part of our childhood we grew up being able to have picnics and build hideouts and really love this view of the bay and thanks to the hard work of the islanders we were able to purchase this and of course Urshinside I've been involved with Urshinside for many many years and so I think that the island is fortunate to have this become part of our heritage forever now and not just part of a few lucky people and the people who own this land always let the kids of the island come and play here well this was owned by the Sisters of Mercy and so they didn't it was given to them in the 1800s and I think Harry Pringle will tell a bit more for when the Sisters were forced to sell the land then it went into private hands but this lot fortunately was never sold off and never built on these other three were built on but we've had wonderful new islanders on it so now this is a great compromise we have some of the land saved my name is Harry Pringle and I've been on we've had a cottage on Little Diamond for 35 odd years which makes me a newcomer but I've been involved in Urshinside and involved on land conservation on the island for quite a while now this is an incredibly important project not only because it's incredible land that we're preserving forever but also because there's a historical tide because right up there through the woods on a on a knoll was the site of Bishop Healy's cottage he was the second Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland and the first African American Bishop in the country and he built a cottage here in the 1880's and used it as a summer residence but also a place for the Catholic community in southern Maine to come every August it burned down after he died under very suspicious circumstances at some point in 1923 the island legend has always been that it was burned down by the KKK I've been able to verify that nobody has to my knowledge but we're doing our best and so stay tuned we may have an answer for you at some point in the future is there any movement to have some kind of a memorial to this Bishop who you know very unusual at that time in Maine to have you know ahead of absolutely in fact in the entire United States we have thought about that I'd like to know a little bit more about the circumstances under which the cottage was destroyed and to do that you need to spend some time in the archives of the Catholic Diocese which I would have done in February had this pandemic not come along and made that very hard somewhere in those archives there are some clues as to how that cottage burned so if we can find them we'll have to actually put together a little historical plaque that will make some sense but even if we can't what you've got I think is not only a wonderful case of land conservation but a piece of history in the middle of Casco Bay that people ought to know something about my name is Bill Stauffer you want me to just I want you to just go go yeah so why do we start this first of all can I just say how long a process this took to build up the previous owner David Putnam who has since passed away and I thought it was going to be easy I thought he's an old guy he's just going to donate these lots and we'd be done with it but it wasn't that easy the lots were in trust so we actually had to raise the money and the price was it was high at first so the whole process took us about three years not only did we have to raise $300,000 but we had to get the sellers to agree to sell us both lots for $300,000 so we did get that agreement they gave us about six months and then we went to Islanders and the donations just kept getting bigger and bigger and then we wouldn't get quite there and somebody else would cook in a little bit more money and so just the generosity of the Islanders kind of blew me away and we did have we had a few naysayers saying wouldn't it be more cost effective if we want to save land to buy acreage say way up north somewhere we could probably get it for a lot less this came out to about $47,000 an acre but I think we have to save land wherever we can find land to save and when you look in the islands there's not a lot of land left to save and I know we often talk a lot about saving land and how it impacts human beings in our lives but I'm of the mindset that we're the caretakers of the globe and we kind of got to save this also for the birds and the trees and all the plants that only the scientists know what to call them but yeah that's a beautiful story and I think the generosity of the Islanders is just amazing but it's their home you're right, you're right it is their home and I also think that part of it is having land that's left untouched but also it's for future generations of kids that need a place to just go sometimes they're going to do bad things but they need that freedom to get away to just discover to walk around not knowing the name of a plant or an animal but just to discover what's out there and if there's a home on every single lot then they kind of lose that and that's the magic of the islands and you don't want to lose that we don't want to lose that magic of the islands I mean I go out to the other, whether it's like Cliff where you guys are there's a loft that overlooks Jewel Island I mean you just you have to appreciate beautiful pieces of land like that, yeah and be thankful to the people who either donate land or allow people to use it as well as the people like the generosity of this island coming together so quickly and getting that money together and this isn't even a year round island these are people who come here and have that great appreciation and it was a joint effort in other ways too because I'm not a scientist like some of the other members of our board and so to me it's a very subjective almost artistic when I look at land like this but some of the like John Lordy from our board who gave me a whole spreadsheet of the birds that exist on these lots he did an inventory you look at that and then you take a look at bird populations on uninhabited land versus inhabited land it's a huge difference sometimes exponential difference so there's a lot of other reasons just for the biodiversity that maintains if we take away that biodiversity then what do we really have on these islands right yeah okay I'm Jim Hackett I'm a lifelong resident here summer resident at Little Diamond Island so this is my 77th summer here and I hope to get a few more happy summers out of this who knows but growing up here as a kid these woods were really a lot of fun for us we would divide up as two little groups of kids into two tribes because you know Indian tribes Native American tribes and we would build little shelters and things over here in the woods and then at the end of the season what we would do is invite each other's tribe over and we would prepare a Native American meal out of anything that we could find here on the island dig clams blueberries raspberries anything make muffins, make pies had a lot a lot of fun very very fond memories and there are still some of us left in the clan one being Priscilla Doucette I see Phillip Lee over there and I don't think Martha was old enough Martha Nichols but fond fond memories are growing up on Little Diamond here so do you still get together with the old tribes? oh yes still get together some of them are now missing some of them have moved off the island some have died but we still get together in Reminis and really have fond fond memories of everything here so being able to preserve this land means you can continue that tradition exactly I can continue the tradition as a matter of fact one of our my tribes had a little settlement it was down in here somewhere and we would build little lean twos and what have you and probably had fires which probably was very illegal but we did that anyway how wonderful so this has given you a lot of joy it has given me a great deal of joy to know that this is being preserved and so much of the island has been preserved thanks to others too and other little children like you are going to have those adventures with their own imagining yes they certainly are I have two grandnises they have already been over here and looked around and I told them bringing up other kids here and looking around and enjoying immensely mother nature, the forest, the woods and everything that it has to offer