Boston Harbor Islands Adventure, A: The Great Brewster Journal of 1891

Boston Harbor Islands Adventure, A: The Great Brewster Journal of 1891

By Stephanie Schorow and Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands

Released June 5, 2023

In 1891, four intrepid women from Lowell sailed to a remote island in Boston Harbor for a 17-day escape from New England's prim and proper society. Calling themselves the Scribe, the Aristocrat, the Acrobat, and the Autocrat, the women rusticated in a cottage on Great Brewster Island, reveling in the chance to shed their identities of wife, mother, and daughter. Relive their sojourn through their remarkable journal, filled with observations, illustrations, photographs, and poetry, reproduced here by the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands.

Stephanie Schorow is a former reporter for the Boston Herald and a freelance writer focusing on topics of regional and national interest. She is the author of Boston on Fire: A History of Fires and Firefighting in Boston and The Cocoanut Grove Fire. She lives in Medford, Massachusetts.