Schumacher Way: A Fictionalized History of the Founding of Camp Cotuit

By Ann Arata

The world is restless with change during the summer of 1915. As modern technologies kindle optimistic dreams and a womens movement develops, three sisters and their mother vacation in the now popular summer destination of Cape Cod where the seeds of possibility begin to grow.

Emilie, Emma, and Helene Schumacher are in the middle of their lives and restless to develop something of value that will last and also pass on their strong moral values to generations of young women to come. As they set out to create a girls camp on Cape Cod that they hope will advance womens athletics, the sisters must garner support from the local community to achieve their goal. But that task may be easier said than done as one obstacle after the other rises up to meet them.

Schumacher Way shares the charming historical tale of three sisters who must rely on their work ethics, determination, a loving family, and the local community while attempting to establish a camp for girls on Cape Cod in 1915.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480834330

Ann Arata

Ann Arata and her two siblings are the grandchildren of Marie Schmonsees and the grandnieces and nephew of her sisters, Emile, Emma, and Helene Schumacher. Together, they have stewarded Camp Cotuit into the twenty-first century with respect and gratitude for the achievements of their great aunts. Ann lives with her husband outside Boston, Massachusetts.

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© 2016 Ann Arata.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-3434-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3432-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3433-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016911610

Archway Publishing rev. date: 07/19/2016

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Seed

Chapter 2 Reflections

Chapter 3 The Search

Chapter 4 The North End of Lawrence Pond

Chapter 5 Through the Trees

Chapter 6 Uncle George

Chapter 7 An Auspicious Journey

Chapter 8 The Sandwich Depot

Chapter 9 The Return

Chapter 10 Planning the Bungalow

Chapter 11 Back Home and Beyond

Chapter 12 Plans and Progress

Chapter 13 A Visit

Chapter 14 At Dinner

Chapter 15 Kitchen Doings

Chapter 16 A New Understanding

Chapter 17 Beneath the Clock at Grand Central

Chapter 18 Off Popple Bottom Road

Chapter 19 The Hoxies

Chapter 20 An Unwelcome Suggestion

Chapter 21 Two Weeks to Go

Chapter 22 In Town

Chapter 23 Tent Hill

Chapter 24 More Kitchen Troubles

Chapter 25 More Bad News

Chapter 26 The First Arrival

Chapter 27 A Decision

Chapter 28 Final Preparations

Chapter 29 An Auspicious First Day

Epilogue

About the Author

Introduction

During the summer of 1915, the world was restless with change. The telephone, automobile, radio, and moving pictures were enlarging personal landscapes and kindling optimistic dreams. America had enjoyed fifty years of burgeoning industry, and families had more time and wherewithal to focus on their children’s prospects. Parents who had no sons no longer despaired but engaged in the potential of their daughters. The disciplines and expectations inherited from the Victorian era still dominated social exchange but with self-reliance, hard work, and persistence; women in particular felt their individual destinies expanding.

In the summer of 1915, the Schumacher sisters, Emilie (pronounced Amelia, and known as Taddy to her sisters), Emma (known as Mittens), and Helene (pronounced Helena), were at the middle of their lives. Some dreams had been necessarily abandoned, but each woman was restless with a sense of opportunity to develop something of value that would last. If there was a shared dream among them, it was to establish a project that would express and pass on their strong moral values. They had never openly discussed this idea with one another, but there are times when past experience mixes with present circumstances, when individuals meld with the natural beauty of a location and a community lends its support. That is what happened in the summer of 1915.

Chapter 1

The Seed

Emilie sat on the ground at the edge of the court. The ball pounded back and forth in front of her with a rhythmic thwack and provided a baseline for the insistent chirping of cicadas and other late-summer insects. The sun hovered just above the sea on the horizon. Its diminishing heat seemed to battle with the cool autumnal air around the group on the court. There were eight players, which was enough to keep the doubles round robin active for everyone. The Schumacher sisters were joined by the same five who had been enjoying this activity throughout the summer. Nat Hoxie, Eldred Holway, Dorothy Wing, Mary Hammond, and Earl Nye represented a cross-section of local Sandwich families who looked forward to the sisters’ visits each summer.

The game itself showed no signs of abating as the partners pirouetted and stretched for balls skidding along the smooth grass. Emma and Helene moved gracefully in their cotton bloomers, but their respective partners, being men and unencumbered by excess fabric, had a huge advantage in their uniforms.

Emilie felt stiffness in her legs as she relaxed. After all, she reasoned, her legs had fifty-five years of miles on them and had just finished two sets successfully. On the other hand, her sisters Emma and Helene—thirty-nine and thirty-four, respectively—enjoyed physical advantages that were obvious as she watched. Emma was small, with an affect of competence that married well with a belligerent nature. Helene, also small and lithe, was gentle and empathetic by nature. Emilie watched both as they moved about the court. Of course, they were all in top form at this time of the year. They were at the end of a ten-week holiday in Sandwich on Cape Cod with Momma. These annual respites, always at a carefully selected spot in New England, made up for the unremitting demands of teaching, which each endured in her respective private girls’ school during the other nine months of the year.

A ball rolled within reach of Emilie. She scooped it up and threw it to Eldred Holway at the service line.

Thanks! he called. He pocketed the ball and rotated his head and neck as he settled into serving position. This may be the last serve, if I have any luck at all.

Get on with it then! yelled Nat Hoxie as he bent his long frame into receiving position. We’re running out of light.

A few moments later, Nat and Eldred shook hands at the net. Earl joined them, and they gathered around a small table on the lawn. The sisters, along with Mary and Dorothy, moved about the court, picking up equipment and putting things in order. Then they joined the men. Momma had already set out eight glasses and a pitcher of fresh lemonade.

"Whew! That was a workout," said Eldred as he rubbed a terry towel about his neck.

Well, it doesn’t help to win all the time, teased Emma. In a round robin, if you don’t lose, you play constantly, don’t ya know?

So you recommend losing from time to time? asked Nat.

Absolutely not! returned Emma. She drew herself up to her maximum height, but her voice and spirit dominated her actual size. In my physical education classes, I always encourage the girls to win at all costs and hope that they’ll carry that advice into adulthood too.

You play as if you believe that, said Mary Hammond. I only wish I’d had the athletic training at that age. My game would be different, I know.

You know? That is interesting, said Emilie. They are beginning to focus on physical education at The Bettleheim School, too, and the girls are certainly enthusiastic.

I think it has something to do with Frances Chadwick swimming the English Channel a few years ago, said Helene. She persuaded her father and a lot of people that women can compete seriously in many areas of sport.

Nat gave his glass an emphatic little shake. Yep, that’s true. That was really big news in 1912. Schools seem to be picking up on it, especially the private schools. Too bad they lose some time in the summer when the weather and light’s perfect for outdoor games.

The evening’s residual light was gone now, and the August insect chorus vied with the ice cubes as the lemonade made its rounds. Everyone sipped and mused in the gathering twilight. Emilie gazed at the empty court and then at her sisters.

You know, said Emilie, I have friends who’ve been running a camp for boys in Maine for quite a few years, very successfully. Who’s to say it could not be done for girls as well? Then they would not have to slip back in their sports skills, and they would have a great vacation to boot!

Without fully knowing it, Emilie expressed the seed of a notion that had lain dormant for awhile. As they shared the lemonade, the sisters and their friends thought of possibilities. It was here, at the cottage they had rented for three consecutive summers, that their dream of a place for girls’ activities took shape.

The house, known as Mary Hall Cottage, sat just on the edge of town and within a mile of the sea. It served as a hub of all manner of summer activity. Days filled with picnics, hikes, games, boat rides, and leisurely naps created the fertile soil in which this new idea could grow.

The timing was perfect. In the last hours of the sisters’ stay, when farewells hovered over all of the group’s activities, the friends craved an idea to which they could attach their hopes for future visits and more permanent rendezvous. The location was perfect as well. The lives of the young people in Sandwich had gone from prosperity under the wing of the Sandwich Glass Company, which thrived until midcentury, to the same miasma experienced across the land as the century waned.

The railroad and boats still connected commerce to the urban areas, and visitors, flanked by trunks of warm-weather gear, sought out the assets of New England’s coastline in large hotels from Connecticut to Maine. Folks like the sisters arrived by train or boat and stayed for eight or ten weeks. But now a Model T or Reo could bring them for shorter stays, and Cape Cod was reassessing its potential as a retreat for those same urban dwellers. The very air seemed ripe with ideas about how to entertain them.

But it was the sisters themselves who inspired this idea. As single women denied the protection and security of a natal family, each had carved for herself, with inborn tenacity and well-bred sensitivity, a successful position as teacher, governess, church soloist, or administrator. They were admired here in Sandwich. For three consecutive summers, supported by one another and the company of Momma, they shared their enthusiasm for healthy and even joyful activity with a range of loyal people of all ages. Now, after the finality of the afternoon’s tennis game, the friends searched for something that would guarantee their return.

A camp! agreed Mary. For girls. Perfect!

And you’d be guaranteed to have all the summers off to run the place! said Eldred.

Really, you should do it! Nat stood. "Just look around. This year and last year, more and more people are coming here from New York and Boston. Cape Cod is becoming a real summer place, and why not? What don’t we have? And you three, he said as he threw out an encircling arm, are perfect for the job." He jumped up and began pacing back and forth.

You could get your campers from your schools. They’d have the same schedules you do, interrupted Mary.

You already know the parents, and they must trust you! Dorothy added.

Even shy Earl had something to say. My cousin went to a camp for boys in Maine last year and really didn’t want to come home. Cried off and on for at least the first two days back.

Hmmmm, mused Emma. I have to admit, at my schools, they are finally moving beyond calisthenics and Greek dancing and talking about physical education. She shrugged a little. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.

Still, said Nat skeptically, when you think about it, it may be too much. You don’t live here most of the year, you don’t have land or connections, and you’d need a lot of help.

The ring of light on the horizon toward the bay grew steadily darker. Raising their voices over the din of insects, the friends, unperturbed, sat for another hour and threw around ideas and plans with the same zeal that had described their tennis game.

Finally, Eldred got up to leave, but not without a final sally. He raised his glass toward the southeast and said, I’ve even got a name for our camp. Camp Cotuit! With due acknowledgment to our neighboring town. He made a formal little bow toward Cotuit, the tiny hamlet situated next to Sandwich. It has the perfect alliterative ring.

And you know, added Mary, "Cotuit is an Indian word meaning ‘land of small pines’ or something like that."

Well, that will probably fit then, if it’s anywhere here on Cape Cod, said Emilie with a smile.

To Camp Cotuit! they called together as they raised their mostly empty glasses one last time. The men, shoulder to shoulder, made their way down the dirt road toward their homes, followed by Dorothy and Mary. On the lawn, Helene, Emma, and Emilie could still hear excited phrases and snatches of Camp Cotuit! wafting through the night air from farther and farther down the road as they cleaned up and then went inside.

* * * * *

Chapter 2

Reflections

Helene woke early the next morning in an undefined state of anxiety. The day promised more clear sunshine. These last days of summer were full and precious, made more so by the impending end of another holiday with her sisters and Momma. The beginning of a new school year was always full of portent in the teaching profession, especially for Helene, who had begun new positions six times in the last ten years. And while they’d all been successful, she continued to look for a combination of challenge, comfort, and the ability to pursue her voice training not too far from her family.

The quest had taken her from Virginia to Portland, Oregon, and now she would be returning halfway between those extremes to Chicago—Rockford, Illinois, to be precise—where Rockford College employed her as a voice instructor. The previous year had gone well, and she didn’t mind returning, but she dreaded the train pulling out of Grand Central and away from her sisters and Momma.

She lay musing in the bedsheets under the gable at Mary Hall Cottage and listened to the dim bustlings of the others as they gathered and packed. So much had changed since the carefree days in Jamaica Plain when, as the youngest of eight siblings, she had garnered daily stimulations fostered by her mother. Back then, Momma was determined that her children, and especially her girls, would be intimately familiar with the civilized habits she sometimes felt she’d left behind with her bourgeois mercantile family in Germany. Music lessons, dance lessons, and of course the art her husband practiced professionally filled their days and their lively household.

Momma and Papa had begun their family in Portland, Maine, where they followed Momma’s brother George from Germany. Papa set up a large art supply store with his own brothers where they purveyed, along with paper and paint, all sorts of equipment associated with the new art of photography. This included stereopticons and the innumerable duplicate exposures of all kinds of scenery and portraits to fill their metal prongs. They also sold framed watercolors and oil paintings produced by Papa and the students who studied with him. Papa had talent, and the painted and framed scenes of New England that lined the walls were only slightly influenced by the forested, darkly Gothic nuances of his Germanic background. These works were popular, and the couple prospered—though not as much as brother George, who created an elixir that touched the pulse of the slightly uncomfortable ailments all Americans suffered at the time. This made him a very wealthy man.

Their first child, a boy, was followed quickly by Emilie, then three more boys and two small girls. After the war in 1870, it began to appear that Boston would hold more opportunity in the artistic trades. Papa began painting frescoes