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' Sconset Memories by Edward G. Stanley-Brown I FIRST CAME TO NANTUCKET in 1923, the year of my birth. Since that time I have only missed one summer which I spent in Korea, courtesy of the United States Army. Charles Augustus Oliver, M.D., my grandfather, was an eye surgeon and Chief of Surgery at the Will's Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. There, in 1885, he removed cataracts from a man's eyes. The two operations successfully completed, the patient announced that he had no money with which to pay my grandfather. The patient owned two lots of land on the North Bluff of 'Sconset on the island of Nantucket which he offered as payment for the surgery. My grandfather is reputed to have said that he had "never heard of the damned place but, if that was all he was going to get, he'd take it". In the spring of 1886 he journeyed to Nantucket, inspected the pro perty and immediately decided it would be a grand location for a sum mer home. He deposited $1,500.00 in the Pacific National Bank and commissioned a local ship's carpenter to build him a summer cottage. The result, "Sunnycliffe", no longer in our family since 1980, stands to day exactly half way between Sankaty Lighthouse and the 'Sconset Post Office. Built from the timbers of a barn from Wauwinet, "Sun nycliffe" boasts four double bedrooms, three single bedrooms, two din ing rooms, three chimneys, a wood house, bath house and a garage. Douglas and Barbara Seholm with their six children own the house to day and I am grateful that they love the old home as much as I did growing up there. As a child with my grandmother, 25 pieces of luggage, a dog and always a bird in a cage, we boarded the steamer Commonwealth or the Priscilla of the old Fall River Line at Pier 14 on the North River (the Hudson River). Leaving New York was an exciting occasion with bands playing, flags waving, flowers, bon voyage parties, popping of champagne corks for the grown-ups and unnumbered porters to convey your luggage. My grandmother had a veritable suite with sitting room, bedroom and private bath. One entire wall of the sitting room was taken up with her luggage stacked from floor to ceiling. My grandmother, who was an unyielding lady, to be polite, had both her dinner and breakfast, the following morning, served in her sit ting room. She declined to take a table in the public dining room with its polished brass, burnished wood railings and attentive black waiters
