Real estate transactions did use the lot at the corner of Water and Third streets as a referent for other lots. We’ve already seen examples of John senior’s mention of “land owned by me” and the like. Later, we encounter “the homestead of my late father John Shackford” and “the old homestead of my father the late John Shackford.”

Yes, homestead.

After considering the 1806 Samuel Wheeler house at 9 Washington Street and the Federal-style 1805 Hayden (the oldest two-story dwelling in town), the circa 1807 Lewis Frederick Delesdernier on Franklin Street, the 1810 Jonathan Weston, 1820 Daniel Kilby, and 1821-1822 Stetson-Starboard houses on Boynton Street as well as an 1812 Cape on Washington Street, the 1816-1818 Dr. Micajah C. Hawkes on Shackford Street, 1819 Jonathan Venzim-E.E. Shead on Middle Street, and 1821 William Bucknam and Captain Joseph Livermore houses on Key Street, I’m confident that ours predates them and may indeed be older than 1803, as the routing of Water Street route proposed.

I’m willing to venture 1780s. Feel free to argue otherwise.

As for time? An Eastport Sentinel article on the Wheeler house, March 29, 1882, mentioned that under the ownership of Bion Bradbury, the home “was changed by the substitution of a pitch roof,” among other modernizations. I hadn’t really considered the pitch of our roof until this but now realize it is lower (or was, before our own modernizations) than many of the later structures in town. The Federal-style houses, of course, are an exception.

While the 100-acre Shackford holdings along Water Street underwent subdivision and real estate development, the 100 acres at Shackford Head remained intact. So far, I’ve been unable to locate the original title that would have been bestowed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to Captain John Shackford senior, but the documents for the adjacent Coney or Cony Farm repeatedly refer to the land held by John Shackford, during his life, or later, “land formerly of John Shackford.”

In 1837, when Joseph Coney leased his 40-acre farm to his son, Samuel May Coney (1812-1895), the rent was recorded as one cent a year.

Samuel soon came into full possession. By the time of his death, he had added the Shackford property, too, as was noted in the sale from the estate (attorney John H. McFaul) to Charles O. Furbush in 1896. That transaction included an 1895 Plan of Shackford Head by surveyor H.R. Taylor.

All of this would become part of the controversial attempt of Pittston Company’s attempt to build a massive oil terminal and refinery on the site in the 1970s.

I can see why Shackford heirs living in Eastport would have held onto the rugged land. A house could go through 40 cords of firewood in a year, and with seven homes or more at times, having a large wooded reserve would have been useful. Depending on the proximity of a sawmill, the wooded land could have also supplied the Shackford shipyard or even the wood in our house.

I never suspected our humble cottage would hold so many stories and twists. A sea captain’s home should have a widow’s watch, right?

Ours, as you’ve noticed, doesn’t.

Still, a single house like ours can be a miniature version of the whole island’s history.

There are still so many unanswered questions to work around in this puzzle, along with points that will require clarification and correction. Consider this, like the house itself, a work in progress.

Besides, we’re living out the next chapter, including the renovations and restructuring that’s occurring as I write this.

Captain John senior and Esther had one other son, Samuel, who died in South America in 1820. His wife, Elizabeth Lincoln, had been born in Hingham, Massachusetts, and died in 1884 in Eastport, age 90.

The only child, Samuel, became a ship captain and, in 1851 in Eastport, married Mary Tinkham. He was also the one who provided the Shackford family profile in William Henry Kilby’s 1888 Eastport history volume.

Samuel junior turns out to be a remarkable figure in his own right.

As the 1895 Album of Genealogy and Biography, Cook County, Illinois with Portraits detailed, “He was, like his father, a shipmaster, which calling he followed until he came to Chicago, in November, 1853. Immediately on reaching this city, he engaged in the commission produce business, an enterprise which he carried on until the great Chicago fire, after which he removed to Winnetka.

“While living in Chicago, he was one of the early members of the Board of Trade, and served two terms in the city council during Mayor Rice’s administration. For five years he was a member of the Cook County board of supervisors, serving on several important committees, and for a time was chairman of the finance committee. During the Civil War, over two-and a-half million of dollars of soldiers’ bounties passed through the hands of this committee. He served about four years as a member of the Chicago board of education. … For many years he was a trustee of Rev. Robert Collyer’s church in Chicago, and was an exemplary churchman, never noted for extreme piety, but highly respected for his practical ideas of Christianity. He has been for years a trustee of the village of Winnetka …”

In addition, “Mr. Shackford has always been highly esteemed as a public-spirited and useful citizen. Before the Great Fire he had, perhaps, the finest and most complete records of city and county affairs ever in the possession of any one person, and his excellent memory aided him in the recollection of important transactions, which made all very valuable to the citizens. The people seemed to feel, and often expressed themselves in saying, that if he was chairman of a committee, that committee would do its full duty in advancing the interests of the city. He was indefatigable in looking after the affairs of the public in general, nor was he negligent of his own business.

“He has the best genealogical record of the Shackford family, and more interesting family records and mementoes than any other man in the state. Members of the old Shackford family are related to the first families in New England, proof of which he has in his possession. Mr. Shackford has written and left to posterity many valuable genealogical records, which have been, from time to time published. Notable among these, because of national interest, is ‘The Lineage of President Abraham Lincoln,’ as published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for April 1887, in which the writer, whose mother was a Lincoln, proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the brothers Mordecai and Abraham Lincoln, sons of Mordecai and Sarah (Jones) Lincoln, of Scituate, Massachusetts, were the ancestors of the Lincoln families of Pennsylvania, and that Abraham Lincoln, the Martyr President, was descended from the brother Mordecai …”

The 1855 Eastport map, produced shortly after Samuel had relocated to Chicago, illustrates how much the family had flourished. At least 13 buildings are labeled Shackford — most of them along Water and Sea Street just below our house. Many of the latter were likely warehouses and offices related to the six Shackford wharves and piers flanking the Calais Co.’s Steamboat Wharf, at the time owned by John junior.

The 1850 Census had eight Shackford households in Eastport. The 1860 Census had ten. And soon there were none.

So much for the Shackfords who grew up in the house we now own and their descendants.