Family Memoirs & Histories, Massachusetts - State & Local History, Regional Studies - Northeast & Middle Atlantic U.S., Massachusetts - Regional Biography

Once upon an Island

Name: Once upon an Island
Author: Matilda Silva
ISBN: 9780970047656

by Matilda Silva

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Overview

Life for a child can be somewhat challenging on an island that has no schools, houses an active military base, and sometimes runs out of water. At least, this is how it was for Matilda Silvia, whose army father arrived on Peddock's Island in 1904, when Fort Andrews was first established. Silvia describes taking a boat to school on the mainland of Hull, Massachusetts each day. She would also watch military maneuvers on top of a hill with family and friends. When her house caught on fire, she explains trying to put it out with buckets of ocean water. Until this day, Peddock's Island, one of fourteen islands in Boston Harbor, is still inhabited by "island folk." Silvia's family lived there until 2000, when the Metropolitan District Commission took it over.

This delightful facsimile of memories told in the author's own voice is accompanied by photographs that date back to the turn of the century. A visit from President Calvin Coolidge, a photo with Charles Lindbergh, and a later appearance by Eleanor Roosevelt all encapsulate the way in which Silvia naturally weaves history into every day life on "her" island. As change quickly occurs (the arrival of telephones and radio, as well as erosion on the island), Once Upon an Island maintains a reminiscent and child-like quality, while celebrating the coming of age as well as the presence of the Harbor Islands.

About the Author
MATILDA SILVIA maintained her century old family home on Peddock's Island in Boston Harbor until 2000 and lived in Norwell, Massachusetts until her death in 2003.

LESLIE SILVIA lives in Norwell, Massachusetts and has been a captain for passenger vessels in Boston Harbor since 1978. She is now engaged in a medical career, and while completing her medical studies, helped the publisher complete her mother's memoirs.

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Editorials

John Galluzzo

A beautifully recounted, pleasing-to-the-reader's-eye life history of Peddock's Island in the 20th century, captured for all time.
—The Hull Times

Publishers Weekly

This chronicle of a woman's life on a small island in Boston Harbor encompasses both typical family stories and unusual tales about living in a remote location situated across the bay from a booming metropolis. Silvia's father, an Army tailor, arrived on Peddock's Island with the military in 1904, and his family continued to live there for nearly 100 years. The author herself was born on the island in 1917. (She recently died, and her daughter finished this book.) Silvia's memoir presents a conventional story of growing up in a military atmosphere-going to parades on summer Sunday afternoons, playing inter-post baseball games, attending school bundled in long underwear and starched petticoats in the winter. The one exceptional aspect of her narrative is the island's situation as an insular community: Silvia and her schoolmates had to take a boat to school, for instance, and could get ice cream only when a 100-pound chunk of ice was ferried over to keep the ice chests cool. Although it's a fairly straightforward and dry account of life on an Army post, Silvia's book gives a fine snapshot of a bygone era.