The Memorials of Acadia National Park

J. J. O'Brien and His Jesuit Settlement Memorial

In 1952 a summer resident of Seal Harbor, ME named John Joseph O'Brien (1882-1971) mounted a bronze plaque on a granite cliff in his "Sea Bench" estate garden and invited garden tours to visit and enjoy it.*1  The memorial commemorated the first settlement of Europeans on Mount Desert Island, ME and the introduction of Christianity to the island in 1613. The memorial inscription reads:

FIRST RECORDED LANDING OF WHITE PERSONS ON MT. DESERT ISLAND, MAINE
1613
FRENCH EXPEDITION, UNDER SIEUR DE LA SAUSSAYE, INCLUDING THREE JESUIT PRIESTS, FATHERS PIERRE BIARD, ENNAMOND MASSA, JACQUES QUENTIN AND JESUIT BROTHER GILBERT DU THET, LANDED ON WEST SIDE OF SOMES SOUND AT WHAT IS NOW KNOWN AS FERNALD’S POINT. THEY NAMED THEIR SETTLEMENT SAINT SAUVEUR. SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, A BRITISH FORCE ATTACKED THE COLONY, KILLED BROTHER DU THET AND DISPERSED THE COLONY. BROTHER DU THET’S BODY IS BURIED SOMEWHERE ON THE SHORE OF WHAT IS NOW KNOWN AS THE JESUIT MEADOW.



Jesuit Settlement outside St. Ignatius

O'Brien commissioned the bas relief memorial, a work done by acclaimed Detroit-based, German-born sculptor Walter Midener. It was cast at the Modern Art Foundry in Queens, NY, the same company that made the bronze statue of University of Maine benefactor Harold Alfond. When O'Brien sold Sea Bench, he removed the memorial and attached it to a 4-ton granite slab which was installed outside of Saint Ignatius Church in Northeast Harbor.*2  This was fitting, as St. Ignatius founded the Jesuit Order.



Marian O'Brien
Courtesy: Clewiston Museum

O'Brien, a Philadelphian and a University of Pennsylvania Law School graduate (1908), was a journalist, industrialist, entrepreneur and politician from Grosse Pointe Farms, MI. Upon graduation he entered newspaper work, but he resigned as city editor of the Philadelphia Ledger in 1914 to go to Florida and develop agricultural land. In 1917 in Hillsborough County (Tampa), FL he married Philadelphian Marian Newhall Horwitz (1882-1932), the widow of Philadelphia attorney George Horwitz, and daughter of Daniel Newhall, vice president of  the Pennsylvania Railroad.*3  He and Marian lived in Moore Haven on the southwest side of Lake Okeechobee. There they formed the Southern Sugar Corp., later reorganized as the U.S. Sugar Corp., the country's largest producer of cane sugar, and established the town of Clewiston, "America's Sweetest Town."*4  Marian was elected mayor of Moore Haven, a.k.a. “Little Chicago” from its location on Lake Okeechobee, and became the first woman mayor in the South. She also was president of the Moore Haven bank. By 1924 he and Marian had sold their land holdings and left the area. In 1925, while a Palm Beach resident, O'Brien purchased "Guy's Cliff," a 6-acre waterfront estate in Bar Harbor that today is the site of the College of the Atlantic's Kaelber Hall. Marian died in their Grosse Pointe Farms home and is buried with her son and sister in St. David’s Episcopal Church cemetery, Wayne, PA.

In 1934, two years after Marian's death, O'Brien married Louise Webber Jackson (1883-1960), niece of the founder of Detroit's Joseph L. Hudson department store and widow of Hudson Motor Car pioneer Roscoe B. Jackson. Bar Harbor's Jackson Laboratory, a cancer research facility funded earlier by Jackson, the Webber family and Edsel Ford, is named for him.*5  O'Brien was a Michigan neighbor of Edsel Ford and living close by was Richard Webber, Louise's brother and a family financier of the Jackson Memorial Laboratory. In 1935 O'Brien was appointed the director of the Wayne County (Detroit) Works Progress Administration. The WPA (1935-1943) had a mission similar to that of the Civilian Conservation Corps (1933-1942) -- to provide jobs and income for unemployed, unskilled workers to do public works projects.

John J. O'Brien
Courtesy: Kebo Valley Golf Club

Among O'Brien's accomplishments on MDI, he was instrumental in setting up the Crobb Box Company in Northeast Harbor in 1942 to make shipping crates for Ford Motor Company’s war-related production effort.*6  He was president of Bar Harbor's Kebo Valley Club (1943-1946) and president of Seal Harbor's Harbor Club (1953-1958). Also, he served on the board of trustees of the Jackson Memorial Laboratory and on the Seal Harbor Village Improvement Society. Upon his death in 1971, which occurred at his Grosse Pointe Farms home, O'Brien requested memorial tributes be sent to the Jackson Memorial Laboratory. He and Louise, who died in Bar Harbor 11 years earlier, are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Detroit, MI.

J. J. O'Brien's Jesuit Settlement Memorial stands today as a silent witness to a seminal event in Mount Desert Island's history. Its 400th anniversary will occur next summer.

*Footnotes:
1  Bar Harbor Times, 7/24/1952; p. 1.
2  Memorial GPS coordinates: N44° 17.643'  W068° 17.619'
3  George's father, Dr. Phineas Horwitz, a surgeon general of the United States Navy, summered in Bar Harbor from 1879 until his death there in 1904.
4  The O'Briens named the town of Clewiston in honor of their Tampa friend and financier Alonzo C. Clewis.
5  Established in 1929, its original name was the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory. Today its name is simply The Jackson Laboratory.
6  The name Crobb comes from the initials letters of the founders' surnames -- Irving Clement, Gerald Richardson, John O’Brien and Horace Bucklin. Crobb Box continued to produce its lumber products until purchased last year by Pleasant River Lumber.