This project highlights three properties initially owned by the Avery family.

The Avery farmhouse was located at 1810 South Street, with a large barn behind it with the name Island View Farm. George and Lottie Niles Avery came from Pennsylvania and bought the farm in 1896 from the Rose family. The house built in 1829 is still there, but the barn was removed in the early 2020s. George and Lottie had 10 children; only seven children survived infancy, Marshall, Arnold, George, Horace, Bessie, Frank and Otis. George Avery broke off some parcels kept by family and the remainder was sold to Fitzgerald who developed the area as Gerald Park.

George and Lottie Niles Avery’s son Arnold Poole Avery built a cottage at 74 Avery Shores around 1920 that evolved into a year-round house by 1930. This house was possibly built on the site of the house built by squatter Samuel Burchard (a.k.a. Birchard), circa 1700, referenced in the Root book. Family stories indicate the farm’s hunting/fishing lodge was at this site prior to the building of the Avery cottage. Mildred and Edward Hansen and their children, Mary Ann and Anthony, moved to 74 Avery Shores in 1964. It is now the home of the author, Mary Ann Mellor Hansen.

Charles Mellor, Arnold’s brother-in-law and civil engineer built a cottage at 65 Avery Shores around 1930. His wife and family would spend summers there. Mildred and Edward Hansen turned it into a year-round house and moved there in 1989.