Bessie and Helen Starratt

William Malcolm Bent’s Autograph Book

Mack Bent was 13 when he got his new autograph book, and his friend Harry Starratt, who was 15, signed it right away. So did Harry’s little sister, Bessie, who was 13.

A third child of Benjamin and Clara (Fowler) Starratt, little Helen, did not live to be a teenager. These three young people putting their ink pens to work in the new book had no way of knowing that of the three, only Harry would live a long life.

Bessie was by all accounts much loved and very talented musically. It was decided that she would have an adventure- visit her aunt Ellen who lived in Bermuda on a plantation estate with her wealthy Bermuda husband, “Worshipful William T. James”. She would not come home. Shockingly, Bessie became ill in Bermuda and at the age of 20, died.

About five years after Bessie’s death, William James decided to gift his wife with a Paradise estate. For their 25th wedding anniversary in 1898, he built a Queen Anne-style home grander than most in the village of Paradise, for the extravagant sum of $4000. They named it “Ellenhurst” and so it is still today (Figure 1). 

Bessie didn’t get to walk down the Post Road in Paradise from her home over the Starratt store so she could enjoy the verandah and beautiful rooms of Ellenhurst of her aunt and uncle. But for over 20 years in Paradise, we all enjoyed the “Moonlight Concert” that music lovers David and Linda Hankinson created. Music at Ellenhurst was meant to be.

Figure 1. The “William T. James House” called Ellenhurst

Ellen was not fond of Paradise and preferred Bermuda. Still, she could see Clara and other congenial guests. The guestbook still exists, and the crème of Paradise society, modest as it was, signed that book.

There were five Fowler sisters, and soon four of them would have Paradise homes. Clara, of course, Bessie and Harriet’s mother, had been here for years.

Then Anna and her husband, the famous Baptist theologian, Dr. Calvin Goodspeed, built a house on the river a few doors down for their retirement home: it too was a Queen Anne beauty (Figure 2). It was finished in 1911.

And Lucy Fowler and her elderly husband Edward, moved into the house next door on the west side of Ellenhurst (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Home of Lucy Fowler Lang

So the sisters might have enjoyed moving into old age together, visiting each other, and their children and grandchildren knowing each other. Mary Louise was up in Sydney Cape Breton with her husband, Rev. James Wm. Bancroft; Bessie, after whom Clara’s daughter must have been named, was in Oxford, and they could easily hop the train and enjoy visits.

But none of that happened.

In 1912 Dr. Goodspeed died, and Anna did not stay in their beautiful home for very long. William James died in 1913; Ellen took him home to Bermuda for burial and did not return. And incredibly, Lucy’s husband Edward died on February 15, 1914, with Lucy passing away ten days later on February 25.

As the guns of war opened in 1914, Clara must have mourned not only her daughter but also her sisters. She did at least have the comfort of her husband Benjamin and son Harry who all lived long lives.

As the horrors of a World War and a pandemic licked around the edges of the tranquillity of Paradise, they must have been glad to have each other.

Written by Barbara Bishop