Beston Society Calendar of Historical and Upcoming Events

JANUARY 29: Nan Turner Waldron, author of Journey to Outermost House, is born, 1922.

FEBRUARY 6-7: Henry Beston's Outermost House is swept out to sea in a massive winter hurricane, 1978.

FEBRUARY 7: After an intense January storm leaves the Fo'castle hanging on the edge of a cliff, work begins on moving the Fo'castle back on the dune, 1933.

FEBRUARY 19-20: Winter storm detailed in Midwinter chapter of The Outermost House hits Cape Cod , 1927. Even on the high dune, Henry Beston's Fo'castle is surrounded by high tides.

MARCH 5: Ownership of 32 acres of duneland on the beach in Eastham, where Henry Beston's Fo'castle is located, is officially transferred to Beston from Edna Nickerson Hurd, 1932.

MARCH 27: 2012 -- Lecture and documentary footage screening, Don Wilding's Henry Beston's Cape Cod: Inspiration for the Cape Cod National Seashore -- 7:30 p.m. at the Foxboro Senior Center, 75 Central St., Foxboro. Sponsored by the Foxborough Historical Society.

APRIL 5: Henry Beston completes the manuscript to The Outermost House at his office at the Cliveden Building at the corner of Hancock and Cliveden Streets in Quincy , Mass. , 1928.

APRIL 15: Henry Beston dies at the age of 79 at his Nobleboro, Maine home, 1968.

MAY 9: Ice storm with high winds hits Coast Guard Beach and surrounds Outermost House with abnormally high tides, 1977.

JUNE 1: Henry Beston born, 1888.

JUNE 18: Henry Beston marries writer / poet Elizabeth Coatsworth in Hingham , Massachusetts , 1929.

JUNE 21: Chimney Farm, the farmhouse in Nobleboro, Maine that Henry Beston and Elizabeth Coatsworth called home for several decdes, is dedicated as a National Literary Landmark at the Nobleboro Grange Hall in 2009 The Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association and the Nobleboro Historical Society, hosts for the event, also celebrate the renovation of Henry Beston's writing shack on the Chimney Farm property. Speakers at the ceremony include Chimney Farm caretaker/writer Gary Lawless, Beston biographer Daniel Payne, and Beston Society co-founder Don Wilding.

JUNE: Carpenter Harvey Moore and his crew begin a four-week project of building the Fo'castle, a 20x16 cottage, for Henry Beston on the beach in Eastham two miles south of the Nauset Coast Guard Station, 1925. Moore 's carpenters are paid a rate of $2.50 per day.

SEPTEMBER: Henry Beston goes to the Fo'castle for a two-week stay in 1925. He ends up staying on and off for a period of nearly two years, and writes a book of his experiences, which he calls The Outermost House.

SEPTEMBER 16: In 1963, Henry Beston writes to Nan Turner Waldron (author of Journey to Outermost House), stating "your letter brings the sense of the Great Beach back very vividly, and it makes me happy to thnk that people who feel the beauty as you do still shelter under the Fo'castle's roof."

SEPTEMBER 18: In 1944, Tom Kelley, former owner of the Overlook Inn in Eastham, writes to Henry Beston informing him that the Fo'castle is still intact after yet another storm, but work begins to move The Outermost House for the second time, this time to its final location next to Nauset Marsh.

OCTOBER 5: The Outermost House is published in 1928.

OCTOBER 10: The Patriot Ledger newspaper of Henry Beston's hometown of Quincy , Massachusetts gives The Outermost House rave reviews, 1928. Critic Walter Emerson wrote "The average person living there alone, probably within a week would toss himself into the sea if he found himself without means of returning to civilization. Henry Beston, however, is not an average person." The review opened with Emerson writing "If you want to know Henry Beston, read The Outermost House ... in it he himself is revealed, his great love for untarnished nature, his ever enquiring mind so filled with the beauty and mystery of his carefully recorded observations, his very religion and philosophy, are all there. And Henry is indeed worth knowing."

OCTOBER 11: Henry Beston's Outermost House is dedicated as a National Literary Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior in a special ceremony at Eastham's Coast Guard Beach , 1964. The ceremony is presided over by Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody. In 2004, the Henry Beston Society holds a 40th anniversary tribute to that event at the Cape Cod National Seashore's Provincelands Visitors Center in Provincetown , with stage and film actor Marvin Einhorn portraying Henry Beston. Endicott Peabody Jr. provides a special taped message for the 200 people in attendance.

OCTOBER 15: In 1926, Henry Beston told of the burning of The Pioneer, a trawler out of Gloucester , Massachusetts , which he witnessed from the Fo'castle during his "year on the beach" but not told of in the pages of The Outermost House. The crew members, many of them badly burned and injured, were brought ashore near the Fo'castle after being rescued by the Coast Guard, and were brought into Beston's humble beach cottage, where they were bandaged up and served soup and hot wine toddies by the Outermost Householder. Two days later, the crew members were featured in a photograph in the pages of The Boston Sunday Post.

NOVEMBER 8: Nan Turner Waldron, author of Journey to Outermost House, dies at the age of 78 at her home in Sharon , Massachusetts , after a battle with cancer, surrounded by family members, in 2000.

NOVEMBER 11: Henry Beston speaks at Armistice Day ceremonies in Eastham, 1928.

NOVEMBER 22: In 1928, The Patriot Ledger newspaper of Quincy , Massachusetts publishes excerpts of a book review of The Outermost House from the December issue of Vanity Fair magazine. In the review, critic John Riddell praises The Outermost House, saying that "it stands alone, not only in this publishing year, but it any year ... Mr. Beston has done one incredible thing in this work which no other writer to my knowledge has ever succeeded in doing before. He has captured in prose the very sound of the sea ... I genuinely believe that Henry Beston is one of the few great prose writers in this country today. The Outermost House is strong medicine. I genuinely believe that it will live for other generations."

DECEMBER 25: Henry Beston and his daughter, Margaret, spend the baby's first Christmas at the Whalewalk Inn on Bridge Road in Eastham, 1930.

JANUARY 1: Henry Beston witnesses the ruddy turnstones on the beach, 1926.