The last person born on the small island of Islesford was the newborn’s great-grandfather in 1927.
An island off the coast of Maine is celebrating the birth of a child — the first born there in more than nine decades.
Aaron Gray and Erin Fernald Gray welcomed their sixth child, Azalea Belle Gray, on Sept. 26, 2020, at their home on Islesford, Maine, also known as Little Cranberry Island.
Since Warren Fernald, Erin’s grandfather and a lifetime lobsterman, the first baby to be born on Little Cranberry Island was Azalea. He is said to have been born in July 1927 and passed away in 2005 at the age of 77.
“It’s exciting,” Denise McCormick, Cranberry Isles’ town clerk, told Bangor Daily News of the community’s new addition.
Denise McCormick, the town clerk of Cranberry Isles said that about 115 to 120 people live there. There are two schools — one on Islesford that has nine students, and another on Great Cranberry Island that serves three students.
Erin, 40, said that she and Aaron had a contingency plan to welcome their sixth child on Maine’s largest coastal island, Mount Desert Island, where Erin gave birth to three of their five other children. The two others were born at a mainland hospital.
While the couple traveled to their home in Northeast Harbor last month in case Hurricane Teddy made it too difficult for them to make the trip to MDI, Erin did not go into labor, and so they traveled back to Little Cranberry Island.
“I don’t think I would have done that if it were January,” she said. “But the logistics worked out just fine.”
Soon after the couple welcomed their new bundle of joy, they realized the island’s last birth was Azalea’s great-grandfather.
“That is the last one all the old people can remember having heard of,” Erin said.
The Grays, who homeschool their children, said they wanted their baby born in Islesford due to the town’s residents having such close-knit relationships with one another.
“It’s a tight community,” she said. “I hope someone else has a baby out here.”
