“It was nearly twenty years after Abraham Somes came with his family to make his home at Somesville before William Gilley, first permanent settler in Southwest Harbor, built his log cabin at Norwood's Cove on land now owned by the Southwest Harbor Country Club and which remained in the Gilley family from William's time to the date of selling to the present owners.
William Gilley was at Cranberry Isles in 1777 and it was probably four or five years after that date that he went to Southwest Harbor and took up land, which was sheltered from the sea though close to it.” - “Traditions and Records of Southwest Harbor and Somesville, Mount Desert Island, Maine” by Mrs. Seth S. Thornton, 1938, p. 124.
“The house now used as a Country Club house was the home of the Gilley family. William Gilley was the first permanent settler in Southwest Harbor and his first house was a log cabin near the shore. Later he built a house just north of the Gilley Burying Ground. Then John, William's grandson, the eldest son of Benjamin Gilley, built the house that is now the Country Club for his parents. He was under age and for his work on the house his father "gave him his time." The place passed from
father to son in the Gilley family until Pedrick D. Gilley, fourth generation to own it, sold it to the present owners. The graves of the three generations preceding him are in the Gilley Burying Ground nearby.” - “Traditions and Records of Southwest Harbor and Somesville, Mount Desert Island, Maine” by Mrs. Seth S. Thornton, 1938, p. 131.
