Emily Manchester

WOMEN OF WESTPORT POINT

Emily J. Sowle Manchester (1867-1963)

Aunt Emma

Famous for her johnnycakes and her dedication to the Westport Point Methodist Church

1942 Main Road, Westport Point

Back in the late 1860s, James Sowle came home from a long whaling voyage to find his wife Betsy caring for a red-headed child. He promptly told her she had enough to do without taking in the neighborhood children. Word had never reached him of the birth of his own red-headed daughter.

Emma was born April 7, 1867 while her father was at sea. She grew up on Old Harbor Road with 3 brothers and 2 sisters. Family stories tell us that at age 12 she was running the large hotel Howland House and after that was serving boarders and taking in boarders at three adjacent houses on the left as you go up the hill on Old Harbor Road.

As her father had been a member of the Westport Point Methodist church since 1859 she probably came to church service here and to meetings at the Acoaxet Chapel which he had helped establish and build. The first mention of her in our church is in the late 1890s when she had married and moved to the Point.

She received honorable mention for her work with the Sunday School as well as on many committees. She was the drive and the workhorse behind the activities of the church, all the while running a boarding house, caring for her husband, George Manchester and daughter Ethel.

Her Johnny Cakes were famous even in New York and New Jersey as visitors enjoyed them – thin ones at breakfast and lunch with maple syrup and butter or thick cream and salt or sugar, and thick ones at night. She kept nine griddles going on a black coal range in the heat of summer along with all the other ingredients of delicious meals.

While her fame throughout our land was for good food and hospitality, here at home we remember her for her hard work and devotion to our church. She scrubbed and cleaned and varnished and painted. She taught classes, put on suppers, luncheons and food sales doing a tremendous amount of cooking. Ladies met at her house each week to sew in preparation for the summer bazaar. At one time or another, she worked on every committee of the church, and for most of her life as a trustee.

Aunt Emma often talked of heaven and its pearly gates, streets of gold and walls of jasper and of God waiting for her there. She earned every step of the way.

She loved to read and always marked the passages in the book that were the most inspiring. Books at the Point library bore her comments in the margin when Bible quotations were used or a moral was taught.

In 1919 she gave the land behind the church to be used for a community house. In the meantime, it seemed wise to dig a cellar under the church to be used for recreation. Then the land was made into a playground which village children thoroughly enjoyed. In 1966 with a large Sunday School of 150, space was desperately needed and land was finally used as she envisioned.

(Written by Glenda Broadbent)