Susan Weston Smith

First Summer People: Thousand Islands 1650-1910

By Susan Weston Smith

Why would anyone name an island Deathdealer, Bloodletter, Astounder or Dumbfounder?  Why does the international boundary zigzag between the United States and Canada? Who named this region the Thousand Islands? Who were the first explorers, surveyors, settlers and tourists? 

Susan Weston Smith's fascination with the history of the Thousand Islands let her to libraries, museums and archives to the homes of fellow islanders, and eventually to the British Hydrographic Department in Taunton, England, where, almost accidentally, she happened upon Ca[pt. William FitzWilliam Owen's original survey map, hand-drawn in 1816. 

It had not been unrolled in perhaps more than a century.  This map held the key to answering a great many questions about these beautiful islands. 

Susan has a variety of studies of the islands to her credit, including A History of Recreation in the Thousand Islands, and A Photograph Inventory of Historic Sites in the Canadian Sector of the Thousand Islands, both written for Park Canada, St. Lawrence Islands National Park.

Susan W. Smith © Brock’s Island Names first appeared in the First Summer People: Thousand Islands 1650 – 1910, Published by Boston Mills Press, (Stoddart), 1993. NOW OUT OF PRINT