From Primedia Publications

Greyfield Inn
Cumberland Island, Georgia

By Susan Bard Hall

The widowed Lucy Carnegie built Greyfield in 1901 as a wedding gift when her daughter Margaret married Oliver Ricketson. Lucy's late husband was Thomas, brother and business partner of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Fiscally conservative Thomas wasn't nearly as wealthy as his brother, but he owned about 90 percent of Cumberland Island, Georgia's southernmost and largest barrier island.

For a "vacation" home, Greyfield was exceedingly luxurious. A staff of 40 cared for the four-member Ricketson family when they were in residence, usually in the winter. In the 1960s, Tom and Lucy's granddaughter Lucy Ferguson and her family opened Greyfield as an inn to help keep it intact and still available for family members. The younger "Miss Lucy" died in 1989, just shy of her 90th birthday, but the family continues to own and operate the inn.

It still looks much as it did in 1901, inside and out, although the Ricketsons enclosed a third-floor porch in the early 1900s to make extra bedrooms and the Fergusons converted the first-floor porch to a dining room, registration area and gift shop (the only shop on the island, so guests are encouraged to bring necessities). Fawn Olson, Greyfield's staff historian, characterizes Greyfield as a living museum. "There are Tiffany lamps on the bed stands. There are Chippendale chairs in the living room. People expect such treasures to be untouchable, either cordoned off by a velvet rope or behind glass doors. It's just the opposite here." Family antiques of the Victorian era furnish the inn's guest rooms, too. When they wear out, they're replaced with similar antiques. The china in the dining room is original, and Carnegie-Ricketson book collections fill shelves in the living room and library--guests are encouraged to read whatever strikes their fancy. The oldest book Fawn has found so far dates back to 1835. There's also at least one inscribed by Andrew Carnegie.

Fawn describes the living room as "eclectic eccentric in a Victorian style." The house was something of a hunting lodge for the Ricketsons, so mounted trophies hang on the walls. There's a personal touch on two windowpanes of the South Marsh guest room, where guests can still see where Miss Lucy tested the authenticity of a diamond ring she received for her sixteenth birthday by etching her name and the year (1915).

Although Greyfield is luxurious, air-conditioned and was one of the first places in the country to have electricity, it is in some ways cut off from the rest of the world and the 1990s. The only way to get there is by boat. Guests get free round-trip transportation on the inn's own ferry, the Lucy R. Ferguson, for the 40-minute ride between Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island, Florida, and Grey-field's private dock on Cumberland Island. There is no telephone service, only a ship-to-shore radio for emergency purposes. No televisions, radios or newsstands intrude on the island's sense of isolation. As one visitor wrote in the inn's guest book, Greyfield is "another world."

Cumberland Island itself is a secluded playground of history and nature. The first known residents were Timucuan Indians. In 1566 the Spanish built a fort on the island, and the Franciscans later established a mission. Revolutionary War hero General Nathanael Greene and his wife, Catherine, came to the island in 1783 after General Greene received 11,000 acres on the island as reimbursement for having helped finance the Revolutionary War. With the aid of slave labor the Greenes built a plantation, called Dungeness, to grow sea island cotton. Later, the widowed Catherine and her new husband, Phineas Miller, built a manor house on the property in 1803.

Another Revolutionary War hero, General Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, stopped at Dungeness in 1818 on his way home from a recuperative trip to the West Indies (he'd been wounded in a Baltimore riot in 1812), but he died here before he could make it home to Alexandria, Virginia, and his family--including his young son and Civil War general-to-be Robert E. Lee. The plantation thrived until Union forces took over Cumberland Island on March 2, 1862.

After the war, the island was all but abandoned until 1881 when Thomas and Lucy Carnegie purchased 4,000 acres and built "an appropriate place to raise their children" on the site of the Dungeness plantation house. It's also said they were trying to one-up the millionaire "cottages" the Vanderbilts, Astors and Rockefellers built on Jekyll Island immediately to the north. The Carnegies completed their $200,000 mansion in 1884. Just two years later, at age 43, Thomas died. Lucy died in 1916, and her children closed Dungeness. Abandoned for years, it burned in 1959. The ruins are a popular picnic spot for Greyfield guests. In the old ice house at Dungeness, the National Park Service established a small museum detailing the island's 3,000 years of human history.

Dungeness was one of five Carnegie mansions on the island. The Cottage, completed in 1886 for son Thomas Jr., burned in 1949. Plum Orchard, constructed in 1898 for son George, is vacant and in disrepair. Stafford, built in 1901 for son William, is a private residence.

In 1972 Congress designated Cumberland Island a National Seashore to preserve its historic, scenic and natural qualities and to shield it from development. The Park Service restricts the number of daily visitors to 300. Only 30 people live on the island year-round.

Cumberland Island's serenity draws many of Greyfield's guests to the island. The inn's picnic lunches come packed in hampers or backpacks for portable enjoyment. Bicycles are available, and the inn provides guided island and historical outings. In the evening, the ringing of a dinner bell calls everyone to a candlelit gourmet dinner. Jackets are required for men, the traditional attire for 97 years.

Of the 11 rooms in the main house, three have private baths. The others share baths with claw-foot tubs. Greyfield also has two cottages, each featuring two guest rooms with private baths.

Fernandina Beach, Florida, where guests board Greyfield's ferry, is about 30 miles or a 40-minute drive from Jacksonville International Airport. A 50-block area of downtown Fernandina is on the National Register of Historic Places because of the abundant late-Victorian architecture from prosperous late-1800s shipping and tourism. The town claims to have been Florida's first resort.

Greyfield Inn
Cumberland Island, Georgia
Reservations: 8 North Second Street, P.O. Box 900
Fernandina Beach, Florida 32035-0900
904) 261-6408 Copyright PRIMEDIA Enthusiast Publications, Inc.