In 1891, four intrepid women from Lowell sailed to a remote island in Boston Harbor for a 17-day escape from New England's prim and proper society. Calling themselves the Scribe, the Aristocrat, the Acrobat, and the Autocrat, the women rusticated in a cottage on Great Brewster Island, reveling in the chance to shed their identities of wife, mother, and daughter. Relive their sojourn through their remarkable journal, filled with observations, illustrations, photographs, and poetry, reproduced here by the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands.

The Great Brewster Journal project was conceived and coordinated by Stephanie Schorow, the author of eight books about Boston history, including East of Boston: Notes from the Harbor Islands and The Cocoanut Grove Nightclub: A Boston Tragedy, both for The History Press. Support for the project came from the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands (FBHI) under the direction of Suzanne Gall Marsh, founder of FBHI, a current FBHI board member and a former National Park ranger for the Boston Harbor Islands. Stephanie and Suzanne assembled a team of nine writers and researchers, many of them longtime volunteers for FBHI, including Ann Marie Allen, Allison Andrews, Vivian Borek, Carol Fithian, Walter Hope, Pam Indeck and Marguerite Krupp. Elizabeth Carella, a photographic historian, provided analysis of the journal's photos. Martha Mayo, retired director of the Center for Lowell History at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, provided Lowell background.