We Build

by Laura Lee Davidson

From an article entitled "Saint Andrew the Fisherman -Bobs Lake" David One of the early visitors to the lake, author Miss Laura Lee Davidson, was instrumental in founding Saint Andrew the Fisherman. Miss Davidson was a friend of another doctor, Edward Renouf, who camped around Bobs Lake in the late 1880’s and eventually built a cottage on Ashnelot Island. He interested some friends from Baltimore, among them Miss Davidson, in coming to the lake. Laura Lee Davidson stayed in her own cottage on the lake one winter around 1914. She wrote a novel based on that winter’s experience – A Winter of Content – which contained thinly disguised descriptions of the local people. Many of them didn’t like what she said about them. However, she stayed on at the lake for many years after that and came to be on good terms with the full-time residents. In 1929, she started working with the residents around the lake on the building of the church, and wrote a small book, We Build, describing the building process, again substituting fictional names for the people involved. The story is a heart-warming tale of a community effort to build their own church in tough times when nobody had any money.

33 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1937