Little island in Maine gets big surprise in a tiny package

Something exciting recently happened on the tiny island of Islesford, Maine — baby Azalea Belle Gray was born on September 26.

It’s a very big deal for a place known as “The Little Cranberry Island,” because Azalea is the first baby born there since 1927.

According to the Bangor Daily News Azalea’s parents, Erin Fernald Gray and Aaron Gray, had decided to forgo a home birth when Hurricane Teddy was forecast for the coast and left the island to be closer to a Bar Harbor hospital.  But the weather died down, and they returned to Islesford in time for their sixth child to be born at home.

“It’s exciting,” town clerk Denise McCormick told the Bangor Daily News. “We had a little baby boom, so that’s a good thing.”

And that last baby to be born on the island in 1927? It was little Azalea’s own great-grandfather — the late Warren Everett Fernald.

Islesford us part of the Great Cranberry islands, and its population has increased by 40 percent between 2010 and 2018, from 101 to 142 residents, according to the US Census Bureau. For many years, older people have consistently far outnumbered children.