The Hinckley Cabin
Very little information is readily available about the former Hinckley Cabin. It was located at the northeast end of camp beyond the Boys Bunkhouse on Assembly land that was sold in 1984. The location of the Hinckley Cabin is on the map in the 1982 brochure here. (It's #25, all the way over to the right.)
The Hinckley Cabin was most likely the third cabin at the Assembly, built in 1938 and/or 1939. There is a Cabin Agreement to build it on file dated July 1, 1938. Construction could have begun in the Fall of 1938 and completed the following Spring, or built entirely in one year or the other, the records aren't clear.
Lois Hinckley (1943-2022) of Vienna ME, told us in a 2017 interview that she stayed in the Hinckley Cabin with her family from 1946-1956 while her father, the Rev. Dr. Edward B. "Ned" Hinckley, was president of Babson Institute (now Babson College) in Wellesley MA. She did not remember it as seeming at all brand-new when she first began attending as a child in 1946 — in fact, she recalled the cabin itself as seeming "well used" her first year in it.
The Hinckley Cabin was built by Lois Hinckley's parents and maternal grandparents: Edward B. "Ned" Hinckley & his wife Dorothy Kuenzli Hinckley, and her parents Vivian M. Kuenzli & Rev. Charles H. Kuenzli, who was one of the Assembly's core lecturers in the first two decades and became the FNCA's 2nd President in 1940.
The cabin itself was your basic rectangle with (in Lois's words) "a bump out on one side" for the master bedroom. There was an outhouse a short distance away, as well as a large 3-trunked birch tree that Lois remembers sitting in often as a child.
The Hinckleys are in the 1948 All-Camp Group Photo below. Lois Hinckley is the little girl sitting on the lawn in the front row third from the right. Her father, Ned, is seated immediately behind her, with her mother, Dorothy, sitting to his left. Her grandmother, (Mrs. Charles H.) Vivian Hinckley, is the next one over. Just behind and to the left of Ned is her older sister, Marjorie, with the large, dark-colored hanging bow on her dress. The page of identifying names below the photo says at the bottom that her older brother Ed was absent.
© FNCA 2011Nothing has surfaced to suggest that the Hinckley Cabin was ever used by any family other than the Hinckleys before, during, or after the period mentioned above. Correspondence also indicates that the title to the cabin was owned by the Hinckleys, not the Assembly, so they would have had to give their permission others to use it.
By the mid-1960s, the cabin started falling into disrepair. By the early 1980s it had became so dilapidated that it was quite dangerous and had to be torn down, possibly in the Fall of 1982, but far more likely before the session in 1983.
In 1984, the land on which the Hinckley Cabin had been was sold to long-time Assembly members Ed Schnurr (who served on the Buildings & Grounds Committee for many years) and his wife Wendy (Ashbridge) Schnurr.