‍Ambrose Grow might not like what’s been done to his house. 

The Civil War veteran and Kansas farmer arrived on the island in 1881, homesteading 160 acres along the Bainbridge waterfront and building his home on what’s now Parfitt Way. 

When not farming or founding churches (he and wife Amanda were charter members of the Eagle Harbor Congregational Church), Grow most enjoyed writing letters to local and East Coast newspapers lambasting the vices of dancing, card games and liquor. His 1909 obituary described him as “fearless in his onslaught of what he believed to be the great evil of our times.”

If he were alive today, the prolific writer and famous teetotaler would likely be firing off a letter to the editor regarding the current occupant of the Grow family homestead, Bainbridge’s beloved watering hole, the Harbour Public House.