Quansett Farm

In Danger of Being Foreclosed

(From an article in the Herald News, Sunday, January 24, 1999)

Susan Almy Yacubian (1233-8618-213) and her husband live on the Quansett Farm in Westport, Massachusetts. This is the land where her ancestor Job Almy, in 1742, built a home on 500 acres that stretched to the sea.

This is land where Susan grew up, married, lived all her life, and buried her father in a country cemetery. This is the 30-acre parcel that remains in her family, while the rest is protected by the Audubon Society, the state Agricultural Preservation Restriction program or sold. This is also the land she and her husband, scallop fisherman Larry Yacubian, might lose.

The Yacubians are behind on payments on bank loans on both their fishing boat and house. To buy the boat, they had to put up their home as collateral. The Yacubians finances collapsed like those of other scalloper families when their yearly income from fishing for the tasty shellfish was just about sliced in half in December 1994 after three huge sections of the fertile fishing ground George's Bank were closed to rebuild depleted stocks of haddock, cod and flounder. Scallopers, whose equipment can snag ground fish, were also prohibited from the over fished grounds along with fishermen who go for the finned fish.

Various relief plans for the scallop fishermen are being considered and we hope that the Yacubians will be able to withstand these restricted times and keep their home -- Quansett Farm.