A dozen years ago, we had our first date in Oxford, England, at a restaurant called The Old Parsonage. Years later, after Carolyn became an Episcopal priest, we came to think of wherever we lived as a sort of parsonage.

Our dreams suddenly became tangible when we moved to Maine for Carolyn’s calling as priest-in-charge of St Dunstan’s Episcopal Church.  While we fell in love at first sight with our nearly 200-year-old home, we grew even more enamored as we moved in with our family and began researching its history.

The home was built as a parsonage for Rev. Stephen Thurston, his wife Clara, and their large family. Rev. Thurston was pastor of First Congregational Church, a stunning historic building up the hill, crowning the campus of the Penobscot Marine Museum. Clara was the aunt of Winslow Homer, one of America’s greatest artists, who not only visited the house but even sketched pictures of the family (and their cow!).

It all suddenly felt bashert, or predestined, to use a Yiddish word.  What more fitting place could there be, we thought, for a Christian priest, married to a Jewish curator and scholar. To quote Paul Simon, we thought, “why don't we get together and call ourselves an institute.”  We knew the name instantly:  The Parsonage.

~ Dr. Aaron Rosen & Rev. Dr. Carolyn Rosen