By SQUIRE RUSHNELL

My wonderful wife, Louise DuArt, and I live in the Yellow Cottage of Edgartown, built in 1853. We love that our Island’s most prominent artist, Ray Ellis, calls it the “most painted house on the Vineyard.” Is it? I cannot attest. But, were I an artist, I’d have my easel permanently perched on Davis Lane.

We love that the Yellow Cottage makes us feel as if we’re living in a Leave It to Beaver home, complete with a Dutch door, and Louise baking scones in her June Cleaver apron.

We love that the warm glow from the coal basket nestled in the kitchen fireplace, side by side with antique pots that have hung there since the house was built, creates a cozy nest on a winter’s day.

When we acquired the Yellow Cottage about 18 months ago, it had been carefully preserved and beautifully decorated by the Conovers, the owners of the Charlotte Inn. Our goal was to further preserve the cottage and to further enhance its unique architectural attributes.

On the exterior these include the wide wood trim and the detailed pilasters above the windows. On the interior one discovers the tapered Greek revival design of the windows and sees the ripples of the original antique glass.

Our goal was to refinish and repair the wide plank antique white pine floors and this was achieved by Mark Clark at Martha’s Vineyard Hardwood Floors. We added wide crown molding and extensive interior cabinetry by John Kheary, including a strip of bookshelves along the top of the high ceilings in the library and study.

Upon purchasing the Yellow Cottage we commissioned woodcarver JP Uranker to create a sign with the date of the house which appears on Edgartown’s Online Assessors Database. The sign said, “Yellow Cottage 1870.”

One of the workmen came to the construction site one morning and surprised us, saying, “The Yellow Cottage was on TV last night.” What? we thought. Upon investigation we learned that MVTV had commissioned a documentary of historic homes of Edgartown. We got a copy. But, imagine our surprise when we heard the voice of title expert Mary Jane Carpenter describe the Yellow Cottage as being built by carpenter Henry Ripley in 1853.

“Oh, no!” I said to my dear wife, who rightly asked where I’d gotten the erroneous date that had been carved into an expensive sign above the door. But, once we determined that Mary Jane was right, not the Assessors Database, our signmaker said he could correct the problem by carving the proper date, and applying it to the sign as a raised addition.

A strong attraction to the Yellow Cottage is the design of the white picket fence and the highly unique arbor looking through a garden path to a small patio in the rear. Our talented gardener, aptly named Julie Gardner, has filled the window boxes and pots with colorful plantings.

We love to sit in the patio and listen to the church bells which ring out on the hour from the Whaling Church, and that at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., peal three hymns from the Federated Church.

We love our neighborly neighbors, and we love living across from a grand home now owned by Trudy Goff, that once housed a school for boys founded by the son of Joseph Thaxter, an eyewitness at the Battle at Concord Bridge and at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

In fact, every day that Louise and I can spend living in, and writing books in Yellow Cottage, is another day living in a storybook itself.

SQuire Rushnell is a speaker and author of the When GOD Winks bestselling book series.

Artist Ray Ellis offers this anecdote to the Davis Lane story: “When I first came here in 1963, I was painting on the end of my station wagon on Davis Lane and heard a bicycle come up behind me. A lady said, ‘Do you mind if I watch you paint?’ I said no. After about five minutes, she said, ‘You paint just like an artist in New Jersey named Ray Ellis.’ I turned around and said, ‘I am Ray Ellis!’”