Jane Morgan’s beautiful old farmhouse on North Street has been sold. I attended the yard sale there last weekend to pick up something to remind me of Jane. I have written about her role at the Kennebunkport Playhouse several times. I thought this might be a good time to share some Blueberry Hill Farm history.

Thomas Perkins, Jr. built the oldest house still standing in Kennebunkport village in 1724 on Oak Street. His son, Abner Perkins, had the c.1747 house on Locke Street. Abner’s son Stephen Perkins built the house that we know as Blueberry Hill c. 1790. He also had a blacksmith shop close to the road which was later moved back behind the house. The property was finally devised out of the Perkins family by later descendants in 1878 to the South Congregational Church, along with the parsonage next door. When the church owned them, they were known as Sunset Hill Farm and Sunset Hill Manse. Cora Howland from Chicago, who flipped a number of old houses in town during the 1930s, bought both Sunset Hill properties in 1928.

Meanwhile, the daughter of Edwin Robertson, original owner of the 1913 House on the Hill aka Port Gardens, had married Basil Hwoschinsky. He was a Russian Count who had served in the Russian navy and on the private yachts of Tsar Nicholas II, and Empress Alexandra then guarding the royal family until Tsar Nicholas abdicated on March 15, 1917. Basil Hwoschinsky was posted to the Russian embassy in Washington, D. C. where he met Edwin Robertson, a Columbia, SC lawyer and banker. Hwoschinsky married Frances Robertson in 1919, shortly after he had begun his own career in banking in NYC. He bought both Sunset Hill properties as his summer dacha in the 1930s. He planted an apple orchard, acres of Blueberry bushes and rows of peonies along the driveway. The Hwoschinsky family sold Sunset Hill Farm to Jane Morgan and Robert Currier in 1958. They sold Sunset Manse to Frederick Meek the following year.

Jane’s era at her historic Blueberry Hill truly ended in 2026.