A handwritten pile of notes in one of the Cape Porpoise archival boxes is topped with a cover letter “To the Readers:

The following notes on the history of Cape Porpoise and its houses were dictated to me by my mother Laurette Hutchins Perkins (Mrs. Clement Stone Perkins) during the last two or three years of her life. She died June 2, 1937, aged 89 years…”

“In order that this book does not become lost by someone forgetting to whom it was passed, I am asking Mrs. George Emmons to keep a record of its where abouts.”

Somehow that pile of handwritten notes survived being passed around from one Cape Porpoise resident to another until Cynthia’s sister in-law, June Fischer Perkins, a highly literate and service-oriented person in her own right, typed several copies of her mother in-law’s Cape Porpoise History Notes to ensure their survival.

Thanks to these selfless women who remembered, verified, researched, wrote, typed and distributed these notes years before the History of Cape Porpoise by Melville Freeman was written in 1955, he had plenty of Cape Porpoise History to share throughout his book.

Laurette Hutchins was born in 1848. She grew up at the head of the Cove in Cape Porpoise. Her father William H. Hutchins and his brothers, Stephen and Thatcher owned the land surrounding the Garrison House, including the marsh land that would later be developed as Little Sanford. Laurette was certified to teach at the Cape Porpoise School in 1871. She married Clement Stone Perkins in 1878 and went to live in his family home on Mills Road, where she raised her kids.

Laurette and Clement had moved to Barnard Lane in Kennebunk before he died in 1927. Their single daughter Cynthia, who had made a good life for herself working for the local paper and then as a Lino typist in Boston, moved home to live with her sharp-witted widowed mother.

I first read these notes 25 years ago after Cape Porpoise resident Mary Bryant silently placed the typewritten bundle in my lap on her way past.

Many thanks to the local history lovers of the past!