The Nott House, aka White Columns on Maine Street, was donated to The Kennebunkport Historical Society in 1981 by Elizabeth Nott, who asked that it be referred to as the Richard A. Nott House in memory of her brother. You may remember from a previous Throwback Thursday that the Greek Revival mansion was built for Charles E. Perkins and Celia Nott Perkins when they married in 1853. Both of their children died young. After Celia died, Charles married her sister, Lydia Nott. Lydia Nott Perkins inherited the homestead overlooking Dock Square. She shared it with her single niece, Celia (Ce Ce) Parker Nott and when she passed Ce Ce lived there alone every summer from 1919 until 1955 with annual visits by her brother’s children, Katherine, Richard, and Elizabeth Nott.

Ce Ce and Richard were especially close. They loved working in the garden together and having tea in the birch summer house. Richard A. Nott, after a lifetime of military service in WWI and WWII and a long career at AT&T, inherited the Kennebunkport house from his Aunt CeCe in 1955, just as he was reaching retirement age. He was a recorder by nature, from his work as a statistician for AT&T, his letters home from Europe during both wars and his lifelong passion for photography, he has left us so much history to absorb. We recently received a donation of letters he wrote to his sister Elizabeth when he was modernizing the Nott House in the late 1950s. Richard moved the dining room into the big old kitchen (now the Bush Gallery) and added a small modern kitchen with all the latest 1950s appliances. The old dining room became his library and music room.

If any of you are looking to volunteer to take on a very interesting historical project, Richard’s letters, his photographs from his Army service, his amazing photographs of New York City in the 1930s, his glass plate color positives of his travels and of his beloved Kennebunkport, let me know. We always welcome volunteers at the Archives and at the Nott House. I have shared some of Richard’s Kennebunkport pictures here today.