Author: Sharon Cummins (Sharon Cummins)

The barque Laurens was launched from the Kennebunk River shipyard of Robert Smith Jr. on January 31, 1838, almost exactly one year before the famous revolt of 53 Africans onboard La Amistad. At first, Kennebunks men sailed the Laurens across the Atlantic carrying mostly cotton and tobacco, but she started whaling in the early 1840s....

The first railroad company to run tracks through Kennebunk was the Portsmouth, Saco and Portland Line. The company opened a depot in West Kennebunk in August of 1842. It was the only depot in the Kennebunks for 30 years. Competitor, Boston & Maine Railroad Company, leased rights to run their trains on this line until...

Do you remember the Langsford House in Cape Porpoise? Were you there when the two upper stories of the yellow hotel building were demolished in March of 1964? Ferdinando Huff first ran an inn on that lot in 1682. The town was twice abandoned during King William’s War and Queen Ann’s War. Thomas Huff returned...

One is never too old or too young to be a History Hero. Without the documentation done by young William Harrison Larkin, Jr., at Goose Rocks Beach in the late 1800s we might never have known the location of the buried shipwrecks at Goose Rocks Beach. Two wrecks lie between The Point and Shore Goose...

I received a research request for information about anti-slavery sentiment in the Kennebunks. While the subject is broad enough to fill a thousand 330-word Throwback Thursdays, one example that I first learned from the diaries of Kennebunk Town Clerk, Andrew Walker, speaks volumes. Walker’s diaries are available through DigitalMaine. Eunice Dorman (1803-1852) and her little...

Kenneth L. Roberts is best known for his set of historical novels, The Chronicles of Arundel, but he was still a young newspaperman when he bought an old stable at Kennebunk Beach from his wife’s aunt in 1919. Roberts jokingly dubbed it ‘Stablehurst’ but His friends, Booth Tarkington and Hugh Kahley thought the name lacked...

The Kennebunk River is and always has been our source of commerce and entertainment. It wasn’t a coincidence that Captain Nathaniel Lord built his mansion during the War of 1812 overlooking that river with shipbuilding ways and merchant wharves in his line of sight. Fishermen still keep their boats in the Kennebunk River as do...

Capt. Joseph A. Titcomb, Capt. Fordyce B. Perkins, and Silas H. Perkins, who all ran the Perkins Coal Wharf in Dock Square had much in common. First and foremost, they were all related, either by blood or marriage to each other and to the family who built and occupied the Nott House now owned by...

Even the tiniest buildings in Dock square have fascinating history. Taking a walk in the neighborhood the other day I noticed that Dock Square Coffee Shop on Perkins Wharf is for sale. It got me thinking about the history of that small building and the tiny one beside it that now houses part of the...

THROWBACK THURSDAY is appearing early this week in light of today’s relatively rare occurrence. The earthquake experienced here in 1727 was noted as the fourth great earthquake that had happened in New England since the Pilgrams landed at Plymouth Rock. The first one had been in 1638, the second in 1658, and the third in...