Author: Sharon Cummins (Sharon Cummins)

Youth sailing and racing has a long history in the Kennebunks. Even before the Kennebunk River Club was built in 1890, kids were learning to sail and race their sailboats out of the Lobster Boat and Canoe Club near Government Wharf. George H. Walker offered a prize for a series of races in 1904 that...

Hazel Wildes will forever be the Queen of the Kennebunkport Dump Association. Where Ed Mayo conceived the idea to make littering uncool in Kennebunkport Hazel gave the movement everlasting heart. She was awarded the first Miss Dumpy crown in 1966 at the Nonantum and was mentor to every Miss Dumpy that succeeded her. The Annual...

The Seaveys of Kennebunkport descend from William Seavey who moved to Arundel from Kittery in 1720. Like his father Captain Eli Seavey, our subject today was a ships carpenter in the shipyards for many years but Matthew eventually started building yachts on his own behalf, to operate as tourist excursion vessels. Capt. Matthew B. Seavey’s...

“The observance of “Easter Sunday” in New England except by Roman Catholics and Episcopalians is quite recent. In this village, I do not think there was any particular observance previous to 1870,” wrote Diarist Andrew Walker in the Spring of 1883. By then, homegrown lily displays adorned every pulpit in every church in the Kennebunks...

I’m working on a series of lectures about the history of Kennebunkport. Even though each is about a different part of town I find the research overlapping in interesting ways. The names of some people who lived here before the Europeans temporarily abandoned Cape Porpus in 1689 are still in frequent use today. Turbat’s Creek...

The future of the former Unitarian Church Parsonage at 15 Portland Road in Kennebunk is again in question. I have collected historical information about the house that may be useful to those contemplating its historic value. The Unitarian Society bought a nearly 3-acre lot for a parsonage from Horace Porter in 1833. The house was...

One of the treasures protected by the Kennebunkport Historical Society is a record book kept by Rev. Silas Moody of the covenants, baptisms, marriages, etc. of the Church of Christ in Arundel from 1771-1815. The book went missing for 100 years but was returned in 1915 by a woman who came upon it in Fryeburg,...

The discovery of gold in California in 1848 inspired thousands of fevered fortune hunters to rush there by land and by sea. Fifteen of them were from Kennebunk. The sudden population influx caused a great housing shortage. A handful of Kennebunk entrepreneurs, future West Kennebunk Twine Mill proprietor Robert Waterston Lord, Capt. Wm Lord jr.,...

Pinkham Island in Cape Porpoise Harbor was called Negro Island until about 50 years ago. On some documents, a more offensive name was used. I have read stories about an escaped enslaved person who, after rescuing a local child from drowning, was allowed to reside there on that poison ivy covered rock after the Civil...

Town Planners and Kennebunkport Historical Society (KHS) Officers tried for years to create a Village Historic District to protect our many vulnerable properties, but Port voters repeatedly rejected such local ordinances. Our Bicentennial celebration presented a chance to take a tiny step in that direction. KHS and the Maine State Preservation Commission applied to the...