Author: Sharon Cummins (Sharon Cummins)

Daniel Dow (1828-1878) of Newton, MA built the first summer cottage at Goose Rocks in 1865 on land owned by Kennebunkport farmer, Elbridge Proctor. Daniel’s son Francis (1859-1936) spent his childhood summers soaking in the raw natural beauty of the remote place. He was already 11 years old when the first hotel, The Goose Rocks...

Work on the Pier Road Causeway Project has begun. The Town of Kennebunkport will elevate and rebuild the portion of Pier Road between Stone Haven Hill and Bickford Island where tidal flooding issues are increasingly impacting public access to the pier. But it won’t be the first time. Bickford Island at Cape Porpoise was called...

Today’s Throwback is an update to a post I shared for Veterans Day 2023. I had learned that a boulder at Stone Haven Hill in Cape Porpoise used to have a bronze tablet honoring Civil War Veterans embedded in it. I lamented that the original plaque had been lost for many years. The Civil War...

We in Kennebunkport were proud to call the 41st President of United States, George H.W. Bush, our summer neighbor most of his life. His son, our 43rd U.S. President, George W. Bush, now spends his summer vacations in the house at Walker’s Point. You might have even seen our 42nd President, William Jefferson Clinton, playing...

Emmanuel Joseph, born in the 1790s in St Ubes, Portugal, came to Kennebunkport in 1817 as a cook aboard a ship commanded by Captain Samuel Pope. The locals felt more comfortable calling the foreigner Joseph Manuel, so that became his name. Shortly after his arrival, Joseph encountered the charming teenage local girl, Sarah (Sally) Wildes....

January 27, 1914, at midnight, the City of Boston steamer George A. Hibbard struck Schooner Olive F. Hutchins broadside and punched a sizable hole just aft of the foremast on her port side. The Cape Porpoise vessel had been returning to Boston Harbor from a four-day fishing trip off Jefferies Ledge with 25,000 lbs. of...

The photographs I’m sharing today were all taken by Stephen Moore Johnson who lived in the Josiah Linscott House on Pearl Street next door to Tory Chimneys. I have shared his 1970s pictures before. He donated tons of prints and negatives to the Kennebunkport Historical Society in 1993. Johnson worked for the Central Intelligence Agency...

I recently received a query about the bank branch on Elm St. When was it built and for whom? Coincidentally, I also received some material this week about the old Dudley mansion on Elm St. next door to where the bank branch stands. It always amazes me when questions and answers present themselves in the...

The Kennebunks have been blessed with reputable historians since European fishermen found this place sparsely populated by native families early in the 17th Century, but their versions of our stories don’t always agree 100%. The area between the Kennebunk River and the Mousam River, which was originally called The Cape Porpoise River, was at first...

I was thrilled when Kate Kelley, The Photo Angel® sent The Kennebunkport Historical Society an old picture of Dock Square Kennebunkport. Kate’s passion is in reuniting old photographic portraits she finds at antique stores with the subject’s descendants by tracing their genealogy. This time, because the picture she found was of a Kennebunkport location, we...