Author: Sharon Cummins (Sharon Cummins)

Places hold memories for the ages. If I show you this c.1965 picture of the Olde Grist Mill, a delicious Indian Pudding might spring to mind or maybe your first job waiting tables. You probably won’t reminisce about riding in a horse drawn wagon full of corn harvested from your family fields, on your way...

The most beautiful stop for paddlers on the Kennebunk River is Picnic Rocks. It has been so for at least 150 years but a few times it came this close to being split up for development. Thank goodness, preservation-minded individuals stepped up just in time. Cape Arundel Cottagers made Picnic Rocks a popular canoeing destination...

The history of Kennebunkport during the early 19th Century can be told through the experiences of Brigadier General Simon Nowell because he had a piece of most everything… until he didn’t. Simon Nowell, born in York, ME in 1779, first came to the Kennebunks as a live-in apprentice for the Kennebunk Landing baker, Mr. Brookings....

The Kennebunkport Inn lot has been through many changes since Ephraim Perkins built a family home overlooking Dock Square around 1800. At that time, the property extended all the way to the Kennebunk River. There wasn’t yet a bridge into Lower Village and except for Ephraim’s own wharf and store, there were no neighboring businesses....

Last week’s Throwback Thursday featured the c.1724 Thomas Perkins House, the oldest house in Kennebunkport Village. This week, the oldest commercial building still standing in the village is our focus. The Eliphalet Perkins wharf and store were built c.1775 for the West Indies trade. Perkins ships carried Arundel fish and lumber to the West Indies...

Captain Thomas Perkins brought his family to Arundel from Greenland, NH in 1720. Within a few years, he owned about all the land along the Kennebunk River from Bass Cove and Walkers Point. That area includes all of Kennebunkport Village and Cape Arundel today. His eldest son, also named Captain Thomas Perkins, built the Oak...

Kennebunk River near the old Mitchell Garrison 1870s Unknown Our mystery vessel somehow managed to get herself in this precarious position in the mid-1870s, based on the vessel on the stocks at the nearby Titcomb & Thompson yard at far right. By 1891 when the bottom picture was taken, what remained of her hull was...

Shipbuilding in Kennebunkport and Lower Village was a family affair. Brothers, in-laws, sons, nephews, and grandnephews passed the shipyards above and below the bridge on both sides of the Kennebunk River back and forth from 1840-1958. I can’t always remember the dates of all the famial comings and goings without a visual aid so I’ve...

The original Kennebunkport Parker House was a restaurant built in Dock Square before 1872 by Wm C. Parker, who had emigrated from Sweden aboard a local merchant vessel. In 1874, Parker expanded into the store next door and opened it as a hotel. Both buildings were destroyed in the Dock Square Fire of 1877. A...